While on this topic, does anyone know of a place in the Denver CO area that can paint a Carbon Bike? Hottubes would be my first choice, but i'd like to avoid shipping it off if possible.

We have refinished many framesets, and as a few other people have said, it's extremely time and labor intensive. It's not a fun job, and not many people are willing to pay the money to do the job right. Sanding a frame and fork properly takes several tedious hours. Painting it is actually the easy part. Basically, we tell customers that we're not willing to strip a frame all the way down to the bare carbon because it simply takes too long. Besides, there's a reason why many carbon frames are painted - the paint is hiding a lot of imperfections in the carbon.

Carbolift works okay, but we've been less than impressed with their customer service, so we just stick to hand sanding. We start with 180 grit to flatten out any raised logos/decals, then we step up to 320 grit before painting. We will re-finish a painted frame with another paint scheme, but we will not completely strip a painted frame. We can take a nude finish frame with decals/logos and sand them off so the entire frame is nude finish. That's about it.

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Kurt Gensheimer
CarbonFrameRepair.com - Your source for quality, professional carbon bicycle frame repair
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I'd love to hear the magical "pro" process that makes this such an inconceivable DIY project. Does it involve something other than spending a large number of hours carefully wet sanding with 320 or 600 grit sand paper until the surface is smooth and free of defects? I will grant that the process is: tedious, time consuming, patience testing, slightly messy. One thing it is not: difficult. If you have the intelligence to not use 100 grit paper or a DA sander and don't try to remove all the paint (and thus almost certainly dig into the frame itself), it's pretty simple.

you can always tell the diference between a DIY or a pro paint job. If you want a simple one color paint that you could do it yourself but if you are looking for something more complicated and nicer, in my opinion, you should get it done by a pro.

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Formely stef32

Kurt, what would be the turn-around time for you guys to paint a frame at the moment?

Mike

We're running about three weeks right now.

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Kurt Gensheimer
CarbonFrameRepair.com - Your source for quality, professional carbon bicycle frame repair
See our latest repairs on Facebook

As a painter who specializes in bike frames I do not use any chemical strippers on carbon. My Process on a new carbon frame would be to remove the factory paint down to the primer. This is done with sandpaper. Once acceptable the frame is primed and repainted.

I have stripped down to bare carbon many times at the customer request but it is not needed unless you want bare carbon or the factory primer is bad. I also charge extra to go to bare carbon.

Being a good painter requires practice and knowledge of the materials. I will answer any question but cannot give you the practice.


http://Www.creativecycleworks.com

I painted a carbon fork recently, I got the paint from a good automotive paint store.

I used enamel that they recommended, they mixed it and put it in spray cans for me.

They told me to use a scotch bright pad and clean up the existing paint really well since it was good paint already. I did as they said, sprayed it with light coats and it came out really well.

jaretj

Oh, you mean something like this?

I wouldn't say it is the reason, but knowing that a part will simply be painted over later takes a lot of the pressure off to get the cosmetics perfect. I've been doing a good bit of DIY with some carbon fiber that has a pretty crazy weave, and it has been taking forever because the fact that I bought the fabric to show off the weave means that I have to be careful to get it perfect...

http://www.fibreglast.com/...tterned_Carbon_Fiber

(The pattern looks cool as hell, but the tradeoff on the cool pattern is a looser weave that doesn't hold together as well)

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Kurt Gensheimer
CarbonFrameRepair.com - Your source for quality, professional carbon bicycle frame repair
See our latest repairs on Facebook

Been wanting to do some custom paint on my giant trinity too..... love the bike but hate the one blue thing on the frame, which is the giant logo on the side. I really want it to be a different color. So..... i was thinking of just tapeing off around the logo & brushing on automotive paint over it.... any opinions on this? Will it work? I just really dont wanna get the whole frame sanded & repainted, when all i wanna change is the color of just the one logo.

Time to resurrect this thread. Does anyone have any experience bead blasting a carbon frame? I've read a few blogs from folks that have had success doing it. Sanding would take way too much time and patience.

Not sure of bead blasting but soda blasting is the way to go if the user has a high end commercial soda system.
I have used a cheap model and it does work very well but takes long for a frame and u waste lots of soda which costs $$

What is the severity of damage? Is the frame clear coated in gloss or is it flat?

I sanded down the bad spots on a Felt AR5 frame I bought used. It had chips and some minor peeling clear coat. I have painted cars before and have a decent HVLP spray gun. I was able to clear coat my frame and it looks pro. I would say that 99% of the people on this forum shouldn't do the same. If you have no previous paint experience except that time you spray painted your BBQ with a rattle can and it "looked legit" you should re think undertaking such a project. If you are comfortable with sanding, wet sanding, spraying clear coat, and have all the materials at your disposal go for it. But odds are if that were the case you wouldn't be here asking how to do it.

You could do what a lot of hot rod guys do and paint it with John Deere Blitz Black. You would have to sand down the frame entirely and ensure ALL grease is gone and the frame is properly prepped. It would probably come out bad ass if you got some black gloss graphics to go over it. That paint does come in rattle cans as well as quarts and gallons for spray guns. My .02

Just realized this was an old thread with a new topic sort of...

my advice would be not to bead or soda blast carbon. Having used both it seems like a bad idea.

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I'm keen to get my carbon road bike painted, but prices seem high - AUS $800. Would automotive sprayshops be willing to do bikes? I'd imagine most of them would simply say no, because it's not something they've done before, but is it the same principle. Plan B would be to do it myself, which I'm not too keen unless it really is quite easy. I was going for a matt black finish.