A bike spray paint job that just went so wrong…

As you legends might have noticed, there were a few days I didn’t blog or vlog for this week. That’s because I was doing a bike spray and rebuild project, and it was just going awful, and I didn’t want to speak about it. I made the call to spray the legendary £80 Carerra Vulcan, and it just went crap, haha.

I thought it would be a great idea because I could make some great content for not only the channel but for some clients. Before we start, I have to say I have sprayed bikes before with cans, and I understand the process well. I started on Monday, and from the off, I knew it wouldn’t go well. I recorded on two cameras, and my proper pro camera’s SD card went wrong, and by the time I had stripped the bike, all I had was a bit of footage off my phone.

I sanded the bike down, washed it, and then applied the primer. At this point, it looked amazing, and I was pretty happy with the progress. A few hours after it had dried and I started applying the paint. When I went to buy the paint, I originally wanted a candy red, but they had nothing close, so I thought I'd roll the dice and try spraying chrome.

The paint went on very well, and I was so happy with how it looked. After I assumed it had dried, I started getting the lacquer on, and the color went completely matt silver. I thought maybe it wasn’t dry, so I sanded it down again, creating blemishes, and then sprayed chrome again, and it looked meh…

A day and a half left to dry, and I tried to lacquer it again to find the exact same issue. I was not happy, haha. I sanded again, ruining the finish further, and then applied more paint and didn’t lacquer it hoping it would be ok and wouldn’t scratch without any lacquer. I started to build it only to find everytime I touched it. It just looked worse and worse.

Halfway through the building process, I sanded again and sprayed and lacquered, thinking I will just have to be happy with the matt finish. After I was done, from far away, it looked amazing, but up close, it looked terrible. I’m glad I went through the process but never again will I spray chrome. What a nightmare! I have a gear cable left to put on, and then I'll probably end up riding it soon. I used the bike for some content today, and it does look cool, but I will forever remember the spraying process and how wrong it went, haha.

Speak Soon

Robbie