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Help! six month new Trek and wrinkled decals!

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Help! six month new Trek and wrinkled decals!

Old 07-09-05, 07:20 PM
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Help! six month new Trek and wrinkled decals!

Okay experts, I need your help. I feel I must first say that this '05 Trek 2300 is my first road bike and I have loved everything about it. My wife now has a 1500 WSB and we are solid Trek fans. Nice bikes, Great ride, good price. Now.... my dilemma.

I just pulled my bike off of my Yakima hitch mounted rack and proceeded to clean it. Apparently, while it was strapped down, the decals on the top tube were twisted or something and have some big wrinkles in them. Wrinkles large enough that there is a small space between parts of the frame and the decals. I have a six month service due this week, so I will ask my authorized Trek dealer, but I value opinions here. The questions:

1) Do you think Trek's 1 year paint and decal warranty will cover this, even though I had it pretty tightly strapped to the rack? Should decals be this fragile?

2) Is the bike clear coated before or after the decals are applied?

3) Can I remove the decals without having to do any other type of touch up?

4) Like car manufacturers, do bike companies sell touch up paint?

Please forgive if this sounds whiney. My main priority is that my bike ride well, but for this $$$ I feel like it should look good too!

P.S I should be getting a roof rack for my car in the next month. A bit too late
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Old 07-10-05, 08:57 AM
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One of the reasons I ride door to door...

If it may help, I have a 2000 Trek 520 and decals are applied over the paint; then clearcoat is applied. On my bike, one or two warning decals, like "don't ride at night", were applied after the clear coat, so I removed those.
To be sure, check in a place where the decals are ok. If they have sharp borders, then they are applied after clearcoat; otherwise, they are under the clearcoat.

As for warranty, I am not a specialist, but I doubt so. And it will be easy for the sales person to tell that the bike was clamped, rubbed or scraped in that area.

Quite frankly, I think you were lucky. It means that the bike was indeed attached very securely on the rack, and that in spite of it, it vibrated a lot due to road imperfections, potholes, etc. Had the clamp been less secure, your bike would have ended on the road...

As for repairs, I would not remove the entire decals because you will break more of the clear coat. If one of the letters is heavily beaten up, you might remove it, but I think the entire "Trek" logo is on a single decal because it's easier to apply that way. So your better bet is to touch up the paint – or the decal – to get a decent look and to protect the aluminium.

Except for Co-Motion, I have not seen a list of touch up paint. I would suggest you visit an auto parts store with your bike to try to find a decent match, and apply it with a Q-tip or another suitable tiny brush. Then use nail polish to protect that finish.
Or use coloured nail polish: it works fine for dark colours, but not for pale ones.
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Old 07-10-05, 09:17 AM
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Originally Posted by Plainsman

1) Do you think Trek's 1 year paint and decal warranty will cover this, even though I had it pretty tightly strapped to the rack? Should decals be this fragile?

2) Is the bike clear coated before or after the decals are applied?

3) Can I remove the decals without having to do any other type of touch up?

