I ride a trek touring bike from the early 80s and it has some rust spots and other cosmetic issues. Three questions in one:


1. I am planning to retouch it this weekend using nail polish or auto paint. Should I remove the rust from the spots before touching up the paint? If so, how do I go about doing that?


2. The frame has some white paint on it that has rubbed off from other places (fences, doors, etc). How can I remove this white paint? Will paint thinner mess up the frame or paint job?


3. Also, I would like to clean up my headbadge if possible, which is covered in soot and grime. It looks like this:

https://www.vintage-trek.com/images/t...badge2_268.jpg

except is it dirty and black and unreadable.

Anyone know a method to clean up the headbadge?

You should remove all the rust to the bare metal, else if you paint over rust, paint will flake off in a year. Than you need to mask and prime the area, than use wet-sand 600 sandpaper on that, and feather the edges of the primer. Only than you can paint. Small chips in the paint with no rust can be touched up with nail polish, don't bother with the rattle can. House paint thinner will not do any harm to bike paint, so is the alcohol. But I usually use gasoline, but be careful with that, it can mess up the clearcoat. Headbadge can be cleaned up with WD-40, just let it soak for a few minutes.

For small areas, I have had success with the rust converter, sold at Walmart for around $6 in the auto paint section. It chemically converts the rust, and then you use model enamel or whatever to top coat it.

For large areas of rust, I use the oxalic acid bath (do a search there are a lot of threads on rust and oxalic). I then use the model enamel to touch up. The other huge advantage of oxalic is that it removes the rust inside the frame. Try doing that!