poppys bike rebuild

My Niece learnt to ride her bike this summer and has rapidly outgrown her first bike. I asked her what type of bike she would like and was told that black with flames was what she wanted. There is a bike that is black with flames available but its a boys frame and they seem expensive and where would the fun be in just buying one? A few weeks later a suitable bike appeared on ebay which i won and soon stripped down. i removed all of the old paint with my trusty wire brush on an angle grinder. I took extra care not to push it too hard as the frame is alluminium and i didnt want to gouge big lumps out of it. it did a really good job and didnt seem to remove any metal. 

Step 1:

I washed the frame and then took it indoors for a week to let it dry in the warm but also so that it would be warm when i got around to painting. I also stored the spray cans indoors for the same reason. On the chosen day i got an electric heater in the garage to take the chill off before hanging the frame from the rafters. Ive never painted an ally frame before and couldnt find any etching primer in my local car store. After a bit of thinking i decided to use grey oxide primer and i roughed the surface a bit with some emery cloth to aid adhesion. I gave it three coats of primer then three coats of matt black paint leaving it to dry above the convector heater ( i wouldnt normaly bother with the heater but the frost on the lawn hasnt budged today). I masked the bottom bracket holes with old bearing shells that i keep just for painting.