After a bit of thought and advice from people on here, I may be sticking with the RR frame, since it’s more my size. Anyway, I found an alloy wheel place prepared to dip and strip both frames for the very reasonable sum of £72. This is how they came back - next step sticker removal.Stripping the clear is a harder job than polishing the frame. You might as well polish it up if you are taking it back to aluminium.
Looks good and satisfying. I've got something similar in line. How did you remove the bulk of the lacquer?Is there a finer way to spend a Sunday morning than polishing an old bicycle? This is the RR frame. I used MAAS metal polish and a rag, then cleaned the residue off with WD40 and shop towels. Some areas need a bit more attention, but on the whole I'm pleased with the result. The shine is back, but the battle scars remain, which is important to me.
(Edit: Forgot to mention that because the decals sit on top of the lacquer, when I took them off there was a layer of lacquer underneath ... oops. It was easy enough to remove using Nitro-Mors, but I wouldn't want to do a whole frame this way.)
I got an alloy wheel place to chemically strip the frame for me, saved a lot of elbow grease!Looks good and satisfying. I've got something similar in line. How did you remove the bulk of the lacquer?