Hi everyone, hope this section is the best place to post this.
I had my old road bike laying around (it's a cheap bike) and I decided to make a city cruiser kinda thing out of it for my girlfriend. And as the title says, I'm having problems with my paint flaking off. I'm new to painting and tried to do as much reading as I could through what I did find on google before I started.
Looks like this might be a problem of the surface not being prepared properly for painting and since I want to learn from this mistake I'd appreciate some feedback.
Here are the order of steps I took:
(Step 1 - Took 2-3 days)
1. Strip the paint down to the metal using detailed sander and sand paper, paint stripper in some places.
2. Wipe clean the frame with some rags.
3. Wipe the frame with thinner to remove any grease, oil.
4. Apply primer until the frame is covered fully (see the photo for the type of primer: new link bottom of the post)
(Step 2 - Which was actually a few weeks after I applied primer, due to rain-I don't have access to a closed garage and don't have the work space in my apartment)
5. Sand the primer with 400 grit sandpaper (dry), apply primer to areas which were sanded too much.
(Step 3 - 3 days after sanding and re-applying primer)
6. Sand the remaining primer to make a smooth surface overall (400 grit, dry).
7. Wipe clean the frame with rags.
8. Apply the color in light coats, waiting 20 mins between each coat until the whole frame is covered (I had some runs due to getting too close- it was windy! here is the paint I used: new link bottom of the post )
Today, after waiting 8 days for the paint to dry, I decided to put on the wheels and the fork to take the bike somewhere and realized the paint has started to flake off in places, I didn't accidentally hit it with something solid as I was being really careful however I know they didn't happen until today either because I was inspecting the frame every day. So maybe the flaking is happening in places which I touch. Obviously the paint around the bolts which hold the wheels came off too.
The magnet test revealed that the body is aluminum and the forks steel (actually the spots I touched on the forks with the magnet flaked off too).
You can see from the photos that the flaking is down to the primer, not all the way to the metal.
What do you think I did wrong? Wrong type of paint? Perhaps waited too much between primer and paint? Didn't clean it enough after sanding the primer?
Any feedback is welcome.
Cheers
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UPDATE: Sorry for the login issue guys, try this:
PHOTOS
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