match 'em up!
As a longtime titanium bike owner, I’ve always been jealous of a beautiful painted frame but Ti and carbon frames don’t need paint like a steel frame needs paint. But I want some painted beauty. It’s like buying a white car; I can’t do white, need some color. So between a Ti frame and a carbon fork…I got nothing.
Well, a little knowledge is dangerous and throw in a compressor and an automotive spray gun and the potential for mayhem goes up. You want to paint your fork celeste green? Good luck with that as you go into your local auto refinishing paint store and try to describe Bianchi’s celeste green or De Rosa pink – blank stares. They will hand you huge stacks of paint samples all related to cars. Celeste green is a big problem, the nearly celeste green of a 1981 Fiat, no problem.
I found a used, top-end Trek Madone frame on eBay a few years ago, to bring my wife out of the Ti age and into the Carbon age. It was a project one frame, meaning it had been custom painted at the Trek factory. When we had the frame in-hand someone pointed out it was Subaru Forester green. Yep, that is correct. Who wants a bike painted Subaru Forester green? I was not ready to take on that repaint so I had it done somewhat professionally, at the local surfboard fabrication and repair spot. Years later the front fork needed to be repainted and I knew I could handle it. I practiced on an old alpha-q carbon fork and decided the Merlin’s fork was going to get it too.
Who wouldn’t want to match the stem to the fork? There are no Rules about this, but visually I think it works. Stems like paint. If I was going to paint forks I was absolutely going to paint some stems too. I think the secret to this might be the clear coat that goes on after the color coat. It is a catalyzed product, tough and flexible. It’s why your car still looks good after a few years on the road.
You can do all this with a rattle-can of color paint from the hardware store but you can’t spray a catalyzed clear coat on top so it might not hold up well. And this spraying is nasty but fun when it’s done, if it goes well.
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I want to like the green and pink combo. I really do. But I just can't. I'm sure we can extend the rules regarding matching of bar tape and saddles to that choice of paint colors. Because it's a slippery slope.
On the other hand, the red/grey combo looks the balls.
To each his own. My wife and I both tend toward the, how to say, overstated. But even a white bike with a white fork and stem would be pretty cool.
Side note, don't tell @Haldy that this sort of thing is possible. I can't imagine the paint job he'd come up with.
Nice jobs on the new colors. I painted the stem on my graveur Velominati orange and in comparison to your stellar work, it looks shite. And no, I won't post a picture!
@Gianni
Hey, they're your bikes, to be sure. All-white bike sounds fun, but it's a bitch to keep clean, and care must be taken with choice of kit such that it doesn't appear that one is the winner of the best young rider jersey.
@Owen
As a rule minimalist, I think that the basic rule is there- bar tape matches the saddle. Period. I can attest to this truth as I am testing out some saddles right now and my LBS doesn't have all-black demos and the look is horrifying since I'm not swapping bar tape on every ride to match a demo saddle. (Merckx forgive me). Believe it or not, a white saddle on a black and white bike with black bar tape still looks wrong. The Keepers knew this.
Stems are interesting- I think of them as non-disposable part of the bike (unlike bar tape or brake pads) and therefore fall under rules governing the paint/look of the overall bike. Therefore, any color you like as long as it looks good. I want to like this look, but it should be carefully employed rather than precisely regulated.
Bit of misinformation in that pre-mixed paint--I.E. spraypaint--is not catalyzed, as spray-finish enamels are batch mixed prior to spraying, the shelf-life of a catalyzed paint is quite short; how long depends on the paint and catalyst and mix, but it is between minutes and days, not months or years (spraypaint.)
Spraypaint has volatile solvents to evaporate, so the paint then air-cures. To cure closer to the durability of commercial finishes, finishes need to be cured in an oven. The hardness of spraypaint that has air-cured is not sufficiently durable held up to repeat contact compared to commercial finishing.
That said, powdercoating is pretty inexpensive for any metallic parts!
When done right it can look the business.
-Eddie
@EBruner
yeah baby, that's what I'm talking about. I did lobby Brett to get his stem painted when he got his jaegher. Crimey, they painted the bars too. They get IT!
@BacklashJack
Yes, exactly. I'm not promoting more Rules. As long as it's awesome. That's my motto.
Dear god, what have you done?
Even I, who once chose the kitchen color that shook a neighborhood, can see you've committed a heinous crime.