My five year old Orange 5 is looking a bit tatty and i'd like to get her resprayed over the winter when she's not getting used much.
Can anyone recommend somewhere localish to Brighton to get this done?
I've seen mention of Nationwide Coatings in Slough, which isn't too far away but if there's somewhere good closer to home then i'd rather use them.

There is a place in Shoreham/Worthing IIRC – don't know the name. Google or more likely local yellow pages should reveal. They're not bike specific but do bikes. I could do it in car paint but it wouldn't be as durable.

treston finishes in southamton is highy recomendeed

Thinking of getting mine done over the next few months too. For some reason I have Universal Applied Coatings in Pease Pottage saved to my favourites. Can only think it was a recommendation from a previous post perhaps.
I am in Shoreham and the only one I have heard of around here is The Spray Shop in Lancing.
Have not had any experience of either tho…

Found a few places on yellow pages but was really hoping to get a recommendation from someone with direct experience. I guess Southampton's not that far away.

I emailed three local companies last week and i've not had a single reply… which does not bode well.
Hmm. Orange's £175 deal is actually looking attractive now. At least i can trust them to do the job properly.

Just had a reply from Keep Powder Coating. They've done at least one bike frame, according to their website, and charge between £45-60 per frame, for stock colours. Not bad, i thought.

No one answers e-mails, thats the point of them! Would you answer an email form a cyclist effectively asking you to submit a bid on about £40's worth of work detailing exactly how you intend to blank off each pivot bolt, tube etc, which he may or may not even follow through. Or the one form a fencing contractor who probably has £4k's worth of work for you, takes less organising, and probably not much more efort to execute?

Phone them, tell them what you want, get an instant answer, why does no one use the phone anymore?

"why does no one use the phone anymore?"

STW has made the telephone redundant. The whole world is on here.

thisisnotaspoon,
Welcome to the 21st Century
😛

yup, back in the 20th century, he'd maybe get a few e-mails a day. And they'd be a novelty, an extra source of business.

Now that he gets big jobs arranged through e-mail he's hardly likely to bother bidding on your frame work is he? It'd take him 20min to answer all your little questions about his experience with bike frames, dig out photos if he has any, assure you that he does indeed know his arse form his elbow and can do his job better than you can. Whereas the next one in his inbox is "how much to powdercoat 10,000 cans?", which lets be honest is a more profitable thing to bid on?

Phone, 5 minutes and you'll have a quote and can ask if your expected to do the blanking or not. Jobs a gud un.

Crikey. You seem to know a lot about his business! Have you downloaded his annual returns from Companies House or something?
I think i'll go with Keep Powder Coating. 🙂

Ooh. Just had a reply from another company. Seems the emails are steadily working their way down the pipe.
I prefer emails to phone calls during working hours. It's much harder to pretend you're working with a phone on the side of your head and non-work-related words coming out your mouth.

I used a small back street place in Eastbourne for a specialized hardtail coat, cant remember the name but is was just off Lotbrifge drove in Eastbourne.
Done a good job,charged me £30 for frame only

Just did a Yell.com search (I'M SUPPOSED TO BE WORKING BUT I'M NOT AND NO ONE IN THE OFFICE IS ANY THE WISER – TRY DOING THAT WITH A PHONECALL; HA HA HA!!!).
T.M.T. POWDER COATING LTD?

http://www.pwsfinishing.co.uk does a lot of the bmx's for the guys over at radbmx.co.uk – people entrust their old retro 80's frames to him, and theres a gallery of his work over at their site.

Banjo boy,

Yup, thats the one !
Nice job from memory, had it matt black and it was good, done it without fowling threads etc and seemed pretty tough too.
Worth a punt 🙄

I'm also looking for a new paint job and live in Lewes. Where you going in the end then?

Also Powder coat – is that the best finish for a steel frame?

Cheers

Thinking of getting mine done in the New Year and will most likely use Windridge Coatings – have seen a few recommendations on STW and from the website they look like a good outfit…

http://www.windridge.co.uk/content.php/410

Ooh… Windridge look like they properly know what to do with bike frames, but Keep is so much closer to home (and cheap!). Hmmm.

windridge are very good, that's who we're using for our frames – despite being the other end of the country! working with them on some decals ideas….

18Bikes – so you would be happy to recommend Windridge then by the sound of it? Slightly nervous of sending my Hustler in bits to someone else!

more than happy – tell them i sent you. email me if you want to chat more?

Dropped frame and swingarm off with Keep Powdercoating in Uckfield. They said they had previously done an Orange 5, which was promising. I talked through the bits that needed masking and all seems to be good. They've got all manner of rubber bits and bungs for blanking bolt holes etc.
£45, they say. Which might go up because i've asked them to chemically strip it rather than shot blasting.
They reckon they should have it done by the end of the week.
Will report back if all goes very well.

Hmmm… Just had phone call from Keep. Price has increased to £75 due to it requiring bead blasting to remove the paint. Had been told they were going to look into chemical treatment as they thought shot blasting would be too rough. Bead blasting is gentler but costs more.
Still, the overall price is currently lower than anyone elses (stickers and pivot bearings from Orange were £35).
Hope they do a good job… They do seem to be receptive to my concerns though (i think…).

Let us know how it goes, I may take a punt with them if they do a good job as they're local for me too.

Stick a picture up when you get it back – hope you've gone for an 'interesting' colour..

Well. Picked up my frame this morning and all would appear to be well. However, it has been a bit of a ball ache making sure that Keep Powder Coating knew what areas to mask etc. The paint stripping took much longer than anticipated and they didn't keep me informed and made excuses that someone was supposed to call me. They also quibbled about the price this morning, saying that it should be £80 when they had told me it would be £75. I also have to scrape a layer of paint out of the shock bolt holes – but they said that this was intentional as they only put one coat of powder on them (not really sure why).
Bottom line is i got what i wanted but the customer service was poor so it caused me a bit of hassle. If i were to do it again i think i would have paid up to 50% more and posted the frame to a more organised outfit.
I'll post some pics when i get home tonight.

Give it a good rinse out and blow out and dry off before you assemble, if its been anywhere bear the blast cabinet it will have lots of grit everywhere, ive really scrathed up my seatpost on mine, as I was in a rush to build it.

Piccy here:

However, there is a problem… When putting it all back together, the helicoil in the swingarm bearing clamp snapped… Thread here.