How To Paint A Bike

Whether you are a bike fanatic, a daily rider or just a bike owner, you want your bike to not only preform great but look great as well. Over time your paint will wear down, peel, chip and rust, and at some point you will need to repaint it. Repainting your bike doesn't have to be a expensive process, it can cost as little as 4$ and consume as little as an hour of your life.  


 The bike I will be painting is a BMX cruiser I bought off craigslist for one hundred dollars. The parts were in extraordinary condition, but the paint job just wasn't up to par. I decided I would paint it and document my process, make an instructable and hopefully some of you out there with poorly painted bikes can give them a "makeover".

Step 1 Tools

Before you start you should have all the tools needed to disassemble your bike. That includes

For disassembly:

- Hex Keys (Allen Keys)
- Wrench
- Screw Driver
- Chain removal tool

For Painting:

- Sand Paper 
- Spray Paint
- Tape

Comments

[metrometro]

For better durability, add some clearcoat to that puppy after the paint is dry. Wait 3 days between last coat of paint and first coat of clear to prevent compatibility issues between drying speeds.

[tmiranda]

You can also use a heat gun or hair dryer to remove the hard to peel stickers. just heat them up and peel.

[Hallmar]

Nice instructuble for sure it will help me alot because i'll be painting 2 bicycle frames and fork. Thanks for sharing this tips.

[apaterson1]

instead of sand paper, i whetted some wet-n-dry and rubbed it alot quiker

[fastback570]

if the paint is nice and simply don't like the color there is NO reason to sand it with coarse sand paper.  in the automotive ind. we scuff using 3-m scotch-brite pads. only only need to break the shiney gloss for paint to stick.  once yuo have the a nice scuffed surface the most major step would be to use a cleaner (prefer PPG aycli-clean or other cleaner) to remove any oils and dirt or you will have fisheyes or paint falling off quickly.

[Hellchild]

what kind of grips are those?

[ANGEL TRTISTAN]

 WHAT TYPE OF BIKE IS THAT????

[Hellchild]

WHY DO YOU HAVE TO YELL?

[TSC]

Nice!!!

[frankito2009]

that method to paint is cool and result 100percent

[sharlston]

what chain is that it looks like a half link slink gusset same as mine

[ricardjorg]

you should have painted something on the bike beside the main color.. it looks like it lacks something.. you draw something on Inkscape, print on label paper, put tape around the areas you're going to paint and then stick the print there and cut out the areas to paint with an x-acto and paint with the second color. then get all the tape out, let dry and then aply the laqueur.. it would look awesome with some white or bright green

[~BenDover~]

Thanks for the idea, I have added new stickers on the bike and it has alot of new parts. I might add a pic later

[tj1796]

hay I like the way A paint your bike I do the same thing when I paint mine but when I do I sum time leave the sticker on to have sum designs on the bike I'm geting ready to paint my hyper bmx bike I just got but its going to be fun cuz I like to paint bikes

[Yerboogieman]

Is that a Cruiser?

[~BenDover~]

Yeah, not sure on what brand though.

[lemonie]

It looks like the sanding was worth it - nice looking finish. L

[~BenDover~]

I used a flat black paint, the photo does not show the color well but it looks great.

[lemonie]

I can see it's matt, sometimes it doesn't photograph too well, but It looks fine. L