I have 3 mid range Bianchis and they range in color from "sick room" green to a light Mylanta blue green. I've heard tales from several knowledgeable CR members that at one time Bianchi mixed their Celeste color every morning so there could have been subtle color differences from day to day.
Yesterday I took out my fire engine red 1983 Colnago Super for the first time in about 2 years. It's been hanging in a dark area during that time. In places it looked like it had the pox! Some of the perfectly matched touch-up spots had turned darker that the original paint!
My touch-up work probably discolored due to some chemical reaction. It still passes the 5 foot test so I'm just going to rub it out a little.
Someone in the commercial bicycle repainting or restoration business needs to protect themselves and their reputation from these kinds of unpredictable results. Same thing with car and motorcycle restorers.
I talked with several bike painters over the years who were reluctant to do any touch-up work even though I told them that I wouldn't hold them responsible for the results.
Maybe Cycleart could have fixed the dent in the top tube, masked it at the lugs, resprayed it and given the owner a small bottle of paint and let them do the touch-up work themselves.
I can understand Cycleart's position and their desire to uphold their reputation of high quality work. While "you can't make a silk purse out of a sow's ear", perhaps the folks at Cycleart could have done a more diplomatic job of explaining their position to their customer (who didn't want a silk purse to begin with).
Chas. Colerich Oakland, CA USA
donald gillies wrote:
> One other issue in retouching is the color changes that paints
> naturally exhibit over the years. Paints from the 1970's are
> especially unstable, as anyone with a Raleigh Team Pro knows about.
> Those bikes started out red, but by now, almost all the original
> finishes are orange and are still changing color.
>
> This is not a Raleigh/Ilkeston-specific problem, it affects ALL paints
> of the on-topic CR era. My roommate in college did a GM-funded
> undergrad research project in the EE department of MIT to predict
> paint color changes, because car makers of the mid-80's were forced to
> CHANGE touchup paint colors EVERY YEAR to match the never-constant
> paint colors of older cars. So a 1996 altima paint retouching can has
> a different formula in 2000, 2005, and 2010.
>
> Anyway, even with a perfectly invisible touchup, in a few years you
> could expect to see a bicycle filled with leopard spots, especially if
> it gets any UV exposure, as the 1970's paints, which were less stable,
> will change color and fade faster than the modern paint retouching
> colors.
>
> THis is just another reason to prefer a full repaint with accurate decals
> vs. a touchup of original paint, if the bike has no historic value.
>
> I agree however, that emotionally its hard to lose part of your old
> friend, i.e. the original paintjob on your original bike.
>
> - Don Gillies
> San Diego, CA, USA