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‘61 Radiant Green Corvette 5 speed Rehab

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Seat spring de-rusting did not go as well as hoped. There is either too much corrosion or not enough chrome left. The painted seat bracket turned out ok, that will be easily painted, but I think if I want to save the seat, I’ll need to get new springs and crash bar, or just live with it.

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Sprocket and crank went a bit better. Pedals are better, but here again, I think there is just too much chrome lost on some areas to bring them back. Another thing I’ll have to live with or buy replacements.
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Well, here is an unexpected surprise I noticed today. Looks like this bike took a side hit:
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Yikes, not sure what to do about that! This is looking like I got a bad deal on this bike. This was never mentioned by the seller. No idea how to straighten that. Will take the frame to the LBS to see if they can do anything. :(
 
Head mechanic at LBS was able to straighten the frame stay. Just a bit of an indentation where the hit occurred remains. Not bad.
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Next up is cleaning the chain and deraileaur.

I’m going to leave working on the seat until much later. I think that will be a separate project that will need new springs.

Really undecided about what to do with the frame paint. There are a lot of rust spots as can be seen in the closeup picture above. Would prefer not to repaint, and probably won’t until I get the whole thing reassembled and see what the complete bike looks like. Anyone have opinions to share?
 
Looks like your LBS did a nice job on the cantilever bar!
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I'm not sure what I would do with the paint. These candy colors are a pain sometimes because the rust is not all the way thru to the surface of the paint but it can be seen it underneath the color coat. Can't go wrong with cleaning it up first and then decide if it needs more help. I had a black 61 that was a rusted up mess so a repaint was a definite. Rusty frame after the paint was removed with chemicals.

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The Tiger I have pictured in post #9 had similar paint issues tho this radiant green Corvette. Not quite as bad, but still did not look pretty. I got the bike in a trade and cost was around $60. Since that bike is not uncommon and I wanted to use it as a rider, I decided to try "touching up" the paint. Found a standard automotive paint that was a very close match to the radiant blue of the bike, not identical, but very close. This was a total overhaul, so I had everything off the frame. After cleaning the frame, I started doing touchup, and it was looking good. I decided a lite overspray of the whole frame would look really good. So, I masked off all of the decals, and then did a lite overspray. Bad areas got more coats. Also did a little bit of touchup in select areas of the forks and chain guard. The result was excellent. You have to be withing inches of the decals to see the slight difference in the shade of blue between the over painted area and the original areas near the decals.

For the radiant green I was thinking something similar. If I could find a paint match, my thought was to smooth out the paint surface with 0000 steel wool. Not sure decals are worth saving on this frame, so I would probably go right over those, but mask off the head badge. Then do light over spray coats and see how it goes. The idea would be to just make all of those rust blotches go away.

The alternative is to give the bike a good cleaning and wax, and leave as is. I think from a distance it will look just fine, but close up there are a lot of warts. The fenders are in great shape with no dents, so that will be a bit of a contrast.
 
In a thread on the Schwinn forums several years ago somebody showed pics of a bike that he had repainted with Testors #1601 Emerald Green. He said the paint was a very close match to Schwinn's Radiant Green, and it looked so in the pics.
 
I’m in a similar position with a campus green Fastback right now. Since the chrome didn’t clean up all that well and the paint isn’t either, at least they match.
Putting crummy chrome parts on a repainted frame sounds like a sore thumb waiting to happen.
 
Thanks for the advice on Testor's. I found several threads that mention it. GT also mentioned Dupli-Colors Metalcast Green in a CABE thread, though I don't think I found any threads where someone actually used that color. I'm really in the middle on the paint condition. A few feet away, it does not look too bad. It's closer up that the warts become very apparent. I think it's going to come down to how the complete bike looks once I get everything cleaned up and assembled, which likely won't be before summer. Depends on how much night/weekend time I have and garage temperature!
 
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