fuji86

Officially threw in the towel on the stuck seat post. It's officially a fixed seat post as of now. I'm going to prime & paint it at this point.

fuji86

The self etching primer coat(s) on the entire frame came out nice. Since I don't have a paint bay/garage to work in, I had to paint the layers in sections. Doesn't seem to matter at this point with the primer coats. I did a decent job of applying it evenly & uniformly and several hours after the last application, it's curing nicely too. At sunrise I'll smooth the cured primer coat with a wet sand if it needs it then get the first coat(s) of engine enamel on it and see how that turns out. Maybe it's just the lighting, but the self etching darker gray primer isn't as smoke gray any more, it's got a greenish gray color to it. It's actually more of a flat dark gray and olive drab color, that really wouldn't be a bad choice for a bike color. But being primer, it's not a tough finish and at the very least would need clear coats to retain that and still have a hard shell finish. The other parts that I did, those have cured for a couple of weeks now and turned out pretty well.

fuji86

Not having the garage area to spray the entire frame in one shot is a bit of a challenge with the engine enamel color coats. The smaller parts (fork, crank chain wheel and crank arms) I got away with that with no issues as they were small manageable jobs.

With the frame, I make three sections. The first to get sprayed was the seat tube, seat post, bottom bracket and chain stays back to just past the rear brake mounts, also the top tube and down tube forward to the cable routing mount and the top tube all the way back where the seat stays attach. Wow, that engine enamel hit the self etching primer and stuck pretty good for the first coat. I let that dry for a couple of hours and then moved on to the 2nd section.

The second section is whatever was seat & chain stays back to the end of the drop outs. That went well too and dried within a couple of hours and allowed me to move on to the third section.

The third section, that's top and down tube the rest of the way forward to the steerer tube and that had no issues.

Once it dries and all three sections cure a little, I'll have to deal with whatever paint runs occurred. I wanted to get a base coat of the engine enamel on the entire frame today and accomplished it. I know I'm going to have to get several more coats on and spread it uniformly. I think any runs are occurring where I broke the sections up. The bottom of the bottom bracket has no runs at all so I didn't get too much sprayed there that it has a drip mark. Sorry no pics yet, because I don't want to handle or move the frame unnecessarily just yet. I'd hate to smudge the work I've done to this point and have to fix that. I can tell this is going to take a lot more effort and time to get the frame more than just ugly and protected from rusting. Would've been nice to have a paint bay to hang this frame and spray it professionally with a spray gun. Perhaps I should've looked into a paint shop that might've sprayed it for me after doing another customer's job ? As I've read about that, sometimes you don't get choice of color. Seeing how I only know one guy that paints cars and his shop is at the other end of the county, that won't work for this. Besides, he does what I call custom pimp mobiles, you know a 1970's American land yacht of a car with 20+ inch rims on them. He doesn't care about even spraying a bmx frame.

fuji86

I think I got it done, the dumpster bay was left open again tonight. I seized the opportunity to get a work area to do the entire frame. Since I was able to get sections 1 & 2 done during the day, the engine enamel dries very quickly when it's layered on top of the previous layer of engine enamel. Anyway, not much to hang the frame on in there, so I used newspaper on the floor to protect the rear dropouts I painted earlier in the day and tri-poded it with the top edge of the seat post against a wooden table that was thrown out. The wooden table protected the wall from overspray. I used the last can of engine enamel to coat the 3rd and final section with enough left over to spray & feather a uniform coat over the entire frame, down to the where the rear dropouts, yet not enough to wet the bottom edge so that it would stick to the newspaper. Letting it dry & cure, will deal with any orange peel or paint runs in the AM. I don't think I have any though because before I took it out to the dumpster area I went over it to see how well I did during the day and giving it a few hours to cure. And it was pretty cleanly painted. I did little sprays with controlled short motions at the proper distance to let the paint hit the frame and stick rather than build up and run. Might cost me in terms of some orange peel, but that's a wet sand and polish away from being irrelevant.

