So, how do you guys balance the need to retain history ( original decals and stickers) with the desire to repaint or powdercoat a bike?

Do you ride it every day and commute on it or is it you sunny sunday rider which attracts attention from bike enthusiasts where ever it goes? Old production japanese bike you ride daily? Powder coat it. 1970s columbus built italian racer fitted with campagnolo? Wet paint and decal repo... I guess there must be a grey.. say a late 70s nishiki superbe or something.... I would say if you ride it frequently then powder coat. Powder coats can look better than paint if done by an expert.

I have a box of old coins on my dresser that go back to the late 1800's. They're just loose in the box and the kids get them out to look at the artwork and check dates. Kind of little time machines.

The box doesn't have a 1909 S VDB in it.

There's a couple factors:

1. How special is the bike?
2. How much time and money do you have?

My personal opinion is that bikes should be ridden. If an ugly, beat up finish keeps you from riding it, and you don't have the money, time, interest in a complete finish restoration, then powdercoat. There's nothing to stop you or somebody else from redoing the finish later if they so desire.

The problem with a restoration is that you might be afraid to ride it the way it should be ridden. You'll live in fear of damaging the finish or nicking a decal and you won't ride the bike.

My feelings change a bit if the bike itself has some history that you're trying to preserve. There are also many people who enjoy the work involved in restoring the finish to like new, but that's different than doing it out of some sense of obligation. Ultimately a bike is just a thing that was created with a purpose in mind, and that purpose was not to be hung on a wall.

In other words, if restoring the original finish leads to a bike not being ridden, that is a greater violation of the spirit of the machine. Better to make it a fixie

Harsh

That was mostly tongue in cheek ;-)

There was an old restored B-17 bomber that was flown into town a few weeks ago. I'm sure a ton of money was poured into the restoration, yet they frequently take people up for rides in it, - for a price.

The thing is old and complex. They're probably dealing with mechanical failures all the time, -some costly to fix, yet they still take it up. That's my kind of restoration.

I don't see it really as a question of ethics, -only opinions. You buy a bike, you do what you want with it. If it's one of a kind or has got some cultural significance, then maybe ethics come into play, but I don't think that's what we're talking about.

I just saw an interesting solution to this problem.

I gave a friend a '50s Rigby roadster The decals (transfers) were really interesting, ("Rigby Brothers of Manchester") but clearly irreplaceable. The paint was shot, especially the fenders. So he masked off the area around the decals and had the rest sprayed with computer matched paint, then striped like the original finish. I haven't seen it in person but the photos look nice.

But you see, I'm bugged by the loosy goosy-ness of it all. You see people do stuff all the time like paint woodwork without a shellac coat so some poor fool has a hell of a time stripping it. Or strip an old violin and varnish it because it will look nicer. People just go do things because they don't bother learning about it first, or they really don't care if they destroy it in the process.

I got some bids on powder coating, and this bike isn't worth it, so I'll let it stay beat up. I don't know if it's important to keep the stickers. I suppose pictures are good enough. It's that SR I posted about in a different thread, but only one SR has been posted with photos, and there have been questions about where they were made and there might even be 2 companies using that name. During that discussion, people wished there were more clues.

Mine apparently is a different model than the others, because I think* it says touring. Mine says Japan, but some of the others didn't. There's so few of them, that I hesitated to repaint it in case someone wants to know which bikes were double butted, etc. It's not a particularly good bike, or an important one, but it is part of the solution to a mystery.

To be honest, all these bikes having braze-ons ripped off makes me a little sad, too. I feel like in 10 years we're going to be paying an extra $200 for a bike's brazeons.

Being this is my first attempt at a restore, I didn't want to approach it irresponsibly.

I like* the idea of painting around the stickers. That's a great idea.

just say no to powder if you are looking to it as a cost savings measure. There is good powder coating, but it is not cheap when done right. I have chemically stripped a number of powdercoated frames, even had one done when I was very poor ($40. was the cost in 1986) the chemistry and physics of powdercoating is the problem, it will thin out at any sharp edge, lug, braze-on seat post lug, head tube, dropouts. If a radius on all of those zones it will be more durable, if a multistep powder job, it will also help as each layer will build, but detail will get buried. Wet paint will also do this but the mechanics is not as severe, and localized film building is much easier.

Not all powdercoating is the same property wise either, and most cannot spec it out or evaluate the spec to determine durability and suitability. I have spec'ed it out before, moat powdercoating is slightly porus! Not the film but the micro bubbles in the film.

Dr, Deltron can probably speak to witnessing this also, strip a PC'd steel frame and rust will be found often, it will not show on the surface often but rust never sleeps.

No bondo under powdercoating either, bondo?! yes, bondo is many a frame maker's friend, many bikes have gaps in the braze without.

but the finish is great! if done well. My latest toy is an '88(?) Ibis SS, that someone powdercoated before I acquired it. I did a fairly accurate resto, and have been using it for a coffee and bookstore bike. I don't think that I could scratch it with a knife (at least the dull one that I have in my pocket). The decals are later ones (san sebastapol) but they are accurate, and the bike is always a conversation starter.

So, I guess I have reversed my original position - if the bike is not one of those historically important thingies, then powdercoat is very practical. I keep looking at the brush stripes on my jeep, thinking powdercoat may be the answer there too...

When restoring any "old" collectible, you always face the issue of what is your goal? To keep it as original as possible? To make it as usable as possible?

