I said why not, and took the opportunity to go ahead and strip my parts off the Bianchi and buy the Broakland. I ended up making a late night trip out to SF, and the dude lived in a warehouse in some industrial district… so at first it seemed pretty sketchy.

Turns out the previous owner had it made a year ago (The bottom bracket has a stamp with a production date of 9/08) and said he rode it only on special occasions. Sounds good, so I brought it home.

Came with a Chris King 1″ threadless headset and carbon Wound Up fork.

The tig welds on the frame looked amazing with everything still raw.

To take care of the surface rust, I read up on a chemical rust removal procedure on a Vintage BMX forum. I went to Sherwin-Williams and picked up this pound of Wood Bleach aka oxalic acid. The acid is mild and eats away the rust / converts it to this yellowish powder stuff that can be easily cleaned off. I didn’t really need to do all this, especially because it was hard to find a container big enough to sink the frame in, since I was getting it sandblasted and powdercoated anyway.

After all that, I took the frameset with me back to San Luis Obispo and dropped it off at Central Coast Powder Coating, what I later discovered to be the most incompetent, pathetic powder coating shop in existence. The idiotic owner told me they had a ton of colors, but when I go there to choose they have almost nothing I wanted, causing me to make multiple trips back to clear up the color choice. This was especially hard since I had no car in SLO, and of course no bike either. After a while I get a call finally from the owner saying it was done, so I immediately make my way over there only to find the shop completely closed down when I arrive. I spend the weekend looking at all the parts laying on my floor and no frame. I go back on the following Monday, only to have my worst fears come true. The paint job was so hideous and unevenly sprayed. There was massive amounts of orange peel every where, it was definitely a rush job. Unfortunately the owner of the shop held my bike for ransom, and forced me to pay for that horrible powder coat. What a shoddy business to say the least.

After stomaching the crappy situation I was in, I immediately made my way over to the other powdercoating shop in SLO, Full Spectrum. The owner here was much more reasonable and actually knew what he was talking about. He gave me a much better price for a 2-stage powdercoat. The frame was re-sandblasted and cleaned off, and a much much better paint job was laid down. Everything was glossy and even. The color is called Anthracite Metallic. Getting this frame properly painted was truly a headache, but at least it was accomplished in the end.

Since this was a Steel frame, I took an extra measure to preserve it and bought a can of Frame Saver. After spraying down the inner tube walls, this stuff dries to a high viscosity oil that is resilient to rust.

The long awaited reassembly:

Getting the headtube refaced:

I’ll have completed bike pictures at another time…