# Flamboyant Red touch up paint?



## dirtman (Mar 31, 2021)

Does anyone know a good match for Schwinn Flamboyant red? 
Just put this together and it could use some paint touch up. 



1965 Racer

This one came to me with a stuck seat post that someone had cut off flush. 
The bike was completely apart in boxes, the chrome is 95% perfect, its still got its original tires.
The saddle was tagged for this bike, its marked Schwinn Approved on the back. 
There's also a same year Breeze coaster brake as well but in Violet. 
I'm not sure if I'll bother putting any ladies frames together, I'll likely just save the parts for another men's 
frame down the road.


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## Freqman1 (Mar 31, 2021)

I'm thinking that saddle is not correct for this bike-or is that a cover? Touching up these types of colors is nearly impossible without it being noticeable. I've seen more than a few bikes touched up that would have looked better left alone. V/r Shawn


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## westwildcats (Mar 31, 2021)

Believe you can get a touch-up bottle on ebay.  Seller is gwlw 7272.  The downside is, it isn't cheap.


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## GTs58 (Mar 31, 2021)

westwildcats said:


> Believe you can get a touch-up bottle on ebay.  Seller is gwlw 7272.  The downside is, it isn't cheap.



 Chances of that matching the old paint would be a miracle.


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## Freqman1 (Apr 1, 2021)

Here is the link https://www.ebay.com/itm/FLAMBOYANT...INGRAY-Bicycle/362037726764?campid=5335809022


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## Freqman1 (Apr 1, 2021)

Like I said you could spend the $25 and an hour of time and wind up making the bike look worse. Something to consider. V/r Shawn


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## Eric Amlie (Apr 1, 2021)

From personal observation it seems that Flamboyant Red is particularly susceptible to fading.
I have a Flamboyant Red '63 Sierra that looks a lot like Terra Cotta after all these years, so as GTs58 said above, matching the faded to some degree old paint, with new paint, is going to be darn near impossible.


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## dirtman (Apr 1, 2021)

The saddle says 'Schwinn Approved' on the back, I think it may have been sold as an accessory back in the day. I have a half dozen of these 60's lightweights here and every one has white grips and a white saddle or black grips and a black saddle. Only two 70's model Speedsters have white/green S saddles. 
I've seen these saddles before, I seem to remember them on the shelf at the old Schwinn dealer back in the day. A buddy of mine has a tandem with a pair of them on it too. I thought the bars looked wrong compared to the catalog pics too but they're marked Schwinn '65 under the clamp, There's a matching set of all these parts with the violet ladies model that was boxed with it.
When I got this bike, like a few others, it was apart in boxes, the wheels, fenders, saddle, a new seat post, the bars, etc were all tagged with its serial number. The original seat post was sawed off flush in the frame with about 8" of post stuck inside. I had seen that way back when I got it and had plugged the seat tube at the bottom and filled it with some light oil and left it hang on the wall. When I dug it out last week, I was able to work the seat post out of the frame using a slide hammer and long rod hooked underneath. It came out fairly easily. 
There is a red/white S saddle in the lot but its the flatter, wider version that's just got vinyl over a tin pan with two short springs, with a grab rail. It looked like it would be better off on a middleweight than this bike.

The paint isn't so much faded as it is turned dark in spots with lots of old touch up spots that someone did with a solid red. The downtube 'Schwinn' decal is gone or painted over, all the remains on the frame is the headbadge and a round seat tube decal.
The bike is in no way worth spending $80 on touch up paint, I figured someone may have known a good close match color wise in something from the auto parts store.  If not, it's staying as it is. The pedals are newer, I didn't get around to digging up a set of older pedals, they were in the box with the rest of the parts so I used them for now. 

I took it for a ride this morning and it rides great but its small for me, I prefer my 24" frame Speedster over this bike because of size. All in all I figured it looks okay for being over 55 years old and dug out of some old guys basement. There's no telling how long that guy had this stuff in boxes there, its been sitting in my basement for the better part of a decade, along with a few dozen others.


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## 1motime (Apr 1, 2021)

If someone has already touched up with the wrong color you can't make it much worse.  Testors make a color that is sort of close.  Think it is Reflector Red.
Used for painting model car taillights.  Cheap and good paint.  Any good hobby shop or Michael's should have it stock


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## dirtman (Apr 1, 2021)

Years ago we used to be able to go to Pep Boys or one of the auto parts stores and match up something at the Duplicolor display but none of the local stores have that any more. Now there's a dozen or so choices in black, gray and white and 10 different primers. I haven't seen Testor's paint in a long time, I think the last time I bought Testor's was at Two Guy's Department store in the 80's. There's a Michaels here but I think they only have the little tiny bottles for like $5 each. 
The car paint that comes to mind was for a Ford, Garnet red metallic is what I seem to remember it being called, it was an early 80's color but the auto parts store don't carry older paint colors if they carry anything at all. The paint shop wants $160 for a quart of red. So that's not an option. If I was going to go through all that I'd just strip the thing down and do a full repaint with an aluminum basecoat and just get the semi clear red mixed to match. I'm just not putting all that into a run of the mill 65 Racer. If it were a middleweight or balloon tire, maybe but the repaint would far surpass just finding a super clean original bike in the first place. There's been a minty clean one for sale for months online for $100 with no takers, that would be far cheaper than repainting this one. 
My limit would be $20 to fix the paint, if I could find a can or two of something close to touch up and fade to match I'd do it but any more and its best left alone. 

Most bikes I've run across that have had spray paint on them turned out to be far better after I stripped off the spray paint, but this isn't likely one of them. I removed the spray paint around the headbadge, the forks, chainguard, and seat post but can see lots of missing paint, my take on it was that they painted the top and down tubes for preservation due to lack of paint. 
What's on there now is okay, just not ideal, but it does shine and from distance look okay. If I were to stumble on the decals cheap, and if I had a few bikes the same color that needed repainting, maybe I'd go get the paint, but for one bike its not worth all the work to do a proper repaint. 
The few I did years ago were when you could still go to the dealer and buy all the decals and paint for the bike for less than a $20 bill.  I've got two tall cans of Campus Green here from the dealer back in the day with $4.99 price tags on them. Plus a receipt taped to the can with the cost of a set of Typhoon decals for $8, and a new headbadge for $3. I had intended to change the color on a Typhoon way back when but didn't, I had painted it the original red and never used the green. I also never used the decals on the bike, I had a buddy who used to do silk screening where he worked, and he copied the decals to make silk screens for the bike. I wish I knew what happened to those screens, if they'd even still be any good all these years later. 
He said what they did was to scan the oem decals, then they cut black vinyl copies, which were used to develop the silk screens. 
The screen blocking agent was something that didn't last long, it would break down over time so chances are it would have to be remade even if I did still have them but it was by far the right way to do the 'decals' on the bike. After screening on the white lettering I shot the whole thing in 2k clear. It was likely better than when new. It had brand new factory fenders, a new saddle, two new Westwind tires, and two new red grips.
I'd likely still have that bike but an ex sold it at a yard sale while I was at work many years ago. One of the many reasons why she became an ex.  I got home one day and found she had a yard sale and had sold off half the stuff in the garage to make room for her exercise equipment she had bought. I lost a rototiller, two bikes, a vintage minibike, some model trains, four fishing rods, and anything else she could sell fast. A month later I sold off the exercise equipment and bought a motorcycle and bass boat. I then traded her in soon after for a newer model that didn't need 'exercise equipment'.


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