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I have an all-carbon bike from Go Outdoors on which the paint seems to be fading unusually rapidly. It's maybe three years old. I've always stored it either indoors or under a cover.
The forks seem especially bad, but there is a little bit of fading on the frame as well. It's supposed to be bright fluorescent yellow, but it's starting to look the colour of your average CTC member's waterproof jacket.
What it's supposed to look like (and did when I got it):
What it looks like now:
Pic coming soon
It's just cosmetic, so I don't really care, but I'm interested to know if there's anything one can do to restore the paint. The kinds of products people use on cars and vintage bikes might not be appropriate for carbon, I suppose.
And does anyone have any idea why this happened in the first place? It's a cheap bike (for the spec) so maybe the manufacturer used cheap paint? I don't think I've been over-cleaning it.
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Fitted a brand new chain today. The old one was slipping every now and again and was past 0.75% wear. This coincided with the emergence of an annoying rattling noise. What could it be? A loose bolt? A slack spoke? The chain too tight or loose? Eventually traced the source to my Kryptonite lock, which hangs on the bike. Irritating. Solved with a few scraps of inner tube to damp the rattle.
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I'm not saying I'd want one, but I was just interested that such a thing exists.
A mixte mini-velo.
Called the DarkRock V-22. Not quite nice enough for the other minivelo thread though.
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Bought this 1990s mountain bike for the princely sum of £10 on Facebook Marketplace. It's a Raleigh Ascender (15-speed), made in Nottingham. Nothing remotely high end, but I wanted something with horizontal dropouts for a single speed project.
The front cantilever brake was missing and the rear tyre had a slow puncture. Got it home without dying too many times. It has a lovely reflective paint. The bike came with a lock, and as a sweet bonus: the key to that lock.
Installed a new set of cheap V-brakes, swapped the tyres from cheap 1.9" knobbies to 1.5" slicks, removed both derailleurs, chainset and freewheel. Removed shifters and worn out grips and replaced them with some (admittedly quite hard) cheap plastic ones.
Wanted to respace the rear axle using ultra precise measurements for optimal chainline, but the drive side cone and lock nut have seized. Didn't fancy getting a new wheel or axle so I just reinserted the axle backwards and redished the wheel the opposite way. By some fluke this results in a pretty good chainline at first glance.
Works well so far. The wheel hasn't collapsed from my amateur dishing efforts and the chain hasn't come off yet. The new chainset is a Sturmey Archer 42T and the freewheel (I didn't have the stomach for a fixed "suicide hub") is a 16T Diamondback effort. The chainring has a guard on both sides so am not too worried about dropping chains. I am using the old chain for now (on the verge of .75% wear) but will get a new one eventually. Pedals are the ones that came with my road bike.
Most important addition was a blue anodised bell. I also got a bargain on a rack, though it may be a challenge to get it to attach to the reflector bridge without interfering with the rear V-brake calipers.
Helpful explanation, thanks.