Advice on rebuilding an 06 Specialized Hardrock Disc

cmachine

It was a bit of a learning experience. The powder coat was very cheap and of high quality....£50...maybe £25 more if I wanted a lacquer. He offered a glittery coat which looked a bit naff/bling to me. The stripping was easy. Took everything off..thoroughly degreased. Speak to the powder coater...see what they can do. Mine only wanted the BB covered...they did all the headtube, lug holes etc. themselves. Check what they are using to remove the old coat. Mine was glass beaded and the guy said they had a time getting the old coat off. I think paint jobs on the older Spesh bikes were much superior to stuff you see now. My 2012 Giant Anthem chips easy in comparison. Get an old BB and thread it lightly into the the BB shell. I used an old powerspline that came with the bike, rather than an HTII as I didn't want it to bind to the frame. You need to degrease the BB thoroughly and i mean that. I thought I did a good job but in the oven bake I still got a faint line of grease that spilled under the BB shell. You can barely see it though.
I was really impressed with the job, place I used was in Comber, Northern Ireland and they do a lot of custom motorcylces and roll cages etc. Candy Pink and Candy Blue are very popular on the MTB frames as is Super Matt Black. You are quite correct about the "nickability" factor though. My old 06 silver Hardrock I could leave locked up and come back to no problem. I would be afraid to leave this one out in the open...so much hard work invested in it now ;-)

jimothy78

Sorry, I think we were talking at cross purposes - I'd assumed you had done the (paint)stripping and respraying yourself.

My intention is to do all the work myself, as I don't want to bother sending it away, etc.

Bike currently needs a new bottom bracket, and I'm also getting together the bits to convert from 2x9 to 2x10, so will probably use that as the motivation to strip the frame completely and repaint before rebuilding it. Just got to decide on a colour, now. Thinking maybe a coppery/bronzy brown or burnt orange????

cmachine

it's ok..I did think you were talking about taking on the stripping yourself. I would just advise against it, given how difficult the powdercoater said stripping mine with glass beads was. Before I did it, I read quite a few forums where guys had done it themselves and it was time consuming and difficult. A decent powdercoater will include the stripping of frame also. If you find one just make sure they tell you how they are doing it as you don't want the frame damaged. Some might strip it chemically which is what you are probably proposing yourself.

I shopped around, rang a few powder coaters and found one that was familiar with bike frames. Trust me, if you find a decent one it is totally worth it. The only limitation is what colours they have available. When I went in the guy said we have KTM orange and it was so close to what I wanted (RAL 2004 I think) that I went with it. They could probably do a nice coppery tone with a lacquer. Have a look at this one...something similar to what I was offered but the lacquer looked too glittery to me: http://i95.photobucket.com/albums/l143/ ... Access.jpg

jimothy78

Yeah - that one's a bit too bright - i think the metallic sheen works best with duller colours, which is why I'm considering the copper/bronze spectrum. It was inspired by a nice metallic brown 456 frame I saw.

If I went for the burnt orange, then that would be in a "flat" colour (not sure if that's the right term, but I'm sure you get my meaning).

Londonscottish

cmachine wrote:

it's ok..I did think you were talking about taking on the stripping yourself. I would just advise against it, given how difficult the powdercoater said stripping mine with glass beads was. Before I did it, I read quite a few forums where guys had done it themselves and it was time consuming and difficult.

I was thinking about rattle canning mine until I tried doing just the forks at the weekend. Even just doing that small area was a bit of a ballache. Prepping takes ages, it's easy to leave lots of imperfections, getting the topcoat smooth and glossy is hard. And the paint isn't cheap. If I'd added in a lacquer top coat I'd have been at nearly £25 for materials (3 x cans of paint/lacquer, 1 x can of degreaser, 4 x sheets of wet and dry) which is half way to a powder coat

Once my new rims are on it'll be black (badly finished) forks black (very scratched) frame and black (a bit scruffy) wheels and spokes.

I'll leave it at that for now and be more comfortable leaving it lying around.

All I need to do next is find another frame and forks to start another one - then i'll get one of them powder coated and leave the other one as a pub bike.

N+1.....