Bicycle Clean up
 

hi
I'm looking for some help in getting my little girls newly acquired secondhand bike cleaned up. I got for €5 in a charity shop and its perfect except it has obviously been out in a garden for a year.
I tried cillit bang but the white is just not coming back from the colour 'dirty'. So my clever 3 year old said she wants it to be red -
my questions are:
can I spray the whole bike: plastic and metal with the same type of paint ? If not how will i cover the bits I don't want sprayed?
Will completely red look a bit crap?
There are bits of rust on the spoke-ends - how to I clean that up without scraping the bike?

This is my first project - all help appreciated - sorry if the questions are dumb! Any other suggestions also welcome
thanks
Teeny

baby oil is really good for cleaning off rust, just rub it on. Hope someone else can offer advice on the paint. Good luck with it

Try CIF on the plastic bits and give them a good scrub. Lemon juice would be a good bet for brightening the plastic up.
A tin of WD40 will really help you with elbow grease and getting rid of the rust and would be ideal for the spokes, use it with a piece of wire wool or an old brillo soap pad. Make sure to use gloves as you don't want rust and old metal getting up under your nails etc.
You need to use masking tape to cover the areas you don't want painted, use it with newspaper for the bigger areas. You would also need to sand down all of the metal work you are going to paint with sandpaper used for metal not wood. You can get this in any DIY shop or car accesssory shop. This is to give the paint a good key.
We did this years ago with an old scooter for one of our boys and he loved it. It was red too!! Good luck with the project.

thanks a million for those. I have now cleaned down and took off bits of the bike (courtesy of a handy neighbour). Yesterday I sprayed it with primer and did it outside in the garden and used a fairly basic decorators dust mask - boy did I have an awful headache! I have a sensitive nose and this wrecked me. I have looked online and see that I can probably get a good 'fume' mask but they're around 20 -30 quid - a bit steep considering I bought the bike for a fiver... Does anyone have a source for one that's not so dear but effective?

thanks
Teeny

Bike cleaning
 

Hi, Its probably too late for my suggestion but maybe it'll help someone in the future. I also get a bad headache from spray paint/primers and even normal household paint, got so bad at one stage during decorating that I went to stay in my parents til the painting was finished, my doctor suggested trying an antihistimin so I got some and they worked, I'm painting the kitchen at the moment using a satin paint on the skirting and normally I'd have a bad headache and blotchy skin but no problems this time, if you decide to try this ask in the chemist for the cheaper tablets, I think they are called 'citrine' and cost half the price of other brands.

rust on your bicycle,
 

i always us tin foil, wet it a little and then use it on your rust, i do not like any chemicals, good luck happy biking to your daughter congrats on being thrifty love it.