For all interested in painting of a bike frame I have prepared a small set of steps how to repaint old frame to get a new fresh design. Instructions are general and can be applied to any frame carbon, steel, aluminium…There can be other several different procedures but these are our steps and we get great results with it.

Abrade all the decals and all transitions between different colors layers have to be also abraded.

Eccentric grinder is really helpfull tool but you need to be careful on tubes edges. Sandpaper P400 grit.

Well, what was the brand of the frame ? 

It took couple of sandpaper discs..

Apply black control paint to the whole frame, before we start with wet grinding. This helps us to see where the frame is already abraded and where is not. Every single corner have to be abraded so other layers will stick well to the base.

With wet grinding we minimise all the scratches and all the transition between color layers. Frame should be as smooth as possible before applying another layers.

If you have raw steel or aluminium frame you need some basic layer which sticks well to raw metal. We use high quality epoxy paint. We use it also for carbon frames so all the old paintings are separated from all new, which will be added to the frame later.

Optional step could be wet grinding of the epoxy layer if you can still see some old layers transition or if you consider surface not as smooth as it should be. In 99% cases we do not add any other filling coats, because they are not necessary.

We work with MOBIHEL automotive paints. Mix all them well and prepare any color you need. There are thousands and thousands of combinations.

We need black base for chameleon paint. 366 is the most black from the blacks. It is black as the forrest in the dark : )

80.1gr of the black base should be enough for the whole frame. We thin it 2:1 with thinner. So you have something about 120ml of the black paint.

Spraying gun Anest Iwata, yes Japanies quality, HVLP low preassure type, 1.2mm nozzle.

Black coat before applying chameleon should be as perfect as possible.

Magic can. Chameleon paint. This is chameleon extreme 230L from stardust colors UK.

The can contain ready to spray mix, you dont have to thin it further but it depends on the painter preferences as well.

We have applied several layers of the chameleon paint and this is the awesome result.

Gorgeous effect.

Color is changing according the view angle and light.

Preparing teamplates. This one is easy. But sometimes it is quite time consuming activity.

SingleBe custom painting template. Necessary for all the frames which leave our paintshop : )

The owner, Jiri Fikejz is a Rock Machine factory PRO rider and he fell in love with chameleon colors. Rock Machine is well established czech bikes manufacturer.

For decals we use a small airbrush gun. What other brand than Iwata. Nozzle 0.3 mm. Put as thin layer as possible, just to cover the layer below. Then you almost don’t feel any edges of the decal.

And the result is …

…is ready to put the final clear coat on it.

And this is already final photoshooting. Isn’t it just fancy ?