Alan, the puppy killer, and me.

Back in February, I went to a cycle jumble at the 'Ciclo-officina di Modena'.
For 5 euros i came home with two racks and this.
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As you can see it's an Alan cyclo-cross frame, and as you can imagine it has a rather sorry story to tell.
The story goes that it somehow fell into the hands of a keen young hipster/puppykiller who had read about this 'new' fixed wheel craze and wanted to create his very own 'bici scatto fisso'.
Nothing wrong with that, however he felt the urge to do this........
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thus depriving the frame of the possibility of returning it to its real use as a cyclocross bike.

The hipster/puppykiller soon lost interest in the project and left it at the ciclo-officina. A short while later, he discovered that bike polo was the new black, and set about converting the Alan for bike polo, adding a pair of steel hybrid forks and coating it in desert camo gaffer tape in the process.

Once again the project was never completed and the frame was abandoned at the officina where discerning members would look at it and discuss the owner's folly.

His loss was my gain and it's now sitting in my shed.

First I contacted ALAN for advice about the brake bosses. They told me that I needed to replace the rear triangle. I took it to my local frame builder, who said they could weld new ones if the tubes were made from 7000 series aluminum. I contacted ALAN again who confirmed that the tubes were indeed made form 7000 aluminum.

So i went off to the frame builder and now looks like this.
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Any ideas what to do about the paint? What's the best way of stripping the paint from an ALAN?

The plan is to turn into a cyclo-cross bike, with gears.
The advantage of this project is that whatever I do, it will be an improvement.

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