And, of course, we can always end up owning "Jim Bowie's knife".

The story goes that a kid shows up a school for "show and tell" with a locked box. He opens the box, and says, "this knife was Jim Bowie's personal knife, that he carried at the Alamo". The teacher asks, "This is the EXACT knife Jim Bowie owned?"

And the kid says, "Yes, this is the exact knife...but my great-grandfather did have to replace the old blade when it got rusty, and my grandfather had to replace the old handle when the wood started to rot...but other than the blade and the handle, this is the exact same knife Jim Bowie took to the Alamo..."

Back in 1981, I was talking with a guy regarding selling one of my bikes, (glad I did not, but thats another story) he was showing me the suspension parts to his Lamborgihini that he just had done as the original paint was not very good. a few years later he had the car apart again as the suspension arms were rusting again. Lamborghini- Italian for kit car.

Powdercoat is Tougher, can take impact abuse much better, but not the panacea for rust prevention.

That's it in a nutshell.

I like bikes so far gone it doesn't matter if I re-paint them.Power Coating was being used in the bike industry(limited use) in the late 50s.---sam

That's funny. A coworker of mine has a bike like that - an early 70's Gitane he bought new, their second from top of the line model (Tour de France maybe?). He cracked the frame shortly thereafter and Gitane replaced it. Then later he picked up a wrecked Nuovo Record equiped bike and swapped all of the components over. Then he swapped some stuff to more modern components in later years. He's pretty sure there not one part on it from the original bike he bought. He had it painted a nice metallic blue but no decals and uses it as his commuter.

I'm almost in that situation - I had an old Bottecchia back in the 70's. I crashed it in the late 90's and it wasn't worth repairing so I tossed it but I did save the rear wheel. But even that had been relaced in the 70's so only the hub is original. Then I bought another Bottecchia a while back - same color, same decals - now all I have to do is build up a wheel with that hub and I'll have my old bike back. Just like Jim Bowie's knife.

Kudos for thinking about the people that come after. I understand what you're saying.

It's all about trends and fashion. Take woodwork for example. I live in an old residential neighborhood. People moving into these old houses will sometimes strip all the paint off the woodwork and grumble about the fact that it was painted in the first place. But this is judging the past through the lense of today where most woodwork is not painted. If they wanted to be period correct, they'd leave the wood painted.

Even though the layers of paint obscure the detail of the woodwork, they are also like rings on a tree. Each layer represents a period in time.

It's all in how you look at it.

I too would rather folks not cut off the braze-ons but I understand why they do. Cable guides on the top tube without a cable in them are going to catch on stuff and they detract from the appearance if they're not being used. If a bike is rescued from a junk heap only to have all the braze-ons cut off well, it's better than being in the junk heap.

The rise of the fixie is a trend that is part function and part fashion. Just like road bikes in the 70's and Mountain bikes in the 80's and 90's, I think a lot of people riding fixies today do so because it's trendy and would be better served by a different type of bike. The nice thing about the trend is that it's helped rescue some old bikes but at the cost of altering their personality.

I acquired a nice '84 ciocc frame, that had been repainted at some point past. There were chips and flakes all over...so I had it blasted (fine mesh) and powdercoated. When I got the frame back the powdercoat job was great, but the blasting revealed 4 - 6 pinholes on the underside of the toptube. So I never got to ride the frame, it's history.

I was reading about the Maserati 5000GT in Classic and Sportscar this morning. One of my favourite cars of all time, surely the most super-exotic car ever made. The one I loved the most, and imagined as a kid would one day be in my drive was the second one built, for the Shah of Iran. I learned in this article that to date the car, built in 1959, has done 3500 km. That's a crime. Things should be used, and restored as they wear out.

I'm hijacking this thread. MnHPVA Guy, did you say a ROADSTER built in MANCHESTER? Manchester ENGLAND? How big was this machine? Small enough for me?

Back to solveg's question, thanks .

East Hill

Funny I've been thinking about this. With buildings the three methods are preservation,restoration and renovation. I watched a hotrod show recently and I got bummed out when they took a perfectly restored model A truck and chopped it up. I personally like the idea of preservation, I just got a 1954 raleigh sports. It has dents,scrapes,faded paint and several later parts (grips,saddle,fulcrum pulley) but I'm not going to spend the winter making it a sunny day bike with a Q-tip and magnifying glass. I don't like the idea of grinding the frames for the sake of a trend. I guess thats a lot of weight , just think how much faster I'd go if I took off that chaincase.

You know I guess it all depends - generally I'm of the preservation, restoration school but there are exceptions. One of the bikes I'd like to one day acquire is a late 80's - early 90's Bottecchia with an SLX or TSX frame. If I do get one of those bikes I plan to stash the original rear hub, derailleur, and brake levers (presumably C-Record) and replace them with later Record components to have Ergo levers and a 9-10 speed cassette. Not original but not too anachronistic either and it would make for a really nice almost modern road bike. With my 72 Bottecchia that just isn't practical. You couldn't use modern components without altering the character of the bike. Most people, even cyclists, wouldn't know the difference between C-Record or other later 80's Campy components and modern stuff (except for the carbon fiber stuff). But you couldn't hope to replace the old Nuovo Record gear with modern stuff without totally changing the bike unless you had mucho $$$ and your own machine shop and even then you couldn't get around the modern derailleur looking totally different.