To lacquer, or not to lacquer?

dude! I'd go with the lacquer, its gonna oxidize anyway so safe yourself more polishing by giving it a coat of lacquer now!

Only my retarded opinion!

I'm with Lewis on this one, don't lacquer the frame. With time, the shiny finish will deteriorate whether you lacquer or not. Thing is, if it's not lacquered, it's easy to just polish the frame to get it back to super shiny condition, you can't polish a lacquered frame. Like Senri said, oxidation doesn't compromise the integrity of aluminium. In the process of anodising, aluminium is deliberately oxidized to create a very thin superficial layer of porous aluminum to give the colour something to cling on to. And anodised bits are just as strong as non anodised bits.
Just put some elbow grease in once a year or so to polish the bike back to mirror finish and it will continue to look stunning.

If you can find somewhere local who can anodise it for you that would be a perfect finish - could even incorporate a colour if you like.
Have a look for some images of anodised aluminium & you`ll see the effect - just like a new set of campag cranks.

All I can say is it looks great now - I'm in the process of removing the paint from an aluminium road bike and want mine to look just like yours does now. I just haven't managed to find enough time to get it looking any good yet - truth be known right now it looks a right mess - I can see an awful lot of wet and dry in my future.

I was planning to leave it raw and use car/rim wax when I got to that stage... perhaps by x-mas, then repolish as required.

BG":190gmihu said:

All I can say is it looks great now - I'm in the process of removing the paint from an aluminium road bike and want mine to look just like yours does now.

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Hey BG. I didn't use any wet and dry on mine although I have been reading this is good stuff.

This is what the frame looked like at first

I stripped the paint back with nitromors paint stripper, and used a LOT of wire wool tidying bits up.
A massive help was wire wool drill attachments (don't know what these are called) these got into stubborn corners and hard to get at bits.
They're also cheap as chips from hardware shops

Cleaned the frame up mostly with T-Cut, then finished it off with the mighty Autosol. This stuff really bought it up glass shiny.

Either way be prepared for a hell of a lot of elbow grease.
You could of course go and get your frame sandblasted or similar, but doing it by hand seemed so much more satisfying to me

Everyone else, thanks for your input, today I decide what to actually do with this thing before starting the build...

dirtydaniel":37hkcytb said:

Everyone else, thanks for your input, today I decide what to actually do with this thing before starting the build...

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And, and, and???????

Senri":1wiml49f said:

dirtydaniel":1wiml49f said:

Everyone else, thanks for your input, today I decide what to actually do with this thing before starting the build...

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And, and, and???????

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ha! well I decided against in the end, the point that got me was that you can't polish lacquer. I am perfectly happy to polish my bike and like it looking shiny


partly assembled, the full (old) bike, new seatpost and new rear mech I got from kind people on this forum, still waiting on pics/news re : a Ti flite transalp saddle.
New tyres are arriving hopefully from chainreaction tomorrow, after that it's just a chain, bartape, and setting up the gears/brakes

Still not sure about those euro bars though, don't think they do the bike any favours... opinions/comments people please?

it's going to look nice - very short stem though - is the frame too big for you?

Here's a photo of mine as it stands at the moment - partially striped using some automotive paint stripper. I'll need to get into it with some thing to get the paint out of the hard to get bits (good tip about the wire brush drill attachment - thanks), but the head tube on mine is CNCed so will need to be smoothed out with some wet and dry sand paper I fear.

It was originally a 2003 Raceline Giro (triple butted 7005 alloy) - plan is to turn it into a flat bar 1x8 for lunchtime rides from work. I've got most of the bits I need lying around (or coming from mail-order) but yet to source wheels.

I've set myself a Christmas deadline to get it done!

BG":26a1lmy9 said:

it's going to look nice - very short stem though - is the frame too big for you?

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The guy I bought the bike off put 2 stems in with it.
I just grabbed this one when I was putting it together.
There is a longer one, I'm going to try them both out.
The frame's 60cm and I'm 6 foot 2 so it should fit perfectly
I'm going to run this as a 1x9 too, was thinking about trying a flat/riser bar myself but I'll see..

Yours looks as if it's going to be nice BG, hope Santa comes early this year
Oh, and post pics when it's done!

That's about the size of mine too - I'm 6'3" and a bit.

This'll be this frame's 3rd incarnation -

1 - it was a roadie with 105 group when I bought it new, then after a bit I swapped all the bits onto a carbon frame,

2 - I eventually built this frame up as a single speed, which was OK, but it just wasn't me (ok so using a half link in the chain to get the tension right was a real pain, so if I go there again i'll use a bike with horizontal drop-outs - there are some nice 'new' retro-ish stuff around like the Schwinn Madison that looks good and isn't too expensive) , and

3 - now I'm stripping the frame to polish it up and run it sort of in-between where it's been before.

I'd have started a thread on this, but I just didn't feel a 2003 frame was particularly retro, even though some of the bits going on it will go back a bit further than that - stay tuned though I may have to start one now.

I'll keep an eye on your build too.