To paint or not to paint?
 

Just wandering with an old bicycle frame, I have heard that even if the bike has a couple of scratches and scrapes, that it is usually best not to respray, but what about touching up bikes, making sure to get as close as you can to the original paint color.

It seems that there are plenty of older 531/501 reynolds frames, that are coming up in the uk on auctions like ebay, but usually require a bit of work to get looking nice again,

Id be interested in knowing peoples opinions in this area, as to how best go about a restoration of a classic cycle.

I like to leave the paint alone, but its down to personal taste on what you want the bike to look like. There was a recent thread on this topic with alot of peoples point of views here

It depends on a couple of things, ask 100 members here and your likely to get 110 different opinions.

If the bike has some important or historical significance, for example the bike Eddie Merckx won the TdF on, then leave it alone, bikes that are extremely rare, you would also leave alone, providing they are actually in original condition. These kinds of bikes should be in museums or collections and any restoration work needs to be carried out by someone who is a professional at museum restorations.

Ordinary production frames, that were produced by the tens of thousands to millions, then you have a lot more options:

1) If the paint is in reasonably good condition, some touch up is acceptable, these days paint suppliers can use computer colour matching, to get colours extremely close, although you need to realise that the existing paint has already faded, new paint will fade at a different rate then the original paint, a good paint supplier can compensate for that though. Giving the rest of the bike a good treatment with rubbing compound and car wax can often help the differences. Most of the fading in paint isn't fading, but rather the accumulation of air pollutants on the paint.

2) If the paint is in really bad condition, where more then 50% of the original paint is missing, then you can repaint.

3) If the colours available when the bike was made were Pearl, Gold and Silver and someone spray bombed it puke green, then you should

The trick is how to go about it, there are 2 methodologies, restoration and functional.

To restore, you look at duplicating, what the manufacturer did, you look for a set of decals, original, reproduction or getting reproductions made, you investigate the original colours for that make/model/year and match them, you do any detail painting between the colour coat and clear coat. Manufacturers often made some really fancy work, especially in the days of hand made North American or European lugged steel frames. The older and/or more high end the bike, the more likely you are to want to restore the original paint scheme.

Functional means you only want to get paint on there to keep the frame from rusting away, a common way to go for cheap TIG welded Asian made frames. You should see if you can find photos or pictures of how the bike looked originally, you may change your mind about functional vs restoration in this regard.