Here’s an update for the Windsor Carrera Sport vintage road bike we featured last month.

The frame has a beautiful new coat of paint, went through a thorough polish, and is ready for assembly. The decal set recently arrived from Velocals and will be affixed shortly before I build up the bike. The only substitution from the original parts is the handlebars. The old ones were in bad shape and slightly bent and these new ones are age-appropriate and in much better condition.

John Felch gives us a tease of his current project: refurbishing an old Windsor Carrera road bike
John Felch gives us a tease of his current project: refurbishing an old Windsor Carrera road bike

One thing I learned about painting with Rust-Oleum spray paint is to not apply a clear coat over recently painted surfaces. I did this on the hammered copper SR which is also being restored and the clear coat reacted with the still soft enamel of the newly-applied paint. The clear coat uses acetone as a solvent and this created alligator-like scaling to the paint. This was a major pain to fix, so learn from my mistake and don’t apply a clear coat over a newly painted surface! The clear works great on old hard paint and really makes a bike look like new if the paint underneath is in good, but faded condition, as evidenced by many of the bikes I have worked on lately.

Hope you all are enjoying this Windsor Carrera Sport project so far. Photos of the finished bike are coming soon.

Enjoy reading about our featured refurbished bicycles? You can read our past Featured Bicycles posts here. Featured bicycles are typically bikes we sell to cover parts for bikes we donate and operating expenses. You can browse our for-sale bikes here: https://shop.bikex.org