The Luxus folding bike frame was in rough shape, and I could tell when I was tearing it down it was going to take a full respray. What I wasn't really prepared for was how much work simply cleaning it would be.
I'm not sure if it had been inside a smoker's home, or if it was just age and neglect, or whatever else the cause may be, but the frame was covered in a smelly, irritating funk. And of course I had to use some of the most noxious chemicals in the house to cut through the gunk, making it a doubly unpleasant job.
The grime is gone. The first round of sanding is complete. I've treated the frame with a
phosphoric acid based rust converter, which takes ferric oxide and chemically converts it to something paintable. The rust just turns black, and it's gone. This is great stuff for stopping rust in its tracks and prepping for paint. Just wear gloves, and a mask.
It's slow going and there's probably a fair bit of sanding left, but I'm starting to get it under control.
The rear half, right after the teardown, showing a lot of scrapes, rust and grime.
The rear half, after the first round of cleaning and light sanding. I still have to remove stickers and it needs a lot more sanding.
The fork was similar: a mix of broken-down decals, scraped paint and dirt.
With the decals removed, plus a lot of scrubbing and the initial sanding done, I brushed the entire frame with phosphoric-acid-based rust converter.
March 2021: Bad conditions and worse paint#
Successful spray painting really requires a pretty narrow temperature band. So of course I decided to spray paint the Luxus folding bike in the dead of winter. It went about as well as you'd expect.
Sportbike bits on the sawhorses getting the first round of paint.
Everything started well enough. A few unseasonably warm days in February gave me a good opportunity to get it sprayed, and I took it. I was cooking along and the frame was looking good when disaster struck: on the last coat the paint crinkled. I had violated a second rule of painting and mixed paints. They did not get along well.
So after spraying and wet-sanding multiple coats, I now had to strip it all back. Honestly, taking after it with a stripping wheel may have been overkill. It's possible I could have just sanded it back. But at this point I didn't trust my base paint anymore.
Taking all that new paint back off
Of course, by the time I'd stripped it all back the weather had turned. Painting outside was no longer an option.
Luckily the individual parts of the Luxus aren't very large, so I took a large plastic tub and improvised a small spray booth. I don't really recommend this. It's hard to get adequate ventilation, and there will be overspray. It worked okay for me, but really, you probably shouldn't try this at home.
The plastic tub
It was slow going, too, since I could only paint small portions at a time. Add in wet-sanding between coats and painting this little frame took a long, long time.
Wet sanding kept finding more defects, so I'd sand and spray, sand and spray, spray and sand.
Because I had sanded back the first respray attempt, and I had more defects than usual from working in the cramped corners, I wet-sanded pretty aggressively between coats to get the best possible surface. For paint I was using a Rustoleum performance enamel which worked well, especially coupled with a good (and compatible) primer. But still, if you want a really good coat, you've got to wet-sand and polish.
With enough elbow grease it started coming together, finally. At this point the painting and sanding are done, and I've gone over it with Turtle Wax Rubbing Compound and then polishing compound. I may give a few areas a bit more polishing, but it's looking good.
While my paint was drying I polished up the original chrome chainguard, and had a go at straightening a few wobbles in it. I'm no metalworker and it remains not-quite-straight. But also not bad. With it sitting in place you can finally start seeing it all come together.
The one upside to the long and painful painting process was that I had time to find a new bottom bracket, which was an adventure. You see, the bottom bracket on this thing was strange: smaller than an American BB as found on, say, a Schwinn cruiser, but larger than a normal square taper BB. And it was push fit. After a lot of digging I came to learn it's called a Thompson bottom bracket, and they're relatively common on Dutch city bikes. Who knew! So I made my best guesstimate on what the best spindle size would be to replace the cottered cranks and ordered one from Holland. And then I waited while it came all the way from Holland.
Almost there
While the bottom bracket was tricky, I got completely lucky stumbling across some reproduction Luxus stickers being offered by a European seller on eBay. While they weren't an exact match I was happy to even get anything in the ballpark and I thought they looked great on the bike, especially with the new red paint.
As I started putting it back together, the first thing to do was install a new Tange headset to connect the frame and fork together. The second thing was to renovate the frame clamp knob with some white Plasti-Dip.
At this point buffing and polishing was complete and a new Tange headset was in place, along with the headstock decal.
Polishing up the fenders took a mix of a rubber eraser wheel on the drill, fine steel wool, polishing compound, pliers and a hammer. And elbow grease. Still, they came up pretty nice.
May 2021: The wheels go round and round.#
By spring I had most of the rebuild under control. I was still trying to trim the Luxus' formidable weight by upgrading the original steel parts to aluminum where I could. The wheels in particular were a problem area. The originals weighed a ton and were completely shot anyway, so they had to be replaced. But as I learned most 20" wheels with coaster brakes have steel rims -- not an upgrade. I kept my eye on the market, though, and eventually found a cheap Schwinn with decent wheels.
Test-fitting the progress so far. The decals are on, and the frame clamp wheel has been plasti-dipped, so the frame looks complete-ish. I've got the rear fender polished and on, but not the front. And I've got a new alloy stem replacing the original steel unit, but some bullhorn handlebars did not stick around past the test fitting.
The original steel wheels were in terrible shape and incredibly heavy for 20-inch rims. This discarded kids' Schwinn was a cheap way to some half-decent aluminum rims. Because the Luxus had no mounts for rim brakes -- and cabling would have been a nightmare with the brakeaway frome -- I had to keep find aluminum wheels with a coaster brake. That was harder than you'd think.
With the wheels cleaned up and rebuilt, and a new pair of white tires, it was time for the second test fit. By this time I had the retro-style LED headlight on and had settled on some Velo Orange North Road bars.
And with a little more fiddling, that pretty much wrapped it up, just in time for camping season. It fits easily in our tiny camper!
However, when we took it camping, we learned it was missing a key accessory: a Fireball basket. So we remedied that.
September 2023#
After a few years of enjoying the Luxus, I found that I had too many bikes cluttering the garage and my interest in camping was waning. It was time for it to go. Luckily, JC, the nice fella that runs Kansas City's Bright Lights for Kids Charity Ride spotted it and had to have it. So the deal was done. And somewhere out there in the world there is a (staged) picture of me riding it across the finish line at the ride!
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