Sorry every post is verbose at this point, but I am feeling very confident this frame is ready to cure and reassemble a bmx bike at this point. The little doubt I have has me thinking I might want to go get another can of engine enamel and coat the frame again over the weekend and build the finish up just a little bit more ?

fuji86

Looked at it in better lighting this AM after sleeping in a little late from the late night. After curing the rest of the night, then compared it to the oem factory paint jobs on my other bikes, frame will need more layers. I'll take it 1 can of engine enamel at a time from here on out. Looks good though, didn't see any paint runs. But I'll give it a wet sand with the finest grit sandpaper I can find and then coat the frame again. Hope is, it'll be done this weekend ? It's not quite as nice as Fizzaly's work, that 06 DB Nitrus in particular that I'm trying to achieve. I definitely need to apprentice under the Fizz !

fuji86

Put another coat on. Uggghhhh, already see the paint runs I have to fix & redo. Saved enough paint though to clean it up and recoat those errors. Created a problem and more work for myself.

Fizzaly

It looks good, that gray is a great color for that frame

fuji86

At that point, the paint job had some smooth spots and some rougher areas, I was pretty much run free until this last coat and boy did I ever get a couple of runs on it this round. Both of them are about 2 1/2-3 inches long on the right hand side of the top and down tube at the base of the steering tube. Wouldn't be so bad if they were vertical at the weld, but the paint runs are horizontal. I don't even want to take the effort to take pics of the paint runs, they are going to be a little bit of effort to get right again. Paint there is smooth though, but the run is more like a scar filled with paint that isn't even close to dry. Had to puncture it and squeeze the paint out of it like a cyst. Otherwise it'll never dry to be repaired and it's just messy at this point.

Edit: Hours later I cleaned up the runs and will wait until daylight (8:30 PM right now) to try again, what a wasted day for the most part because of my lack of spray can skills. I can sand and smooth out though, guess the paint runs were bound to happen sooner or later. Amazed I was perfect in that area up to this most recent coat.

fuji86

Frame is done as far as I'm concerned ! It's to a point where I don't see how another coat will do anything but blow what the best effort so far in this project. I'm not going to get greedy and try for any more coats. An 8 AM rattle can session was a winner this time, zero runs, uniform coverage, it's a function of time for the last coat to cure and then I can put this one back together and finally ride it. I thought about new tires along the way, but decided to run these for as long as they'll go just to get it rideable between now and the end of February.

fuji86

Baking the frame in the sun, it's 79* F outside today. LOL, it matches the painted walkway.

fuji86

I cleaned out the threaded holes of excess enamel for the welded to the frame, "Gyro mount bracket" on the steerer tube. Also, did that to the brake cable mount at the lower 1/3 of the down tube, those threads were cleaned out of excess enamel to ensure that the cable guide screws in. They were a little tight and I put a couple of scratches in the paint, but nothing down past a coat or two. Not perfect, but WTH, at this point, I'm not going to touch that up, let it be the personality of the paint job and just continue to let it cure some more. It's not like I'm not going to put a few scratches into the paint reassembling the bike ?

fuji86

Curing it, I don't have an oven large enough for the frame and I sure don't want it in anything I intend to cook food with. I really have 4 low or no cost options. First is to leave it in the sun and bake itself. The gray paint absorbs the heat pretty good, but by the same token the heat escapes off the bike frame immediately, it's like giving the bike a sun tan I guess. A 2nd option, leave it in the car and let 82* F days turn into whatever a closed car parked in the sun will bake the enamel to. During the hottest 4 hours of the day that could be anywhere between 130-140 degrees depending upon color of the vehicle. A 3rd option look around the apartment complex for an oil drum sized barbecue grill. With that option, I'm worried about it getting too hot, the coals blistering the paint. And as a 4th option, I could build a solar oven/cooker out of cardboard boxes. The beauty of that is, those can get to boiling point of water (212* F), even as high as 300* F. All I need is a cardboard box, insulation inside it that can withstand that temperature to keep the heat in. Aluminum foil, clear plastic and maybe some black paint. I'm after simulating the curing process that an automobile engine would accomplish.

I tried baking the parts in the car today, but it was overcast in the AM threatened to rain and as that cleared partly cloudy at times so I don't think it got as hot as it could've. I'll try it again tomorrow and see what happens with my luck for a sunny day. Today's high was 82, should be that tomorrow too according to the forecast.

fuji86

Oh poop, not getting the cloudless sky like I wanted today. But if the grills over at Home Depot out on the sidewalk sale are any indication the thermostats on the blackest of the grills was right at 140* F inside them. My car is metallic gold. Brushed silver grills were almost 10 dgrees cooler inside at 132* F. It did get to 86 today.

