Barring any "Oops! Forgot that--should get that part," sections of touching up to do, I am completely done with my paint work. Cleaned, compounded, magic eraser-ed, waxed, touched up (plus a clear coat brushing on). There was a LOT to do, and it took me a bit longer than I had planned, but it looks immensely better than it did to begin with. A "unified front" of color. The yellow paint brings me joy to see it. The 620 and 720 are awesome, beautiful looking bikes, but this 420 is just plain cheerful and enthusiastic.
And what makes me even more excited about this is the Shimano R2000 Claris groupset that is as close to complete as it'll get for this bike (thanks to standard reach caliper needs). I had picked up a gloss black Shimano non-groupset crankset for a great price after bemoaning the $80+ prices for R2000 cranksets, and was all set to use it, reluctantly, due to black on yellow looking "basic," but an essentially new R2000 crankset (and BB!) popped up on CL (thanks, ctak) in Portland, and after staring at it for a few days, I decided to reach out and ask if the owner would be open to shipping as I was well north of him. Turns out he was going to south of Seattle the next morning (so, today) and that he'd bring the crankset along if I wanted. I said I'd meet anywhere he'd want and thank you so much. I suppose I have never been more excited for a near 1,100g crankset for a low-end groupset, let alone a low-end groupset, but here I am, chopping my way through an hour and a half of rain-riddled commuter traffic and crashed semi trucks on the return drive home (the out drive was a scant 35 minutes or so--great time) with my bounty for a better deal than I could have hoped for given things. And the dark grey looks
so good next to the yellow paint. The headset's arrival and a wheelset purchase will kick the rebuilding off in ernest.
For now, some head badge work. I think I want to hold off on full frameset photos until I have the headset installed. We'll see.
Head tube is 211mm long, and the pieces of blue tape bracket the 50.5mm tall head badge's bounds. These head badges are stamped (thin) metal, and use foam with adhesive on both sides to mount the badge to the head tube. The old stuff was peeling. Some door sealer tape does the trick, lining the thin strips next to each other and trimming the excess. The foam takes up any "slack" or gap in the stamping, which is why it is used, at least as far as I could see. The new tape is about 2x thicker than the old, but 1) I was given it to use 2) who knows if there is thinner tape easily available, so 3) this was a very fast method as well as repeatable.
Some dedicated Sharpie marker use cleaned up the 'distressed' look logo nicely.
