Repaint a carbon frame ?

Quigs Snr

Has anyone gotten this succesfully done in Ireland yet ?

My old Trek OCLV is looking worse for wear but I am still fond of it and not ready to send it to the scrapyard just yet. I was thinking of getting it stripped and repainted, nothing special just plain black, maybe white decals. Trek say that they offer this service through their local dealers but I didn't get much joy a couple of years ago when I first thought of doing this.

CheGuedara

I understand Dolan do or certainly did frame painting, it'd be in the UK, but could be worth a look in.

DirkVoodoo

Yeah a friend of mine has a Dolan Hercules with a custome paint job, ill send him a txt and see what the story is.

EDIT: Yup, him say UK too.

SomeFool

Might sound a bit daft but bear with me. There is a guy in clonmel who repairs rowing boats. Did a fantastic job on mine (boat that is)... stripped the original paint off it and repainted it.(boat is carbon). I'd guess he'd be well able to do a bike frame too. P.M me if you want his mobile.

Raam

Quigs, let us know how you get on? Thought of doing this myself.

TinyExplosions

Get it in pink!

Chips Lovell

FTW:

Junior

Could you get it wrapped in vinyl instead ?

DirkVoodoo

My mate just sent me this link:

http://www.argoscycles.com/[/URL

Might be of some use.

Junior

DirkVoodoo wrote: »

My mate just sent me this link:

http://www.argoscycles.com

Might be of some use.

Seriously what year of the 70's was this photo taken ?

Ghost Rider

That's like a still from that 70s RTE documentary series "Hands".

Junior wrote: »

Seriously what year of the 70's was this photo taken ?

Quigs Snr

Many thanks for your suggestions folks, I will look up some of those. Hi Somefool, funny enough I did think about the boat repair guy in Clonmel, I had him do some work for me before (I was a rower for a long time and broke many boats in my day !). Will check out a few things and let you know how I get on.

I was going to strip the bike back, spray it black get some bog standard trek logos, clearcoat and take off the beat up old Dura Ace 9spd and put on Sram Rival. If its too expensive I might just retire the bike and use it as a spare and as a turbo trainer machine. Its hard to let it go though, won my first ever race on that bike.

TinyExplosions

Quigs Snr wrote: »

I was going to strip the bike back, spray it black get some bog standard trek logos, clearcoat and take off the beat up old Dura Ace 9spd and put on Sram Rival. If its too expensive I might just retire the bike and use it as a spare and as a turbo trainer machine. Its hard to let it go though, won my first ever race on that bike.

Oooooo stealth bike, I like it!

If you're looking to bu the groupset, jejames is the cheapest place I managed to find -£450.20 for the lot (and they have it in just about all variants of compact/road double and crank lengths)

cnocbui

Quigs Snr wrote: »

I was going to strip the bike back, spray it black get some bog standard trek logos, clearcoat

Only use mechanical abrasion to strip the paint off. Paint stripper contains methyl ethyl ketone and that would attack the epoxy.

Quigs Snr

Seeing as how I asked the question and was not the first person to do so, I figure there might be some interest in how this turned out...

So the story was that 9 years of abuse (particularly at the hands of the previous owner), plus several crashes this winter had destroyed my old Trek 5200 full carbon / Dura Ace 9spd training bike. I had a choice, I could sell as was for very small money indeed and use the bike scheme to get a good value replacement or refurb it. Based on the lack of demand for older high end bikes I figured it wouldn't be worth selling, its US Postal livery (same frame and paintjob that Lance won the 99 tour on) would make it even more dated and harder to pass on, especially considering that the paintwork was absolutely destroyed.

I also needed 10 speed so I could swap wheels with my race bike easily, always handy...

Finally there was the sentimentality factor, this was my first real race bike and most of my best cycling memories involved this machine... There was the fact that the color scheme in itself as a tour winner was classic and a shame to mess with, but I thought that no longer applied considering how badly it had been torn up, plus the fact that the majority of that particular team had since been discredited.

So, I ended up using Atlantic Cycles in the UK. Argoscycles as mentioned on this thread looked great too but their turnaround time was quite long at the time. Both were the same price. £300 to sand down, spray, decal and clearcoat the frame. Expensive. Argos were more versatile with their schemes but I only wanted a simple Pearlescent Black with Silver outline decals. In other words, plain. Atlantic could turn it around in 2 weeks so the decision was made.

Communications were great throughout and the bike was indeed back within 2 weeks. The expensive part of the job is stripping the old paint off. With carbon you cannot do this chemically, you have to sand it down by hand, its time consuming and labour intensive hence the high cost, if you do that part yourself its a whole lot cheaper. The added complication with my bike was that some of the gouges were so deep they needed to be filled, so it was not a straightforward job.

Heres how it turned out.... I am pretty happy with it. You cannot see it in the pictures but the paintwork is absolutely cracking. Flawless, the only small issue I can see is some tiny air bubbles under parts of the decals. Not good, but not a deal breaker either. There was some overspray on some threads also which made fitting the new parts a pain. I went for Sram Rival 2009 by the way with a Sram Red crank. I got a very good deal and the bikescheme made it very cheap indeed.

All in all, I think I was down about 800 euro to refurb. It would have been better value you could argue to get a Focus or Planet X, Dolan or whatever but I am chuffed to get this old warhorse back to something approaching its former glory and back on the road.

