Originally Posted by
jamesj
So what does anyone use to clean the rust off the frame. Im not wanting to dip it in oxalic at this point as most of it seems to be surface rust. What would you all use to get the bigger spots of rust off? I know about using Scratch X but I don't think that pulls off rust.
Because of the blue color, this bike would be a challenge for me. Every rusty 3 speed I've worked on before was black. I carefully replace missing paint and blend in the repair by compounding and polishing. I've been using enamel paint for repairs. I did once repair a small scrape on my Astral Red Bonneville mudguard by mixing Testors primary colors that worked out very well. From what I see in the pictures I wouldn't do anything more on the frame than polish and wax. It's the large rust spot on the chain guard and smaller areas on the mudguards that would get me attention. I don't remove the rust down to bare steel. And I don't level and smooth the area I'm repairing. I don't mind if the repair looks like a repair. I just want it to look like a competent repair. My goal is to preserve what I can and keep the bike from rusting any further. I don't know how well I could match this finish, but here's a mudguard that had a nasty rust issue that I repaired. I had to trim off a half inch from the bottom and the first 3 inches needed to be reinforced because the steel was so thin.