4) Like car manufacturers, do bike companies sell touch up paint?
1) Nope, the warranty is for defects, not damage.
2) Above post answers that one perfectly.
3) You could remove them, even if they are under clear coat. We have done this for customers. You use a hair dryer to "soften" up the clear coat for a few minutes. Then, you start "flicking" at the edge of the decal until you get some lift, and you need to work it carefully and with patience, while keeping the hair dryer on the area the whole time. (Helps to have a partner assist obviously). The downside is that you will have a "ghost" area where the outline of the decal once was, no clear coat on that area, and a "shoulder" where the clear coat begins again.
4) Trek is one of the few companies that sells touch up paint. Really nice, with the brush/applicator built into the lid. It usually takes them a few months after new color introduction to make them available, but by now you should be able to get them. Check with your local dealer. The auto parts idea was another option. Also, don't forget nail polish. It is basically laquer, available in tons of color, and does last a long time. But a bit more $$.
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Old 07-10-05, 01:12 PM
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Originally Posted by Michel Gagnon
As for repairs, I would not remove the entire decals because you will break more of the clear coat. If one of the letters is heavily beaten up, you might remove it, but I think the entire "Trek" logo is on a single decal because it's easier to apply that way. So your better bet is to touch up the paint – or the decal – to get a decent look and to protect the aluminium.
.
Actually, the Trek logo is fine. It's the detail graphics on the top tube that wrinkled, and at that only on the bottom side of the top tube. It's probably hard to tell in my photo since the wrinkles are on the black one. Could the fact that my bike rack was sitting in the sun have contributed to this? The rubber straps on the rack have actually left an impression in the clear coat. I don't see how that could have happened unless there was some real heat involved. Anyway, what might the chances be of heating the decal, smoothing it out, and then adding a bit of clearcoat? (Admittedly, I might need a little professional help with this venture)
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Old 07-10-05, 02:05 PM
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Originally Posted by Plainsman
Actually, the Trek logo is fine. It's the detail graphics on the top tube that wrinkled, and at that only on the bottom side of the top tube. It's probably hard to tell in my photo since the wrinkles are on the black one. Could the fact that my bike rack was sitting in the sun have contributed to this? The rubber straps on the rack have actually left an impression in the clear coat. I don't see how that could have happened unless there was some real heat involved. Anyway, what might the chances be of heating the decal, smoothing it out, and then adding a bit of clearcoat? (Admittedly, I might need a little professional help with this venture)
Yeah, I'm going to go ahead and disagree with Michel Gagnon on this one. I don't think the paint wrinkles had anything to do with vibration within the clamp at all; this is a hardness issue. It sounds to me like the paint went a little soft after it got hot when it was sitting in the sun, and it therefore took on the shape of the bike rack's clamp. Paint can take a surprisingly long time to fully harden after it's applied. All the solvents and crap in the paint probably hadn't evaporated out, even after 5 months. Not that this is specifically a Trek problem or anything, but we recently discovered that the paint on the fork of my girlfriend's Trek got a little wrinkled from installing a computer speed sensor on it back when the bike was pretty new. My impression is that Trek's recent paint jobs are pretty thick and therefore take quite a long time to harden. Bottom line: be gentle with even relatively new paint. I don't know enough to know of a way to smooth your paint back out. I'd either seek professional help or leave it alone and go ride the thing.
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Old 07-10-05, 03:06 PM
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You can probably use a heat gun to soften up the decals and move them. However, I'd say, not worth the time. They're probably gonna be scratched up at some point anyway, just ride :-) The bike isn't any worse for the wear.
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Old 07-10-05, 06:49 PM
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Originally Posted by The1

3) You could remove them, even if they are under clear coat. We have done this for customers. You use a hair dryer to "soften" up the clear coat for a few minutes. Then, you start "flicking" at the edge of the decal until you get some lift, and you need to work it carefully and with patience, while keeping the hair dryer on the area the whole time. (Helps to have a partner assist obviously). The downside is that you will have a "ghost" area where the outline of the decal once was, no clear coat on that area, and a "shoulder" where the clear coat begins again.
.
The hairdryer should work fine. To eliminate the "shoulder" rub the area lightly with automotive polishing compound. Finish the entire bike with a decent quality wax (just like a car) and it should look fine (and just look at those waterdrops bead right up!).
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Old 07-11-05, 03:36 PM
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I've straightened out some decals with heat but, unless it really bothers you to have the wrinkles, I'd be inclined to smooth them out by rubbing over them with with a cloth and the pressure of your thumb, trim any loose edges as good as you can and forget about 'em. Sometimes messing with the decals will pull off the paint.

I've used little bottles of model paint for touch up; Testers (Testors?) brand. You can usually find a good match or mix two to get the color. Try and 'fill' the place where the paint is missing by dabbing the point of the brush instead of brushing. After the paint has dried well, buff with a little rubbing compound and wax. On most of my bikes the resulting touch-up has been almost undetectable; although, over many years the different paints seem to age in different ways and the repair becomes more noticeable.

Last edited by Juniper; 07-11-05 at 03:42 PM.
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