I’ve just bought a slightly battered looking raw aluminium frame. Should I treat this with something before building it up and what’s the best way to attach a new head badge, arraldite?
No. It's raw. Doesn't need polishing or clear coating etc. Just ride it and embrace the, er, rawness .
Depends how you want it to look like?
You could use brasso and an abrasive pad to clean it. You could even cover it in lacquer but I'm my experience it's easier just to clean it, ride it and nothing else.
As above, embrace the rawness
Thanks. I guess it will make the cracks easier to spot!
Just being nosey!
What frame is it mate?
I polished mine with tcut and put copter tape over the high wear bits and the down tube.
It’s all faded to oxidized weather it was taped or not. It was super shiny after tcuting 😀
I’ve tried a few polishes over the years - brasso, silvo and loads of other stuff. Big fan I raw frames 🤘
This is awesome and requires minimal elbow grease. Comes up a treat.
Polish it. You'll like the result, and once it's got the required lustre, wax it and you'll find the dirt just drops off and it always looks good.
It will just need a once over with a decent alloy polish like Autosol once a year then.
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I use a fine wire wool on mine. When I can be bothered. It's a winter single speed so I just leave it as it is most the time.
Autosol is great for raw alloy, you'll turn a dozen rags black when buffing to a high sheen, but I'd lacquer it too.
