Originally Posted by
sdn40
Sandpaper is the last resort, and personally, I wouldn't use it unless glued to a pencil eraser for spot work. The imperfections are below the level of the paint so sandpaper is gonna take off too much, or all of the paint before finally reaching the target area. A magic eraser works wonders on blemishes, and is actually a very, very fine grit sandpaper in sponge form. Meguiars Ultimate by hand is safe for all levels of use. Cable rub type damage is the trickiest because there is rarely a hard edge to contain your touch up. Chips hold the paint well as long as you're patient. White paint is actually tricky to match.
I would remove all components as well. It makes the job much easier and you can't fix the area around the headset unless you remove it
Clean and brighten the paint
Neutralize the rust without collateral damage
Touch up
Yours is a tough one
Thanks for the advice. I'm well aware of how tricky plain old "white" is to match. I use a camera-based color matcher (with coordinates) on my phone to judge just how close a color is to the one I'm trying to match. Another complication is that the paint has aged unevenly, and I can see places where the original paint was thinner (front of seat tube just above the bottom bracket to the FD clamp) and places where the white has yellowed more (DS dropout).
If the goal was to make the bike like new or fully restore it. I'd be in for a strip and powder coat, plus decal replacement. Thankfully, I hold the opinion that a used mountain bike will have scuffs and scratches.
The goals will be to protect the bare metal and polish the paint to allow for a clean look, when clean. I don't want it to look like a junkyard bike with rust stained paint and bare patches. I'll make a trip to the auto parts store for some light spray primer (I only have the orange stuff) and the Meguiar's ultimate compound to try and clean the dirt out of the little stuff. The compound might reveal a brighter shade of yellow in the splatter too.
Edit: I'll have to wait until I'm done polishing to try and match the white. Who knows how the shade will change as I use the compound.