After my department store bike was stolen last year, and my other one crapped out on me, I was given a 1965-1969 Nishiki Olympic 10 by a cool guy named John who had over a hundred old Japanese and Europeon bikes. I rode it to work a couple times and decided to fix it up a little. I cleaned it up and painted it. White primer, white gloss, transparent blue, then clearcoat. If I did it right, it would have looked really cool. But I didn't know how to fully dissasemble the bike and it turned out crappy. I left it in my attic for about 6 months. The derailleur was bent and wouldn't shift into all gears, so I removed it, shortened the chain, making it a single speed. This worked OK for a while. Flash forward to now. My rear tube went flat, so I needed a new tube. I thought "maybe I'll replace the tires too, since they might just be 40 years old" so I got new tires. While I was changing them, I thought "while the wheel's off, why don't I regrease the hubs?" since the grease in there might just be 40 years old. While I'm at that, I should clean the gears, they have tons of grime on them. Oooh, what nice shiny gears! I should fix the derailleur too, so my Nishiki can be an Olympic 10 again, instead of an Olympic 1. After I got those done, I figured I'd change the grease in the crank, too. About 4 hours later I finially got all the crank pieces off. They're drying/being soaked in TriFlow right now. My bike is looking pretty bare, with no pedals and stuff. Since I'm going to clean out the crank housing, I should take off the brakes and handlebars so I don't bang my head on them or some ****. Hey, cool, there's some original shiny maroon paint on the fork. Now that the bike is a bare frame, maybe I should paint it. Last time it didn't turn out so well. I started by changing a flat, and I'm going to end up sinking a hundred bucks or so into restoring the bike to almost-like-new condition. Tell me what color(s) I should paint it. Red and black by themselves are out (But I'm thinking about black WITH red). Include if it's metallic, candy, pearl finish, ect. check out [email protected] on myspace for pictures