General Cycling Discussion - getting your bike painted and modified

hi i got a raleigh m60 mountain bike, i was wondering if anyone here has got there bike repainted, is this possible? I want to get my bike repainted to a different color, just the frame, will an auto body shop do this, or can a bike shop do this, or can you just do this yourself at home? And also can you replace the tires on the mountain bike with those real thin tires used on them speed cycling bikes? anyone know a site that sell a lot of cool accessories to make customize your bike as well? thanks.

You can either sandblast your frame or you can do it by hand with brasspaper.
Sandblasting is pretty expensive and not always good for the bike, brasspaper is cheap but hard work :D

After the stripping, you can paint your bike with primer and then with the color you like, if you do this , its better to do several layers instead of one.

Another option is to powdercoat your frame, powdercoating is an industrial process to bake a hard layer of paint on the material.
Powdercoating is not as shiny as paint, but hard and not easy to damage.

This is expensive as well and just like sandblasting, you have to bring your bike to a specialized company.

www.nashbar.com

www.ebay.com

Good luck and welcome to the forums!

Is this a steel or an Al frame? Totally different paint process.

You can fit faster slick tyres to any MTB. Look for ones with very little tread, and pump them hard to about 80psi (the harder they are, the faster you go, but watch for the pressure limits of the tyre).

i think its an aluminum frame, i just don't like how the frame looks, so i want to get it repainted, i was wondering if an auto body shop can sand it off and then repaint it? how much would it cost to do this around?

Originally posted by MichaelW
Is this a steel or an Al frame? Totally different paint process.

You can fit faster slick tyres to any MTB. Look for ones with very little tread, and pump them hard to about 80psi (the harder they are, the faster you go, but watch for the pressure limits of the tyre).

thanx, thats good, how much it cost for a set of those tires? and am trying to find a company that sells all white tires for my bike, anyone know where i can get em?

I don't know about white tyres but Vredestein S-licks are well regarded for 26" slicks.

Richard

If you live in a city of any size, check with a couple of good bike shops. There may be someone in town who paints bikes. There is a guy here who does absolutely beautiful work. His basic price includes gentle sand or bead blasting to get down to bare metal. This will also get rid of the decals you asked about in your other thread. The local guy charges a basic price of $160 for a simple 1-color repaint. He can get decals etc. and do special effects for additional charge.

If you want to fool with shipping there are places who advertise in VeloNews who will do a basic repaint for as little as $135