Painting a bike frame

[evenflow]

I've been roped into helping a friend restore a bike.

We want to paint the (metal) frame but I'm unsure what type of paint to use.

Any ideas? Thanks

[Tim-D]

I find the easiest option is to take the frame to your nearest powdercoaters select colour leave for a few days and job done - a beautiful even hard wearing finish that although it'd cost between 40 & 60 to acheive saves hours of diy effort and 20 - 30 quids worth of materials......

[Justin Cyder]

Definitely powder coat. It'll come up like a new bike.

[evenflow]

Cheers both.
If it was to be DIY, what would be best to use?

[ecs]

The best would be some 2K stuff - if he's wanting a solid colour then you can get some gloss mixed up to the right colour, metallics would need a base coat (water based or solvent - just check it's compatible with the top coat) and then a clear coat on top.

If you're going from bare metal then you'll need an etch primer and then some kind of primer on top of that too.

I've done it before with white 2K gloss and it was pretty tricky getting around all the angles of the tubes e.t.c. I had one of my DH race bikes powder coated by someone local which was inexpensive and left a good finish - think I'd recommend that over DIY'ing it.

[anonymous-user]

I did my commuter hack with plastikote rattle cans and it came up pretty good. i wasnt that bothered about the finish as its going to be out in all weathers so i just used black but i used various grade sandpapers to get the old paint off, put on a primer, sanded that down a bit etc then just did loads of light layers, cost me about £25 in total but a local powder coating place should ohnly charge £50 for a single colour.