cudak888 

Did you ever buy a flipper just to have the joy of polishing it out? I bought this 1972 Raleigh LTD-3 just for that:





She came out beautifully. I'll let the photos do the talking:











-Kurt

juls

Wonderful job! My first adult bike was a black raleigh sports-never liked them in any other color. Fond memories of that bike. Thanks for the flashback.

Amesja

Shiny Capt'n!

I just did a '78 and the silver paint didn't hold up so well. I daresay it wasn't much from day one. Black is the best anyhow.

Eileen

My friend has one of those. She was asking me what to upgrade on it and I said "Nothing. It's not broke."

cudak888 

The silver ones are a bit more difficult to get shining, but not impossible.

-Kurt

Amesja

Krylon clear did the trick sealed up all the many chips to boot.

pastorbobnlnh 

Kurt.

The lighting--- perfect! The composition of the photo--- perfecto! The shadows, including of you--- perfection!

The green front fender ornament very clever!

cudak888 

I've found that it takes a good wet-sand before any clearcoat will stick to a Raleigh finish; tried it once.



-Kurt

Amesja

48 hours in oxalic and then a scrub-down with an industrial scrubbing pad* with bar-keeper's friend did the trick. The gray was beyond anything less. Even with the soak and scrub the cruddy gray paint has quite the patina. It looks pretty cool the way it came out though.

*I use the big 30" floor scrubber pads and cut them into hand-sized chunks.

cudak888 

If OA was used to remove rust on the frame, that's probably what dulled it in the first place.

-Kurt

Amesja

30 years sitting in a damp basement/shed didn't help as it was more brown than gray when I got it. Looked like someone had got their pants jammed in under the chaingaurd and it ripped and bent it all to hell. They tried riding it like that but it rubbed something horrible and then they parked it. OEM tires had hardly any wear on them (still had the nubs) although the rear was more worn so maybe the rider was really heavy or ran with very little air. The pedals looked almost brand new after an OA dip took the rust off. There were many many many small chips on the paint of the frame and scratches on the fenders which all had rusted. OA was the only way to clean it up. Even so it took a scrubbing with BF to get down to the bare metal in the chips and even on some of the larger chips it was still brown. It was pretty bad.

Lower headset crown race was rust-welded to the balls. Under a jeweler's loupe the race looked like someone took a tiny tig-welder to it, I've seen pitted races before but this was amazing. The BB was moisture-free and the races looked like they didn't have 10 miles on them although the grease was dried like petrified earwax.

The paint was beyond ScratchX and a quick rubdown. It was a total strip and soak job and rebuild from the ground up. From the looks of the paint it might have been outside for some of this time or at least behind a window to direct sunlight as well as moisture for plenty of surface rust to form.