Bike Paint Job
It’s been over a year since I bought a 2011 Colony Endeavour off Gumtree (Australia’s Craigslist basically, because the actual CL website is simply a cesspit of spam and scam), and the paint work on it has never been in that great a shape. I’m also not particularly fond of completely black bicycles these days.
It came to me in a dream - I seriously woke up one morning and thought “I need to paint my bike.”
I even dreamt the color - a sort of sky blue, with everything else black. I mentioned it to Sabriena, and she thought it sounded like a fun project that would get me off the computer for a while, so we went for it.
I bought the requisite supplies, and proceeded to disassemble my bike. It turned out I needed a new bottom bracket bearing set (I’ve felt it crunchy since I bought it, but I can’t put these back in now I’ve gone to the trouble of getting them out) and the headset is not exactly magnificent, but I put the better bearing on the bottom for the time being. A new bottom bracket and rear brake cable set me back almost another $40.
It’s been four days since I started this project and it’s basically complete. I’m pretty happy with the results, although I don’t think my spray job is as resilient as it perhaps could be. Next time I might simply take it somewhere and get it powder coated.
The components are also not all the color I want - I don’t feel confident enough to unlace and relace the rims and I don’t feel like paying anyone to build them, the sprocket is almost buggered and it’s not really worth sending the stem out for anodizing by itself. I thought briefly about dabbling with home anodizing, but the problem with the wheelset still applies.
It’s interesting to note that I bought paint stripper this time - previously I had always eschewed it in favor of simply putting more elbow grease in and saving a few bucks. Seriously, why the fuck did I do this? The paint stripper was about ten bucks and it saved hours of work - the entire frame was paint-free and polished with steel wool inside of an hour.
fwagglePublished:
Modified:
Filed under:
Location:
Horsham, VIC, AustraliaNavigation: Older Entry Newer Entry