Looking at stripping the paint off my downhill bike, what’s the best way to do it? Will an engineering company shot blast it for instance or is that too risky? The seatstays are carbon also which makes it a bit more of a problem.

Any companies based in or around sheffield would also be very helpful.

Thanks,
Harry

I used to take mine to a powder coaters who would chemically strip it.
Not sure about the carbon bit though, you’d have to do that by hand I think.

How would i go about stripping back to carbon? Just using fine grit sandpaper?

A sharp blade or 100 grit sand paper for the carbon. Fine grit stuff won’t get through the paint/laquer.

Once you start seeing black dust you’ll know you’ve hit carbon. Then just smooth it out with some finer grade sand paper and wet and dry.

Beware of the troll… 🙂

Last time I stripped a frame I massively regretted starting and it was only a little hardtail jump bike. It took about a week of sanding and buffing to make it look half decent.

Don’t bother with Nitromors. The new recipe doesn’t work at all. You can still get powerful paint strippers but only from trade places. That will nuke the paint on the alloy section.

If you do find someone to do it in Sheffield I’d like to know about them. I want my DH frame stripping and polishing.

I’ll give you a heads up sharkattack, i’m after getting my downhill bike down too, only problem is it has the carbon seatstays so might have to do that bit by hand, i’ve sent an email off for a quote from a company in sheffield. Which bike are you looking at doing?

carbon seatstays so might have to do that bit by hand

You will. I don’t think it’d be safe to use paint stripping chemicals on carbon fibre.

A sharp blade is usually the easiest and quickest way to remove paint/laquer from carbon. Then just polish it up with some 1200/2500 grit wet and dry.

You could theither polish it or respray it with laquer.

So I would be okay to just sand it back with fine sand paper? I didn’t plan on using any chemicals. When would I know to stop? Just before I go too far and damage the carbon…

**** hell son. Read my reply above; I’ve told you how to do it.

You can’t just use fine sand paper as it’s not strong enough and it won’t take the paint off.

Unless you’re a complete klutz, you won’t do any damage.

there are chemicals which will pull the paint off the frame and wont effect the epoxy, there’s some caveats to this and honestly its not something you want to do without some experience (and it costs around 1200 quid per drum)

again you can also soda blast , not all soda blasting is the same (our gear cost the best part of 5k to do this on carbon)

Sensible head on…

If you’re sanding anywhere near carbon, please wear a decent face mask. Breathing in carbon dust is a Very Bad Thing™

Which bike are you looking at doing?

I’ve got a YT Tues which is a mint bike but is looking a bit tired. It’s hanging up in a workshop in Sheffield waiting for me to decide what to do with it.

Get the alloy mainframe blasted by a local refinishers (any one that does powder coating)

Sand the paint on carbon bits and spray them matt black. Hard to get “just” the paint on carbon.