I bought this at the beginning of the year from the original owner. He’d used it primarily for fitness training on the road and had swapped in a larger chainring. Asides from that, and the M737 spds, everything was as per catalogue spec. This tends to be type of project I look for; disassemble, clean, polish and reassemble with as few replacement parts as I can get away with. After the parts were all off and the frame checked for cracks I started the job of touching up the paintwork. The paint was flaking away in places and the issues which I’ve seen described on this site that Specialized had with paint adhesion into the M2 alloy were evident. My first attempt to fix the paint chips with selective masking and a spray can failed. Too much coverage over the original paint, and the finish wasn’t glossy enough. I removed that and tried again with hand touch ups using modellers enamel and then polishing back. This was better, less intrusive but very slow. I mixed a wax and T cut polish to get the amount of abrasion I needed. After a couple of weeks off and on I’d got the frame to passable at a distance. I could get away with this on the black frame because it’s an easy colour match. The forks not so easy. I had hoped for light spray would heal up the chips and scratches. I realised that without a perfect colour match this wouldn’t work so I went with masking the decals and spraying the forks completely then finishing with clear coats. Here’s a couple of pics showing the bike as bought and it’s current state with frame and fork paint repaired as best as I can. The rest of the components are cleaned up and ready to go on this week.
