Friday, March 11, 2011

Ole Trek Paint Job

I have always wanted to see if I could paint a frame. I had this older Trek that many of you have seen. It was one of the first bikes I bought. Many from our family have ridden it in our pass down system. It came back to my stable so I decided to see if I could paint it. I first had to take it totally apart and then the real fun began. Because it is a carbon fiber frame you can't sand blast it so its good ole hand sanding. You have to be real careful just to get the paint off without taking carbon off. This turned out to be the hardest part of whole deal. Flat surfaces weren't to bad, and this smile had left by the time I finished. The curved parts of the frame were just plain hard to do.
Once I got it all sanded then I masked all the openings and end pieces.





I made a paint space in my bike shop and it worked really well. I have just primed the frame and fork.

Then I started with the fork to practice. I got the paint from a custom auto body shop and some pointers as well. This is the masking and layering technique to get the design I wanted. I didn't want to just have one color, which would have been alot easier.


Each color has to be free hand masked, I found some flex masking tape that won't leak and really turns corner nicely.

This is the first layer of gloss black on the frame. It took a couple of coats and soft sand to get a good looking job.


Then the masking and layering of different colors.


The final look of the fork, with the bike put back together.


The finished product. I was pretty happy with the way it turned out. I learned alot and had alot of fun trying something new, (Thanks to retirement).


The weather is improving and warmer days are coming. Ride Safe.

2 comments:

Bubba said...

That's awesome! Looks great. Starting to dream of you painting the zebra.

Doug said...

Bub I'm ready, the Al frame you can sandblast, so it would be much easier.