# BSA folding bike painting



## Rubber_Side_Down (May 31, 2015)

I'm working on restoring a BSA folding bicycle.  The restoration will require getting the bicycle repainted and so I want to make sure I repaint it as close as I can to how the factory originally painted it.  The bicycle is technically still in original paint (although much of it is missing).  I know this because there is a little left of the black arrow decal on the head tube and when it was disassembled, you can see the color inside the tubes matches the outside.  Instead of the black primer I have seen on other bikes, this bike uses a red primer.  

My questions;

Does anyone know how these bikes were originally painted at the factory?  

How were the bikes assembled prior to paint?  

Were the components painted individually and then assembled?

Based on what I can gather from the disassembly, it appears the components were painted separately and then assembled (but there are a couple things that contradict that, like the spacers between the brake caliper and the frame are painted on the outside but not the inside, yet there is green on the frame where those parts would have been if the brakes were on the frame during paint).  There is paint inside the bottom bracket, seat tube, and head tube for the frame but no overspray which makes me wonder if they were dipped.  However, if they were dipped, I would expect to see runs in the paint (which there are none).  The primer and painting on the steer tube of the fork is a little peculiar (see below).  




Where the primer ends and the paint ends is a solid edge, indicating it was not sprayed.  There are no brush marks indicating it was not hand painted and the edge is not a straight line indicating is what not dipped.  This is leaving me a bit perplexed.  Any ideas?  It is completely possible the inside of the seattube, head tube, steer tube, etc. were painted with rag wrapped around a wire, then the bike frame was sprayed but that seems a bit overkill for wartime production (actually painting down inside the seattube and head tube seems overkill but I appreciate the lack of internal rust because of that).  However, I also noted much of the hardware and several small parts were first black oxided, then primered red, then painted (also overkill for war production but maybe they really didn't want these parts to rust).

There is overspray on the brake caliper where the spring is coiled around the spacer holding the brake arm indicating that was spray painted. 

Any advice or ideas will be helpful.  Thank you in advance.


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## rideahiggins (Jun 1, 2015)

It could have been dip painted, that's how they used to paint some bikes. But today disassembled and spray painted is pretty much what you'll have to go with. Some of the surfaces you don't want painted that weren't painted originally can be taped off.


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## jpromo (Jun 1, 2015)

My first thought for what seems like overkill on the paint would be that they would have had to find the quickest way to do a large quantity. Looks wouldn't have been terribly important, just production speed. It's also quite damp in Europe, so it's possible rust was a concern, too--and these would have been expected to be outside in all sorts of weather. I'll have to go take a look at mine to compare now.


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## bikejunk (Jun 1, 2015)

looking at my original paint BSA folding bike I would say being that it was war production during a really hard fought war   quick fast get it out the door quality for a bike that wasn't meant to last even the decals are of a war quality and not to the usual standards just my 2 cents


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