Johnny Law

i dont think its really "frame building" but i do know that it has to do with the frame lol:

ok so i have a 2000 TREK 7000 MTB and its a little scrached up and the stickers are showing a bit of wear (well it is 10 years old). I want to know whats the best way to strip all the paint off it so i can repaint it. And i need to know what is the best kind of paint to use..

ALSO! i want to stay under about 50 bucks. THANKS

lverhagen

It takes a looooooooong time, but when I last stripped paint of a bike for incredibly cheap, I used strips of sandpaper, wire brush and emery cloth to strip every last bit off. This is probably the slowest possible method, but it is really cheap and is unlikely to damage the metal.
However, considering the year of your bike, I would assume it is aluminum. As such a chemical stripper would be even less likely to compromise the metal. I have never personally used it, but Jasco Aircraft Paint Stripper has been cited by many here to be the most effective.

Johnny Law

yes sir it is aluminum. do you think i could pick that stripper up ta home depo?

Six jours

Jasco Gel works extremely well. It is available at Home Depot. Make sure to get the gel. It's much easier and faster. It's also truly nasty stuff. It will make a huge mess, and when it gets on your skin it will begin to burn within seconds. I don't even want to think of the consequences of getting it into your eyes.

The only paint job you are going to get for less than $50 comes out of a spray can. It's not going to look very good, and it's going to be very fragile. I did it several times in my intemperate youth. That was enough for me. If you really feel like pursuing it, you might head down to the local Pep Boys (or whatever they call the auto shops in Georgia) and get some high quality paints meant for touching up your car. Apply several thin layers of primer, wet sanding with 1500 grit in between each, then several layers of color, again wet sanding between each coat, then several layers of clear, with more wet sanding. Then wet sand with 2000 grit, and polish with Meguiar's Swirl Remover on an orbital polisher. Done properly this will look pretty darn good, but it's a huge amount of work and is still very fragile.

All in all, you're probably better off spending that $50 on the "other" kind of stripper -- though Home Depot might not be the best place to look.

meech151 

I just got done cleaning up a fork with that Aircraft Stripper and it worked pretty good however the guys at the paint store said the same as Six Jours, its "bad stuff!" Don't breath it, get it on your skin, wear gloves, and damn sure don't rub your face or eyes. They scared me a little but I still used it since it was a small job. After it dried really well I just washed it off with hot water and hit it with a wire brush on a drill and it cleaned it up. I don't like spending alot of money on cleanup stuff like this but its almost worth it to have it lightly sand blasted so long as the guy doing it knows the tubes are lightweight and damageable. I am not familiar with aluminum tubes though so it may not be applicable.

Canaboo

A hardly used method is an actual scraper. You can get a set of cabinet scrapers of various shapes at a specialty woodworking supplier and that will eat right through paint and take it down to bare metal so that you need much less sanding or paint stripper.
I took a couple of frames down in much less time than someone sanding away with emery cloth.
https://www.geoffswoodwork.co.uk/tools/scrapers.gif

Falanx

Less likely? Short of magnesium, aluminium is the one metal that reacts most badly to being chemically stripped. Aluminium reacts with the dichloromethane in most strippers to release hydrochloric acid. Jasco is extremely efficient - because it takes off the top few microns of aluminium, too.

While the surface damage will be mild, you'll see exactly how much etching happens when you take a paint stripper to aluminium when white streaks of aluminium chloride that oxidises to loose aluminium oxide smut with the concurent release of nasty fumes form all over the tubing.

Just as soon as the paint is stripped, the whole bike needs a warm-water and detergent wash to ensure there's no nasty materials left in crevices or re-entrant angles to chew away silently at the metalwork until you crack something. It'll be fine after that, but that stage is particularly important with aluminium alloys.