Can anybody recommend a good place with experience of doing bikes? All the reputable places seem to be miles away. Going price is about £50 but delivery is going to be the same again unless I can get somewhere nearby.

I'd like the whole works, stripping, pre-treatment and clearcoat afterwards.
Any help would be very, very much appreciated.

Love Steve xxx

Hi there. I've got a deal with a powder coater up in grimsby. I'm sure he could do the work for less than 50 quid and i can get a courier for 10 pounds each way.

I've also got a set of RAL chips i could send you if you promise to return them! Pm me if you are interested.

derwent enamellers in derby dobikes. I was quoted £25 for a frame. When i went there they had a few frames about to be done. They do other stuff like cars and motorbikes too, so not specialists as such. Don't know how good their finished product is and when i went they only had limited colours for that price.

Thanks for the replies chaps

Lewis: Have you seen there work? Is it any good? Thanks for the rap chip offer but I've never heard of one of them. If its like a colour chart then I already know what I want (ral 2011).

Orange: Emailed

yes it is a colour chart

i have seen their work and it is above standard. the finish is really smooth. i have had cheap powder before and it was a lottle orange peely to be honest.

We use Derwent at Bombardier transport and they do a good job on our products, although I think they may have a limited range of colours.

Got a very prompt and detailed reply from Derwent. Including pretreatment they charge £40 as long as the colour I choose is in their range, if not it's an extra £65 I'd really like to use them if possible as I've checked them out on a map and they're literally down the road from me. 5 or 10 minutes on my bike. It would certainly save all the postage hassle. Obviously depends on a couple of things though, I'm yet to find out if they have ral 5011 and I want to see the quality of their work before I have it done. Failing this I may just take Lewis up on his offer.

Legacy: How good is "good"? Any orange peel or is it a real smooth finish?

No rush with all this though, I haven't even bought the frame yet and I want to ride it for a month or so to make sure I like it before I start throwing money at it. Got to get it modified by Mercian too. Just want to have a really good daily beater for a change.

Photos will come up here afterwards of course.

We manufacture all the interiors for trains so the standard is very good, its just the colour thing, I thought about sending mine there, but they could not match the colour. good luck and let me know how it goes if you do send it there.

when I went they only had about 8 colours, most of them pretty primary-type colours - yellow, red, black, blue, green etc. Not many subtle shades.

I have tried a few in the area, mainly for motorbike frames which have been black. Everyone does black, the cheapest I found was Wards in Burton on Trent. They did a really good and I even trused my Kilauea to them: £30 frame, forks and stem.

CJ Ward
unit3 Dallow St
Burton upon Trent DE14 2PQ
01283 536 135


The main problem you will have is getting a paint colour you can live with and that means a trip (usually wasted) to have a look at the colours available. I would think that anyone you find will do a special colour but i was quoted an extra £60 to 80 on top: too much for Mr Tightscroat.

My latest project is residing at John Whiteman's place in Long Eaton (I say residing because the Muppets should have had it ready for yesterday and didn't bother to call). I chose these people partly on recommendation and partly because they had a much wider range of "standard" colours available.

This lot are charging me £40 for a metalic (yes I didn't think you could get metallic PC either: maybe you can't) blue. The call it Subaru blue.

Their number is 01159 468566 and they are about 1/2 mile from Long Eaton centre.

If I get it back I'll attempt to put a photo up.

JohnB

John Whiteman did my LTS in black. It was only £30 but I wasn't too impressed with the finish. It's the only thing I've ever had powder-coated, to be fair, so I might just have expected too much. A friend had an old racer done in white which seemed to get a much better finish, so it might depend who's doing the job as well I guess.

On reflection, this hasn't added much to this thread.

Oranges are not the only fruit.

John Whiteman has managed to produce the whole citrus family from super-smooth non-waxed limes through orange and even on to ugli. An impressive achievement all on one frame!

The moral of the storey: unwrap and inspect the frame thoroughly before rushing off with it.

I'm just too impatient: although I know that the right thing to do is to send the frame straight back (and then wait an unknown amount of time) to get them to do it properly.
I haven't. I just couldn't resist turning the pile of bits into a bike.

One of those really annoying coincidences happend part way through the build: a neighbour called round and said that he could have got the frame stove enamelled at work for the price of a pint. Isn't life fantastic?

JohnB

d'oh...

nevermind - it'll soon be covered in mud and stickers

Actually I was thinking of scratches and chips so why be precious about something you know you are about to abuse?

I've tried to add some photos of work in progress before it gets damaged.

JB