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

So, I bought this new in about 1987 and at the time it was a beautiful pearl white with chromovelato gold lacquered headlugs, forks and stays.

Some years later, I gave it to my brother in law who criminally took a rattle can to it and turned it into a 90's flouro monstrostity!

Anyway, I now have it back and am pondering on what to do with it. initially it was just going to get stuck on the turbo trainer (and it might still do that) but I've been picking away at the nasty paint and thinking that maybe I could just strip the paint off and polish up the chrome (it appears to be chromed all over) - but how to get the paint off?

I'm sat here looking at a can of Nitromors.....is that a good idea?

I'm not too bothered about the gold lacquer - I'm not sure there'll be much of that left - but getting it back to chrome and polishing it up might be nice, even if there's a bit of corrosion here and there

Any thoughts??

1 Attachment

Would having it shotblasted remove the chrome aswell, or is that an option?

Have your brother-in-law shotblasted.

@Five-Hats - that's a very good point!

But I would stick to chemicals on the bike, to get the paint off without damaging the chrome underneath.

OK so here's some more "before" photos......I wish I'd taken one of it built up so you could see the full decrepit state of it!

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.

It looks pretty good given the nasty state I got it back in.......

Now to find a suitable seatpost - 27.2 won't fit so suspect I need 27.0 - then I've got a nice old Turbomatic 2 in yellow to go on there -

I've ridden it up the road and back without a saddle and it rides lovely - will be better with a seatpost and saddle though!!

Like where this is going.

I wouldn't have expected to see any brazing if the frame was fully chromed. Can you braze chromed tubes?

@oblivious - that's not braze, it's what's left of the gold lacquer - I could have spent a few more hours removing it but to be fair I thought it looked quite nice in a "ratty but shiny" sort of way so decided to leave it......and it goes nicely with the gold Hammerite!

That looks pretty good. Nice find.

Here it is, finally finished off with the seatpost and Turbomatic 2 - rides really nice, even if the wheels could really do with respoking (they run fine but the spokes look terrible!)