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That’s not something I had ever really thought about so I really appreciate the warning. A friend of mine had his super six stripped and clear coated and it looks awesome so I figured I’d do the same since I’m not a fan of the paint scheme.
My reason for stripping the frame was purely aesthetic though, the bike will be plenty light enough without the 100g I could potentially save by stripping it so I guess now I’ll just learn to live with it as is.
Is it possible to repaint carbon without first sanding it back?
clockwork_killa-
You can absolutely repaint without stripping the frame all the way back to bare carbon. The only reason to fully strip a frame back to carbon before repainting is to save circa 50g of weight (probably the most labour intensive/expensive way of trying to cut weight), or for the aesthetic of a clear coated bare carbon frame.
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Sanding it back to raw carbon is a bad idea. Especially on a hi mod frame. The lay up is extremely thin in places on Hi mod SS frames, and there is absolutely no way of removing the paint with running the risk of also removing critical layers of the carbon layup…. (No matter how talented the painter may claim to be).
A lot of painters that post these before and after paint removal weight claims seem to oblivious to the fact that half the claimed weight loss is actually carbon that’s been sanded away, as well as paint.
It winds me up seeing all the professional painters out there that are more than happy to do bare carbon finishes without making their customers fully aware that there is a not inconsiderable risk of frame failure involved.
It might be fine, it might fail catastrophically, but there is absolutely no way of knowing which you’ll get unless you have x-ray eyes.
Beware.