Respraying carbon frames - special paint needed?

Hi folks,
Well, following all the revelations over the past weeks (particularly) the time has come to put my poor long-suffering Trek OCLV out of its misery - and get rid of the USPS colour scheme it's been sporting since I first got it in 2004. In fairness there are enough battle scars to the paintwork and decals to justify a respray, and I've been thinking about this for a while now. So the recent sh*tstorm about the USPS team is merely the icing on the cake.

So, with all that in mind, is there anything I need to know about special paints or lacquer/clearcoat needed for carbon frames? Do I need to worry about UV light or will any decent paint take care of that? Here in Belgium I don't know much about specialist frame sprayers, though I'm sure I can find someone. However, the guy who takes care of my car also runds a body shop and from what I've seen does excellent work.

I'm sure that to get a simple single colour done his work would be as good as any. The big questions are whether I need to take any special precautions for the actual paint, and also I suppose for the preparation in terms of getting the old paint etc and going down to the bare carbon weave? Is traditional sandblasting suitable for carbon frames?

Thanks in advance for any input,
Gareth.

I wouldn't sandblast. You need fine sand papering to roughen the surface and key it for repainting. I would use a marine two-pack paint like Awlgrip or SP Systems.

I run a 400 BHP methanol injected Impreza with a number of colour coded carbon fibre bits............expertly painted by my bodyshop guy

Shaun

Dad resprayed his Look KG231 earlier in the year, in his case the trick was to roughen up the old paint to give a "key" without taking too much of it off and thus excessively exposing the bare carbon tubing to solvents (the alloy lugs were a slightly easier proposition), although I guess minute traces will invariably permeate through.

David

Just don't use a high heat bake to cure the paint, you frame might go a bit 'floppy'.

why not scrape/sand off all the paint/primer and see what the bare frame looks like ? If its nice you can just clear coat it , If there are dodgy bits of filler you can paint those areas black then gloss the rest , I think you can put new decals over an early clear coat and then more clear over everything

ps I agree on not baking the paint as higher temps may harm the resin and glues used ! therefore 2 pack/part paints are the best option.

Thanks for the input so far. I'd considered the nude carbon idea but a friend of mine who sells Trek told me previously that this generation of OCLV is nothing special when stripped nude. The frames were always intended to be painted and so no attention was paid to the aesthetics of the carbon.

Also, given that solvents are a no-no I think that sanding it right back to fully nude would be an awful lot of work! The more I think about it, the best idea seems to me to be to put a key on the current paint and then have a two-pack coat on top of that. The point about high heat is duly noted so I'd need to check on that! What sort of maximum temperature would I be safe with, do you think?

I'll need to pay a bit of attention to the current decals since I'd prefer a smooth finish and not have the existing ones subtly in relief under the new topcoat - but on the other hand I'm sure I can deal with that if it's going to be a ton of work to get the old ones off. I just don't have the time for that.

Thanks again,
Gareth.

I think you can carefully use solvents/strippers on it as the epoxy is completely cured and inert but to be on the safe side don't let it sit for long, also the 1st application of stripper will only lift paint and the primer will barely be touched. I would say less than 100c at a guess