Oh boy was this bike a lot of work! By far the hardest out of all my projects so far. I went into this build highly determined to avoid all the mistakes I did last time, so I spent an ungodly amount of time wet-sanding the old paint down to the bare metal. The hard to reach areas I assaulted chemically with a paint stripper, which actually did a pretty good job of softening the old paint enough for me to get in there with a wire brush1. I made plenty of mistakes this time around too, of course (including having to re-do the entire fork at one point), but hey, that’s life.
This is the third Nakamura I rebuilt (and the second I post here), and I’m starting to develop a real affection for the brand2. No-nonsense Tange chromoly tubing, durable Shimano LX groupset, these bikes are practically begging for the /r/xbiking treatment!
So anyway, here are the before and after photos:
Before
After
I heard that Methylene Chloride used to be the bee’s knees back in the day, but sadly it’s been banned where I live (and pretty much everywhere else, I believe), so I had to resort to whatever I could get. ↩︎
At least for what it used to be. Now it’s just another shitty big-box store brand, which is a darn shame. ↩︎