redcurrycelt

I've heard the horror stories about paint jobs on italian bikes, and alas, the story is the same on my new Ciocc. There was a 3" area on the top tube with black electric tape on it, and as I began to remove it, I found I was taking paint right off along with it. Whee, look how shiny the chrome under the paint is!

For now, the tape will stay. The decals, too, are in less-than-stellar shape. Regardless, I love the f***ing thing and if I continue to love it longtime, maybe I'll get the paint stripped and leave the chrome, just re-decal it, etc. I'd hate to powdercoat this thing!

I doubt there's much I can do about removing the tape without taking the paint with it.. any ideas?

el twe

Keep the tape on? Or just replace it (the tape).

endform

I heard the same thing from a dude about his pinarello track bike, damn that thing was hot, but damn the paint sucked.

The paint also sucks on my Italvega conversion, absolutely no lettering left and the paint is easy as hell to scratch and chip. Of course my conversion is a 30 year old frame.

benny

pics? You don't see many ciocc track frames.

biff

Send it to a pro to get redone?

redcurrycelt

Would that it were, my friend- would that it were. It's a road frame destined for fixie conversion or singlespeed-dom.

benny

ahhh... i see. Thanks. I got excited for a second. Sorry to hear about your paint. I have a ciocc and the paint is fine.

sloppy robot

mine chips if you look at it wrong.. i guess its kinda like that one guitar nigel tufnel has..

eddiebrannan

use a hairdryer to soften the glue under the tape then try to remove it

koyman

[/edit - RE: above post]
also, lighter fluid works wonders

put some on, and scrape lightly with something plastic. should come right off. you might have to finesse it or use more fluid, though.

osmium

Hey,

Just building up a 96 Basso Gap and the thing fell over against my 86 Woodrup and chip chip chip. The Woodrup just laughed at it. I have a bunch of small chips on the Gap frame. It seems like they don't really prime the frame very well so the paint doesn't seem to want to stay on. Maybe it's part of a conspiracy to get us to replace our steel frames every 4 yrs or so.

Cheers
Roland

EuroJosh

Italian paint sucks in part to environmental restrictions. I applied about 5 coats of turtle wax to my DeBernardi road frame before building it up and that seems to have done the trick OK.
I work at a high end bike shop, we sell quite a few Colnagos. It's pretty humorous that the $2k Giant manufactured CLX frames have much nicer paint than the $4300 made in Italy extreme powers do.

piwonka

my motta is all chipped up but whatever. it's gonna happen. don't sweat it...but do what brannan said and used a little heat to get the glue softer...maybe it won't pull your paint with it.

bexley

Can you expand on that, JoshFrank? Is the brittleness of he paint a result of the absence of some substance that's not allowed for environmental reasons?

I'll take the turtle wax suggestion. Thanks.

teiaperigosa

the Debernardi chips real easy...frame looks a lot older than it is

EuroJosh

I am not exactly sure what is restricted, it dose have something to do with the propellants they use and the curing process. You could probably get a detailed explanation by emailing Torelli, they offer Italian frames with the option to upgrade to American paint.

How about a pic of your Ciocc?

j0e_bik3

this works about 50% of the time, no guarantees, but here ya go:

use ETHANOL, get the denatured stuff from home depot/hardware store (it'll say "SLX" on the label somewhere) put some in a squirt bottle of some sort with a fine tip (red plastic ketchup squeeze bottle?) now squirt some of the alcohol BETWEEN the tape, or decal and the paint, and if it's going to work, it'll just INSTANTLY loosen the glue on the tape, and it should peel with no tack whatsoever. you'll need to keep squirting as you peel, and don't be afraid to hose the thing down with the alcohol, because there isn't enough solvent power in the alcohol to damage the paint, although you may see some "bleeding" of any blue, or red (those are unstable colors) but it should wipe away once the alcohol has evaporated.

if it doesn't work, you're just right where you are now, no worse, no better,.....but I'd try it, harmless if it fails, and might save the day if it works.

we use this all the time at work when the protective paper or plastic masking becomes stuck on the plastic sheeting after annealing, or if some idiot leaves a $5000 stack of lexan out on the pallet in the sun after delivery.

let me know if it works, ok?

Serendipper 

Italian paint sucks.It's been like this for a looong time.






Thankfully Guerciotti painted their bikes in the states! My bike is a wet candy red.

bexley

I don't have a Ciocc, but a Marinoni. It was painted by Marinoni here in Montreal, but I hear that they were using Italian paint up until a certain point and this frame seems to back that up.

(But damn, the cherry red on this frame looks like no American paint I've seen.)

EuroJosh

Sorry, I got you confused with the OP, he's got the Ciocc.

Wotan

The OP asked that question in Feb 2006.

EuroJosh

Oops, miss that part.

Landgolier

The environmental thing may be responsible for the current issues, but my experience is that they found ways to make the paint crappy even back in the early 70's when that wasn't a factor.

j0e_bik3

thats because vintage italian paint was like boiled goat hoof or something,....check out a vintage benelli, or a ducati sometime

they used lacquers, and lacquers dry by evaporation, NOT a chemical reaction, like modern urethanes. furthermore they wont build very thick (like a acrylic enamel), so you have to shoot multiple coats (remember people talking about 30 "hand rubbed coats"?) and if you shoot a lacquer over chrome, your just ASKING for peeling, as even todays modern catylized paints have a tough time grabbing a shiny surface like that.

so if you have a vintage italian bike, I'd baby that paint job, keeping in mind that if you put a postage stamp on it, it might lift the paint off the frame when you remove it.

ciao

Landgolier

So my old Italian bike isn't vegan? Sweet!