Trying to Polish an Aluminum Vintage Mountain Bike Frame - 1997 Marin Indian Fire Trail

[@davidsaxby5400]

Nice quality paint job and a great colour. Looking forward seeing the build.

[@robertmcfadyen9156]

I managed to get a GT STS from 1996 right in 2003 , with wet and dry paper , sequential grades and finally Autosol Alusol with a great outcome . After the clear over and low bake , it looked stellar .

[@jeffk2481]

I like the orange

[@DePuesshop]

Me too! It tuned out surprisingly nice. The build is even better.

[@jeffk2481]

@DePuesshop I got a bug up my butt over giving my Marin a smoked chrome frame

[@DePuesshop]

@@jeffk2481 sounds like a great idea!

[@jaychu2691]

I have two older indian fire trails with the square chain stays, they are beautiful, 1 has a rigid front fork the other has a rockshox mag 21.

[@evanfedder7521]

Absolutely love these videos!! As someone with intermediate bike knowledge I love it when videos don't try to make things to simple. Also I really like the commentary whenever it is included. Keep up the video output!

[@ridethroughlifertl]

I polish aluminum often, and it's a lengthy process if you want a mirror finish. I use a dremel tool with a set of progressively finer scotch-brite-style abrasives. I also have the red scotch-brite pads, as well as some tan [it's extremely course, and I hardly ever use it]. Once I work up through all the grits of the scotch-brite bits, I'll switch to 600-1000 grit wet/dry sandpaper with WD-40. Once that is done, I'll use Autosol and if everything was done correctly, it should be a mirror by then. You can keep repeating with Autosol for better and better reflective quality, but from afar you can't tell much difference between one and four applications. I'm usually doing motorcycle parts, but I've done some bicycle stems also. Like a cheap, no-brand, matte black one I bought, stripped the paint off, and polished up to a satin finish. For the polishing stage, you can also use Meguire's mag wheel polish, which is slightly more abrasive than Autosol. On bare aluminum, you want to seal it with several coats of 2K clearcoat. You probably know most of all of that, but I figured I'd say it so someone else might learn.

[@DePuesshop]

I definitely learned a lot from your comment!! Thank you!! The biggest ingredient that I couldn't find was patience! Haha!

[@tahoward818]

The paint on my wife’s 1987 Schwinn Sierra was looking pretty ratty, plus we didn’t much care for the Blue, yellow and pink Miami Vice color scheme. Fortunately, the 4130 frame was chrome underneath and the paint came off easily with stripper. The chrome polished up nicely, and new Schwinn stickers from Velocals (still sorry they went out of business) made the bike look pretty sharp. I replaced most of the low-quality Exage groupset on this bike, and it rides great. That Orange paint job looks really good.

[@romemancer7905]

You can use a bench top buff pad and buffing chalk for aluminum.. makes the job so much easier ! and fine grit wet or dry sandpaper first to take of the factory coating..cheers.

[@DePuesshop]

Great advice! I will look into that next time!

[@celestialroad]

i've had good results soaking parts and chromoly frames in warm water and citric acid, then using #0000 steel wool to polish off rust.

[@markreed2614]

Go Green!

[@DePuesshop]

Go White!

[@mikegeiger6420]

#1🎉