Heres how it looked before the respray (and some of the heavy crashes)



After... (you can't see how shiny it is because its still got lithium grease and oil all over the frame from being manhandled during the build and I hadn't cleaned it at the point that I took these pictures)

blorg

Looks great Quigs. When you say "gouges" - these were not so bad as for you to question the integrity of the frame?

Custom decals on the wheels? They look less yellow than usual.

DirkVoodoo

Looks fantastic Quigs!

Expect a stern telling off from Lance though (I actually never liked the US Postal scheme, sorry!).

Are those the Cosmic clinchers?

rebel.ranter

Looks very good! Fair play for restoring it to glory.

Quigs Snr

Blorg, the carbon itself was not damaged (if there was a suggestion of that I would have cut my losses right there) but the paint is quite deep on the carbon Treks of this vintage, but also very weak. When it comes off, it comes off in chunks and leaves what feels like a trench as the clearcoat is very thick indeed.

Yeah the 2 sets of Cosmics (Both clinchers) I have had their decals swapped for white. The yellow was too cheesy for me. Silvers would be nice on this one though...

AstraMonti

Beautiful! Much better than the original

Raam

Quigs, that is very very sweet looking! The carbones really suit it.

alfalad

Quigs Snr wrote: »

Yeah the 2 sets of Cosmics (Both clinchers) I have had their decals swapped for white. The yellow was too cheesy for me. Silvers would be nice on this one though...

Where can you get diff decals for the wheels, the yellow on the Mavic is putting me off and thinking of purchasing in teh end of year sales!

Bike looks great by the way!!

Quigs Snr

Ebay. I got them from a guy in Brazil.. cannot remember his details now but he is a regular on the weightweenies forum under the name "TOKO" and I think he has his own website now rather than using Ebay. I could swear I saw some similar decals for sale on Ebay UK recently however... check it out.

The yellow used to look nasty on the bike with the old color scheme.. (seen here after flatting in a race)

http://www.comeraghcc.com/ImageGallery/details.php?image_id=2051

alfalad

Quigs Snr wrote: »

Ebay. I got them from a guy in Brazil.. cannot remember his details now but he is a regular on the weightweenies forum and I think he has his own website now rather than using Ebay. I could swear I saw some similar decals for sale on Ebay UK recently however... check it out.

The yellow used to look nasty on the bike with the old color scheme.. (seen here after flatting in a race)

http://www.comeraghcc.com/ImageGallery/details.php?image_id=2051

Great i'll have a search so and see what i can get.

Thanks.

Lumen

Quigs Snr wrote:

So, I ended up using Atlantic Cycles in the UK. Argoscycles as mentioned on this thread looked great too but their turnaround time was quite long at the time. Both were the same price. £300 to sand down, spray, decal and clearcoat the frame

Quigs, hope you don't mind me adding to this thread as it's the best carbon respray I've seen posted on boards.

I came across a similar job here. The job was done by a guy called Sam Fish for £160 inc. collection and delivery (to London). Did your £300 include shipping?

It says a lot about the quality of Treks that people are prepared to extend their life this way.

Quigs Snr

Wow, thats half what I paid - shipping was an extra 30 I think for me - and a great job to boot (I paid well over the odds, but for sentimental reasons it was worth it to me). I actually have another few bikes (including a 04 Madone and a 01 Klein) that could do with a respray in the not too distant future. I am bookmarking that guy for future reference.

Even though I favour Cervelo these days, the older treks were years ahead of their time I have to say. Apart from being a little lighter, I am not sure that the current ones are any sort of an upgrade. Never heard anyone who has owned one have a bad word to say about that model of Trek and there are lots still knocking about.

furiousox

Bike looks great Quigs, as good as new.
Re: stickers, is this the guy you used?
He's in Uruguay, I got some Colnago stickers from him myself.
Slow delivery but stickers were absolutely fine.

http://stores.ebay.co.uk/DECALSBIKES-Store

King Kelly

Interesting to see this post reappear. I have the same Trek 5200 full carbon but the following years version (2001 I think) in white with blue/red decals. Absolutely love the the frame design and superb comfort of the machine and never had a days bother with it (although was never too fond of the US Postal livery). Groupset is starting to show 9 years wear & tear at this stage though.

Recently purchased a set of Kysriums from Quigs and he was telling me he had resprayed an old Trek like mine. Having seen the results definitely might put this down as a winter project. New groupset and might get another decade out of it!

Quigs Snr

Furiousox, I used a different guy for the Cosmic decals, whilst the trek decals were included with the spray job and sourced by Atlantic Cycles, but that guy in Uruguay looks good - another one for the bookmark list.

King Kelly, A new groupset and a lick of paint and there is no reason for an upgrade I reckon... A plain finish is easy to get like the one in my link and Lumens one too, but it is also worth mentioning that for a few quid more argoscycles in Bristol, because they are partnered with Trek will respray your bike in pretty much any original Trek colorscheme - without affecting the frames warranty. So if there was a particular year or paintjob that you really liked, they could replicate it. Not cheap though from what I hear.

CheGuedara

New cosmic decals for me then! Cheers furiousox!

Used another store before to replace the loud original yellow stickers (www.roiasso.com or something, now apparently closed) but it never had the new stickers