1980's Columbus SL Benotto - formerly gold chromovelato - what to do??

I decided to have a bash at paint removal with Nitromors but got nowhere fast so instead I took it to my local powdercoaters to see what they could do.

They had a look and decided that the best bet was chemical treatment, to try and save the chrome, so I left it with them 24 hours......

When I collected it, I was a bit disappointed because it looked awful - the beautiful clean fully gold chromovelato was not what I found! The reality was that the factory had treated the frame to a key primer coat, and the chamicals hadn't got rid of that, but had removed the nasty green/yellow and the original pearl white underneath it, but had left the remnants of a nasty grey primer coat.

Sadly I didn't take a picture of it in that state!

Anyway, the powdercoaters said "have a go with wet n dry and see how you get on" - so off home and some elbow grease later.......

And it started to look a lot better.....I couldn't save the gold lacquer obviously, but the frame was indeed fully chromed and most of it was ok, although some rust (only to the chrome) was pretty evident around the BB and fork crown.

Once I'd got it all cleaned up as best I could, I decided the best thing to do with the crusty crown and BB was to Kurust it and then cover with paint - I opted for some brush applied gold Hammerite - it actually looks pretty good in the flesh (not so great on the pics!)

Started the build pretty much immediately, which is a mix of Stronglight cranks (with new 36-48 rings), and a mainly Shimano 1055 groupset, plus new Nitto bars with a neat System X black Cinelli 1A copy stem, and an old Campag record headset. All cables and bar tape are new, obviously.

The wheels are pretty awful Exage on some Rigida semi-aero rims - they need a true and the spokes are beyond polishing unfortunately, but I shoved some 25mm GP4000's on there so they'll roll well enough.