Front forks

[Nick Hood]

What is the best way of restoring the fork legs. Rub it down or remove the lacquer with something first ?

[Mattsplat]

Or use www.mailorderrepairs.co.uk

Very reasonably priced to get your forks refurbed/painted/coated.

No affiliation to me, just a recommendation 

Some of his work can be seen on FB.
https://www.facebook.com/MailOrderRepairs

[Sloth]

I bit of autosol and a lot of elbow grease dude  .  1200grade wet & dry for raised rusted areas but be gentle and you can get away with filling pits with a very small quantity of araldite, wet & dryed smooth with the leg.

[darrsi]

I used paint stripper, thinners, wet 'n' dry, then silver wheel spray and lacquer from spray cans........did the job job nicely.
Been a while now, still looks fine. 

[stevierst]

If you ride all year round, refurb as the guys above said, then once the paint is fully hardened cover each fork leg in paint protection film.

I used just bog standard fablon sticky back plastic from a stationers, it's worked on every bike I've had, and my bikes work hard all year round. Never had to repaint a set of forks since using it!

[Deefer666]

Buy some 2nd hand fork bottoms and take yer time polishing them to a mirror finish and then rebuild the forks with the new bottoms on