TO PAINT OR NOT - SUMMARY

The urge to repaint a vintage bicycle will be strong, just about every time, and with every bicycle found.  But one should, initially at least, resist that urge to paint and focus on what is ultimately best for the bicycle and one's pocket book.

The best advice, one can offer, is to build and ride the vintage bicycle before worrying about cosmetic repair.  Protect bare metal from oxidation, clean and wax the rest, but leave it at that, for the time being.  Ride the bicycle, for a while, and then consider what needs to be done, should be done and should not be done!

Repainting destroys originality!  Once gone, the original paint/art can never be regained.  Never!  Bicycles that have been repainted are, often times, worth less, in the dollars and cents sense, than those bikes that carry on sporting their original cosmetics, patinas of age, and all.

Replacing paint and art, on a bicycle, will set the owner back between a hundred and a thousand dollars, every time.  The hundred dollar paint job may or may not have that quality look, but it will be miserably fragile, when compared to the original factory issued coat of paint or that emerging from a professional painter's shop.

Repainting a bicycle destroys credibility!  The average person who wants a high end, exotic road bicycle from the past also wants to be sure that he, or she, is getting an exotic road bicycle from the past.  Not something similar with a fresh coat of paint on it.  And make no mistake about it, exotic this or thats do show up and, sometimes, are neither this or that.  It is hard to fake original and nearly impossible to prove what original was to begin with.  It all sounds confusing but it boils down to one thing.  At the end of the day, can anyone prove that this 1971 Masi Gran Criterium it actually a 1971 Masi?

Repainting, often times, is just the beginning of the cash outlay.  Chrome plating, sporting its own patina of age, will look out of place against fresh paint and art.  So too, will scuffed up and or otherwise damaged components.  A time worn leather saddle, will look as if from another world, when place along side the shine and glow of new cosmetics.

There are options to a full repaint, and those include paint and art touch up or leaving the finish exactly "as found".  Needless to say, touch up and don't do nothin cost considerably less than a full paint job.  Also, as often as not, touch up will better allow all of the patinas of age, those of paint, art, chrome plating and componentry to match far more closely.

But, in the end, it is always the present owner of the bicycle who must choose the path to follow.  To paint or not to paint?  And interesting, even frustrating, question that will present itself, time after time.  Even to those who are lucky enough to claim some expertise regarding the situation.