Detail the whole bike, clean out the rust and touch it up with nail polish.

Re-painting is absurd unless this bike is very sentimental. Even then at the level it's at you can get it damn close with nail polish which comes in all sorts of flakes, colors, metallics, etc. There's really no reason you can't match or come darn close with a nail polish on this thing. I've done two repaints and neither was worth the effort. Now, if I plan on repainting something I'll pay someone else to do it and it will only be on a bike that's rare enough or special enough to warrant it. Even then the price and hours (time IS $$$$) required to re-paint leads me to say... ahhh... I'll spend that money on a frameset I REALLY want and transfer components.

EDIT: it's so simple to touch this thing up I suggest you try touching it all up and if you still don't like it, you can always repaint.

I love repainting bikes and I do not think it's as hard as some people think if you use good materials. I'm currently rehabbing my Gazelle Champion Mondial and have decided to repaint it in Black Pearl instead of the White Pearl it was painted orignally. Here are some things I've learned after repainting 4 or 5 bikes.

It will not be cheap. The paint I use is $38.50/ can before shipping an handling
Use a good quality stripper and small wire brush to remove the paint
Use a self etching primer as your first coat
Keep the coats as thin as possible, the first coats may be translucent don't be tempted to lay more paint down
You can use spray paint but never use the kind that has primer in it. I use Alsa paints like their killer pearl base coats you can find the paint on line.
Read the instructions on the paint and follow them many times there is a limit to how long you can wait before the next coat such as re-coat within 15 minutes or after 24 hours
Wet sanding will make everything look so much better
Velo-Cals makes some really nice replacement decals...wait until the paint is totally dry before installing them
Use a 2 part epoxy clear coat such as Eastwoods 2K Aero-Spray High-Gloss Clear

Here is a bike I painted for my brother. It was a Fuji Cross Pro converted to flatbar 105

I was just given an industrial air compressor (amglo 30gal, 1.5hp, single stage, oil, 6.5 cfm [MENTION=136541]125psi[/MENTION]). The thing weight 200lbs. i have a '74 varsity that it pretty chipped up. I am going to media blast it and then spray it over the winter. The bike was free (same person that gave me the compressor, who was moving out of state) it is in rough shape and doesn't have much value as it is. Painting it lets me play with the compressor.

I painted a car with my uncle in the mid 80's. But he was a professional body man, we shot it with lacquer I don't think that is easy to get. I and decent with a rattle can. I painted this bike a few years ago. I sold it so no idea how the paint held up.

Definitely clean and touch up. They are fantastic riding bicycles, and seriously under rated. Nice lug work, Columbus tubing, flashy paint. Here's mine I got as a bare frame. I built it with an 8 speed Dura Ace group, red wheels from a Lemond, and some vintage style fade wrap. I even painted the seatpost flutes blue after these pics were taken. It rides like a dream.,,,,BD

How many different brand names were these six speed "Shimano 105 Specials" sold under? I have one in a Cilo. I saw one today on Craig's list named SainTropez and now this Schwinn Tempo basically identical, right down to the Biopace cranks.

I'm going to strip and powder coat my Cilo this winter because I like it that much.

In my experience, touching up a frame/fork that sports only a few blemishes is not too hard to do and will look pretty good, depending on how well it is done.

But touching up a whole bunch of blemishes, to me, often times looks like the bicycle has a disease of some kind.

Nice looking bike! I am still debating on what groupset to put on it. I'm all over the place with that, from brand new 11 speed Ultegra Di2 to Campy Veloce, or piecing together a 9spd Shimergo with all used parts. Partly depends on what I end up doing with the '88 Prologue since I'm modernizing the groupset on it too. Did you have any issues spreading the rear drop outs? Did you have to bend them so that the RD stayed in proper alignment?

Now you mention it yeah I agree. A couple of touch ups are probably no big deal but there are sections of my bike that would probably leave it polka-dotted if I tried to just touch it up. Might look better if I just left it alone, but some of the bigger scrapes are already starting to rust. Perhaps this would be a good opportunity to try a paint job. If I mess it up I'm not out too much, and though its a nice bike I've only had it for a few months so not like I am really attached to it yet. When you folks say its a lot more expensive than one would think, how much are we talking? $100 worth of primer/base/clear, or more?

I might contact a local autobody paint shop in town and see if they can hook me up with some paint that would be similar to original.

What kind of temperature range can you paint a bike in? Although I am more than willing to do all the work myself (I have compressor, spray guns, sand blaster, etc) I am super busy through fall renovating the upper level of my house and need to have that insulated and finished before it gets cold out, and also building a new brick hearth for a woodstove. Not sure if I'll have a free weekend until October...

You could drop that frameset off at any custom powdercoat shop along with 100-200 dollars and get it back in a couple of days ready to reassemble. That would include a full bare metal media blast and coat in your choice of about 5000 different colors.

Auto body paint is fantastically expensive nowadays. It's real easy to spend hundreds of dollars for supplies on even a small job. And you're still left with having to do all of the surface prep and labor. Along with ancillary stuff that's often forgotten like tack rags, mixing cups, water seperator for your air line, respirator and such.

Yes, but it would never be original again. It's honestly not in bad shape at all. Not enough to justify a repaint anyway. Just MHO.,,,,BD

I wouldn't do a full refinish myself either. I guess I was just trying to point out that a paint job for a person not equipped or experienced will be a slippery slope and in the end when final totals are added up, an expensive project. Paying a powder shop is always going to be cheaper in that case.

If you go the spray can route I would say $10 for Primer, $25-50 for the Base Coat paint, $30 for the Clear Coat and then $50-$75 for decals and you need to factor in masking tape, tack rags, sand paper as well so add another $25 for that. It could cost up to $200. You could go cheaper and use the paint from your local big box store at about $5 per can but I've had some awful results with Valspar, Duplicolor, Krylon and Rustoleum.

On a couple of my bikes I've decided they earned their paint chips so I should just preserve what I have. In those cases I've just lightly wet sanded the frame with super fine sand paper and soapy water and then used Eastwood's Patina Protector to coat it. One can of Patina Protector lasts a long time. I've used it on the bumpers for my Bug and on 2 bikes and still have some left in the can.

And that doesnt include the stripper, never used a chemical stripper before so no clue about those. But most all of the extras I wouldn't need to buy (masking tape, sand paper, etc I already have). Have sandblaster too, might need media for it though. Think I may have glass beads for it.

You guys who say its not bad are you blowing the images up fullsize? The forum tends to shrink em way down unless you have a 24" + screen and have it fullscreen. One thing you could do is right click and view the image in a new tab by itself.

That Patina Protector looks interesting though, maybe I could just clean the rusted spots and the top tube cable guides that are bleeding rust, and then spray it all down with that Patina Protector. I'm not opposed to keeping it all original even if some parts are faded and scraped, mainly I want it protected so it wont continue to rust.

never mind