may have said:I have a 20 year old Centurion Le Mans RS, which is a little beat up,
but in decent shape mechanically. I'm deciding whether to refurbish it
or to buy a new bike. I'll be riding the bike mainly to get in shape.
If I can fix mine up cheaply,
"Cheaply" is a term that is relative.
Quoted message said:To do a refurb, I may want to repaint the frame, I was wondering what
it typically costs to have a frame bead blasted and what the paint and
supplies would cost (probably custom colors put into aerosol cans,
since I don't own a compresser/paint sprayer).
Depending on where you live, bead-blasting may be easy to get done or
may be hard to find at all; environmental regulations tend to make all
forms of paint removal costly in certain locales. If it's available
at a reasonable cost, I would be surprised if the price was outside
the range of $25-$50. A bike frame is a relatively large piece, and
will not fit into the cabinet of the kind of blasting setup that is
present in most machine shops, so you'll probaly have to shop around a
bit to locate a place where it can be done. Be aware that cleaning
the grit from the inside of the tubes afterwards is unlikely to be a
completely successful activity; if you frequently store your bike
inverted on ceiling hooks, it's very likely that grit from the
blasting process will make its way into the upper steerer bearing, and
you will definitely want to use only a sealed-cartridge BB. Overall,
I would advise against blasting a frame for this and some other
reasons.
As for having paint canned in aerosol form, expect to spend over $30
to have a single 16-oz can made, and be aware that like the problems
with blasting, environmental regs have taken a lot of the most
suitable paints off the market. You may fare better in this instance
by talking to someone at a small, independent automotive paint and
body shop; they'd have the equipment to shoot the frame quickly and
easily.
Those two things said, perhaps the better part of valor is to simply
do a little spot touch-up and spend money on whatever mechanical bits
need attention instead. You said you're riding this to get back in
shape; is the appearance really all that important? New paint won't
make the bike faster or easier to pedal.
Quoted message said:Is it fairly easy to get good results?
This depends on your level of skill and patience. For me, the answer
is "yes", but I can't estimate what your efforts will produce.
Quoted message said:Where can I buy decals (since
Centurion is no longer, I'm not sure what decals I'd buy 😉?
Check with sign-making companies in your area, and ask about cut vinyl
decal production. Many of them will likely have the ability to
produce one-off die-cut decals for a semi-reasonable sum, though it's
usually cheaper if you can bring them the design you want in an
electronic form. Be aware that they will probably want it in a
specific graphics program file format, in what's called vector form.
I have seen some bikes with such decals around here, including one at
a local university whose owner was apparently equipped with a unique
sense of humor; the bike had decals with "Gefickt" in the Fette
Fraktur font used for official German documents.
If bike theft is a problem in your area, consider camoflage decals
misidentifying it as the least desirable brand available, perhaps
Huffy. Or do without; like paint, the decals contribute nothing to
the performance of the bike, after all...and don't forget that some
custom frames come with no identifying marks.
Quoted message said:There are a few spots with a bit of rust where the paint has chipped.
If I decide to use touch up paint, should these areas be sanded down to
bare metal before applting the paint?
For the greatest permanence, yes. For the greatest ease of
application, no. There are also chemical methods of rust removal,
using products such as Naval Jelly, which do minimal damage to the
surrounding paint.
Quoted message said:Also, is the plastic disc that goes between the cassette and the wheel
spokes necessary, or can/should it be removed?
This is a matter of opinion. Its purpose is to protect the spokes
from damage if the chain jumps past the big sprocket for some reason.
Although in theory that shouldn't happen, in practice it very well
may; without the plastic disc, the chain can chew up the spokes and
leave them gouged in a manner that may cause them to fail later. I
like to leave them on. I often find that they are difficult to
replace, though, because the range of them available as spare parts is
smaller than the range of possible applications.
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