Originally Posted by
VintageTTfan
That is a beautiful bicycle. I think I might be even more OCD than you.....I will never repaint a vintage bicycle....for me it has to be original paint. Some believe that repainting the bike lowers the value also. I have seen some very nice repaints done however and they are very expensive. I might not take it as far as one screw, however so maybe we are tied. Is that orange the original color or what you painted it to?
Now the question is ....Is it non purist to buff out a scratch or two as long as you do not use any replacement paint??? Any opinions on that?
I'm new to this, restoring my first real vintage bike, so my opinion ain't worth much. As a purist, I've done paint jobs on vintage jeeps, but that's an easy-to-match paint job.
No way I'm going to repaint the frame on this first vintage bike I've decided to try to restore, despite all the scratches missing pieces of decal. Okay, I might try to replace some of the decals.
BUT, the steel fork has some missing paint and a thin layer of rust. I could prep that and repaint it, but it's not going to match that "cosmic black with white web" on the rest of the bike, so I'm just going to buff out the rust, treat it with metal ready and cover the bare spots with por-15. It will be close to the same black, but an obvious touch-up if you look close. But that's fine. Not going to be painting the frame.
How would anybody recognize the model if I do?