Pacific Northwest - '98 C'Dale R4000 rebuild pics

Finished my winter project WAY early, and had a blast. Now that I got my Vanilla all-rounder bike I decided to have my old scratched and dented C'Dale powder coated and do the rest myself. I had some great fun polishing the cranks and cable stop for the rear D with simichrome to remove all the scratches. The powder came out a metallic latte' brown which looks great with the brooks tape and the mavic rims.

Hope you all have a great new year filled with more rides than you can count.

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More pics on Flickr under my username "mtypinski", I can't get the set link to work on here

Sweet looking ride. Its the color of a perfect cup of coffee. Appropriate here in the PNW

What can brown do for you?

A lot by the looks of it. Clean & classy, good stuff.

Is that an older Dura ace gruppo or a mixture?

Thanks for the kudos, I was pretty stoked when I saw the powder color. It's DA 7600 series from '98, the stuff that came on the bike. I was considering changing, but I kind of like all the memories of the scratches (like the brifters, which took a beating when I was sideswiped by a truck in Phoenix in 1999). I think it adds some memory to the bike to have all the old stuff, and with DA I was able to strip them down to almost nothing and clean/rebuild everything. The only substantial piece I replaced was the BB cartridge, mine was pretty beat.

Makes me think of the perfect Americano every time I see it now.

Awesome job.

Where did you have the powdercoating done?

And, does Simichrome do a better job than other metals polishes? I used some Mothers chrome auto wheel polish on the chrome bits of my vintage bike, but haven't yet attacked the crankset yet.

I went to these folks:
Class Act Paint & Powder
(503) 254-6400
in east PDX

They're a family business and were very reasonable...$150 to strip and coat incl. clear layer for gloss. Thanks for the comment.

I use whatever metal polish I have...simichrome seems to have a bit more abrasive but I also used some old Honda Motorcycles Proline polish...really all the paste-type seem to have the same distinct odor that would tend to indicate they use the same basic ingredients. It took about an hour per crank to get the coating (anodizing?) off, but after that they took a very deep and even shine. They still show the miscellaneous scratches and dings form 10 years of use, but I think that adds to their appeal myslf...especially since I put them there. Oh, and I didn't do the inner faces of the crankarms, since they were relatively pristine and you don't see them anyway. It'll be enough of a pain to polish the surfaces you can see every month or so.

Thanks again.

Wow, I don't think I've ever seen a bike that colour before. And it matches the rivets in the Brooks, too!

Very elegant :) .

East Hill

Thanks EH, yeah "brown" isn't exactly a color that leaps to mind for a bike. I'd have to guess that's why I've also never seen one (aside from an old Raleigh 3sp in dark brown) before myself. I think "metallic copper" sounds a lot cooler, which was the actual powder name. That, or I could christen it "Dark Roast Stumptown Americano with room for Cream." Unwieldy, but regional and catchy. Once I saw the color on the frame I just had to spring for the expensive Brooks perforated bar tape to match. Which, I must say, was a pleasure to install.