Tried to turn a fixie bike I had laying around into some cool Si-Fi art to hang in my back yard.

Supplies

Lots of spray paint, masking tape and Xacto knife.

Step 1: Tron Paint Job on a Fixie Bike

I'm calling this one a disaster. I'm writing this up so that others that want to pursue custom paint jobs can learn from my failure or laugh because they already knew better.

I saw a cool picture of a fixie bike with a ultra-cool Tron like paint job on it. I had a bike that I built from pieces from other bike projects and since no one wanted to buy it on Craigslist after a few weeks I decided to try to duplicate as best I could the paint job. All done with spray paint. I flip bicycles on Craigslist all the time and spray paint them as necessary to clean them up.

I figured the end project I would hang up in my back yard as yard art.

Step 2: Break Down the Bike, Sand It, Prime It to Get Ready to Paint

So I'm painting the wheels, frame & fork with a mix of Blue and Black.

I don't sand to bare metal. I sand enough to scuff the existing paint up so that the primer will stick. Frame, fork pretty easy. The wheels - are a massive pain to do. BTW, painting spoked bike wheels is a hack at best, but if done correctly looks great from 2-3 feet distance or longer.

So after a couple of hours of sanding and masking where I didn't want paint (bottom bracket, head tube, axles and sprocket threads on the rims) I was ready to paint.

Used rattle can grey primer to paint all of the pieces first. Once painted. I lightly - with 400 grit sand paper - scuffed the primer-ed parts - I want to get off any overspray or rough patches from priming.

Step 3: Paint the Bike Fluorescent Blue First

So here's where things went sideways.

So the idea here is that the bike will be painted blue first, then I'll lay down masking tape over the parts of the bike I want to stay blue. Then I'll paint the bike black - painting over the masked areas as well, then when I remove the tape the blue lines will be visible. Hope that makes sense. To do it the other way - paint the bike black then mask off the areas I want to paint blue - well painting blue on top of black - the true color of the blue won't show up.

Anyway - since I wanted 'fluorescent blue' - Krylon is the one one that sells the spray paint. Usually a can of Krylon paint ls like 8 bucks tops at Home Depot but they didn't sell this color. I had to go to Amazon to find it at a stupid expensive price of $17.00 a can! Like 3X what it should be.

As I was trying to paint the expensive Krylon Fluoresent Blue paint on the bike I realized the paint wasn't going on even. Blotchly at best. Sometimes coming out like dust Even after painting more than once. Just a real mess. I tried the two other cans and same thing. I went back and looked at the reviews for this paint and there were a substantial amount of reviews of people saying the same thing - that the paint was crap! Ugggggg. One review said it looked better when painted on top of white instead of primer gray. Soooo, the frame was already painted - poorly - blue but the fork wasn't. I painted the fork white and the paint did go on more consistently. What a mess. Turns out there was a color at home depot that was closer & cheaper - and brighter that would of been a better choice. Oh well.

Step 4: Masking Off the Pattern on the Frame

I had an idea from other pictures what I wanted to do. I decided that the thinner lines would be 1/4" thick since I had a couple of roles of 1/4" masking tape and the thicker lines would be 1/2" thick using a 1/2" wide roll of tape. So I started out laying out a pattern. Wasn't easy, since the 1/2" tape was blue and the bike was almost the same color. After spending an hour or two each day for a couple of days I had the frame complete. I was worried on some of the curves and intersections the tape would life and black would seep under when I painted but best I could do was re-check before painting.

I also had the issue when I cut the tape on the frame I made a cut line into the blue that would show up. Very unprofessional. But at this point I figured I just have to finish this thing and you wouldn't be able to see it when it was hanging on the wall.

Step 5: Masking of the Pattern on the Wheels

Well - I thought masking the frame was difficult, masking the wheels was 10x harder!

I decided since I had two wheels and two sides, I would try 4 different patterns on the rims. And I would put the two coolest ones that would show when it hung on the wall. A 50/50, half blue, half black was easy - simple mask.

I decided to do a fancy count from 1 to 10 on one of the wheels using a type of binary pattern. Oh man, this was a lot of work. I measured the wheel diameter at various places - top of the rim and bottom of rim (above spoke holes) as my work area. Then when about this complicated pattern. After a couple of hours over a couple of days I had the pattern down that I wanted.

Now the issue is - how to transfer that pattern to the rim. Remember we have to do this backwards - mask the blue parts and leave the rest to be black.

I was able to snip sections of the wheel into 8 1/2 x 11 sized so I could print them life sized on the printer then went about cutting out the pattern and laying it on the rim. This took hours to do - and quit a big masking tape mess on the floor.

After laying the complex pattern on one side I did a simpler pattern on a 2nd side and punted and did a 50/50 half blue half black on the front rim.

Step 6: Paint the Parts Black

After everything was masked off, I painted the frame, fork & wheels black.

The fancy 'Fluoresent' blue barely contrasts with the black. And the matt black I chose didn't make things pop.

So after everything was painted I decided to paint the whole thing again with a gloss clear to try to make the blue pop better. It added a little to it. Just a little.

Step 7: Put It Back Together

I was able to find some cool tires that matched the look I was going for and some interesting tape for the bars.

I did a re-assembly of the bike.

Step 8: Hanging the Bike on the Wall, Throw Some LEDs on It

I picked up some picture hanging clear - like fishing line - kit to hang the bike under the eves of the roof. The line was 35lbs test so I figured it could hold a 25 lb bike. It does work. But I'm always worried its just gonna fail one day.

So not shown here are some LEDs I zip tied to the back of the frame. Turns out I had to run the wire for the LEDs up the hanging wire so I went from invisible wires holding the bike to one side with the LED power cord snaking up the side.

The LEDs really showed poorly when turned on at night. What I need is a LED spot light from above that would paint the bike in a blue light.

Step 9: I'm Done With It

Once the bike was hung up and the LEDs on it. We decided it didn't go with the back yard's look. And the blue paint didn't contrast enough against the black. So I took it off the wall and now it sets in the garage.

So I took a bike I couldn't sell for a $130 bucks, added at least $70 into it and now I have a $200 buck bike nobody wants.

Step 10: Lessons Learned

What Went Right

I stuck to a losing project until it was done

My masking tape skills greatly improved!

What Did I learn

Using a vinyl cutter (which I don't own because they are not cheap) would of been the way to go. I could of cut the patterns out and stuck them to the black frame.

Learned a great respect for those professionals that can hand paint jobs like this.

Think through a project more before leaping off the cliff to make it. If I would of thought through all of the steps in this I'm sure I would of passed on making it.

What when wrong

The blue paint selection really messed things up. Using a lighter (and cheaper) baby blue paint would of made this project 100% better.

Should of taken into consideration that a SiFi Tron looking bike was never gonna look good hanging in the back yard.