How to clean a grimy old bike frame?

Question

It's a 1950s eatons glider , used to be my great uncles. Sat in the garage since the 80s and now it's mine. Finally. Haha , but the paint just won't clean up. I've tried soap and water with a toothbrush , spray nine, that's all I got lol any tips ? I want to bring it back to as close to perfect as possible , already did the chrome up and it looks great , the banana seat is great as well, just the paint left

Answer 1

How exactly to clean it depends on the type of dirt, so try to figure that out first.

If it's just regular dust, possibly mixed with moisture and some grease/oil to make it sticky, regular household cleaners should work well. Try to get something mildly (!) abrasive, such as a metal cleaner (used for cleaning stainless steel metal sinks) with a mild abrasive component.

The dirt could also actually be a different paint (maybe someone tried to repaint the frame at some point?). That will be a lot more tricky. Solvents would likely remove the original paint too; here your only option is probably to gently work with sandpaper.

Finally, there are special erasers for cleaning hard surfaces. They look and work similarly to pencil erasers, but are harder, to clean away stuff that is difficult to remove. They should be available at stores for household goods, or at hardware stores.

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Note: Do not use oven cleaner - it is meant to be used on enameled surfaces, and will strip off paint (it is actually a fairly decent paint remover). Thanks to andy256 for this warning.