Edit: Think the car oven worked. Engine enamel slow baked over the hours it was heated up and cured.

fuji86

Putting it back together, all that remains is grip installation, adjust the brake & chain, then ride.



Edit: Grips went on (Sinz Sticky grips, not nice clamp ons, but they'll do for this bike), chain is adjusted. Saving the u-brake for last, I hate u-brakes, too many cables and where this one is located, about as much fun to sand a chrome frame in the tight spots.

BTW, mineral spirits and my golf club reshafting tool work great on installing grips. Similar process with the handlebar grips:

https://www.golfsmith.com/products/18...Installer_Tool

Those plastic fingers slide the grip on and pull out as the mineral spirits lubricates and evaporates after 15-20 minutes.

fuji86

Well, it's done and I'm pleased with it for the most part. Tightening the axle nuts took it's toll on the paint job, but I guess that happens with all of them. Rode it about 3-3.5 miles today around the neighborhood. What a workout. So I'm thinking the seat needs to be raised but the post is stuck. I'm thinking I can turn this into a 20" folding bike sized cruiser for the neighborhood so I can sit on it and still pedal. My plan is to get another seat post collar and seat tube to use to extend it.

Fizzaly

Turned out awesome, I really like the grey and black

fuji86

Thanks, Fizzaly.

There's a state park just down the road. It's the Oleta State Park and they have mtb trails, even a warm up area that's more out in an open field with small mounds. The warm up area isn't like any of the bmx courses in terms of challenge. The bmx bike is actually overkill for these trails, except perhaps the distances covered (17 miles of trails, that I don't think I can ride a bmx that far with). I'm taking both my atb & bmx over tomorrow to ride them and see which I prefer. They charge $ 2 to ride in and $ 4 to drive in and ride the trails they have.

Anyway, future touchups of the bike ?

https://media.photobucket.com/image/b...altree4002.jpg

https://www.interbmx.com/profile.php?...=594&img=10342

https://www.individualsole.com/wp-con...07/lrgfit1.jpg
https://www.individualsole.com/wp-con...07/lrgfit2.jpg

Greyryder

I ride my mid school monster on MTB trails that are about 12 miles long. Once I have my legs back, after winter hibernation, I'll often repeat sections of the trail for a longer ride.

fuji86

Here are pics after the final adjustments were made.

fuji86

I'd say I'm at that point myself, during this project and I did not indicate it, but I experienced and recovered relatively speaking from a pinched nerve in my lower back. Any riding I've done during this time has to have that asterisk next to it and even going forward. I have to ride within myself. Not certain if anyone has experienced it first hand. But the major event that kicked it off felt like a slipped disk in the L5 of the lower back. After that, within moments afterward it had escalated to a full blown sciatic nerve issue:

https://www.spine-health.com/conditio...about-sciatica

Good read to understand the condition and as I don't ever want to go thru a surgery for it. I am not going to press my good fortune that I was over this particular incident within a week that progressively improved after the first 1.5-2 days of simply not being able to lie down and sleep. To give you an idea of what it was like prior to going thru this, I would sit in a computer chair for about 15-20 minutes. The nerve would pinch, the pain in the left side below the lower back was excruciating, from the left buttock, the back of the thigh, tingling and numbness throughout the leg. To get out of the chair wasn't easy. The left leg couldn't support my weight without me bracing on a wall or a piece of furniture until I could get some circulation back to that side. I limped and heavily favored that leg. Anyway, it was actually a good thing the major incident and sciatica occurred. Because over that process my spine is back in alignment, the nerve doesn't pinch and I can sit for hours again with no problems. I do stretches & physical therapy whenever I get an opportunity, every day to rehab. So even riding a trail, I'll probably stay on the beginner, maybe an intermediate one and really monitor the level of pain the exercise puts me thru.

One of the other things that I've done. I'm converted over to being a back sleeper rather than being a side sleeper. I was surprised myself how much strain was relieved from the back, hip & knee areas. With the sciatica, sleeping on my back was the only way I could get a few hours of sleep.

fuji86

Awesome weekend, actually just a Sunday. Greynolds Park had it's annual Love In Hippie concert. I rode the Haro to the all day event and had a lot of fun. A lot of cyclists there too, not many dog lovers/people there, but older folks just rocking out. Enjoyed the classic cars. Got a few compliments for the bike restoration I did as well.

https://www.majic1027.com/lovein/
https://www.greynoldslovein.org/