Powdercoat rims

[Lamedog]

Rims on my Champagne '02 LeMans are scratched up and its time for new tires. Local shop advised powdercoating, but cautioned against a gloss finish. Anyone given thought to appropriate rim color for a Champagne LeMans with Fuzzy Black engine? I like Rich Maund's comment around the necessity for Red, but I'm not sure it fits for me. Is this the time to lose the black engine paint and go for gold/aluminum? (Or will this look like a Sumo wrestler with skinny ankles?) I'll post a photoshop for comment but expect someone has already done this...

[Skeeve]

Rims on my Champagne '02 LeMans are scratched up and its time for new tires. Local shop advised powdercoating, but cautioned against a gloss finish. Anyone given thought to appropriate rim color for a Champagne LeMans with Fuzzy Black engine? I like Rich Maund's comment around the necessity for Red, but I'm not sure it fits for me. Is this the time to lose the black engine paint and go for gold/aluminum? (Or will this look like a Sumo wrestler with skinny ankles?) I'll post a photoshop for comment but expect someone has already done this...

 

Any real world bike [ie, not a show bike that only gets "ridden" on vacuumed carpets and waxed linoleum! ] gets this dark grey road muck all over it's rims in short order.

 

So my suggestion for the "best" color for rims is a matte or semi-gloss dark grey [about the same as the "anthracite" grey that the Centauro motors were coated with, or a little lighter!] Spend less time cleaning & more riding, since nobody will notice that your wheels are dirty, unlike the cast alloy wheels on my SV, [first year], which are not only too light a color but have all sorts of nice little surface roughness to hold the dirt! I swear that bike is faster when I take it out after a good cleaning if only because I've removed a couple pounds of rotational mass from each wheel by scrubbing all the dirt out of the rim! Black wheels don't solve the problem either [altho' Suzi went that route later w/ the SVs], since black shows dust almost as much as white!

 

Go dark grey w/ the powdercoat. You'll thank me later, even tho' it make look mundane, it'll always look "right" so that people won't even notice the wheels & just say "What a great looking bike!"

[pasotibbs]

Any real world bike [ie, not a show bike that only gets "ridden" on vacuumed carpets and waxed linoleum! ] gets this dark grey road muck all over it's rims in short order.

 

So my suggestion for the "best" color for rims is a matte or semi-gloss dark grey [about the same as the "anthracite" grey that the Centauro motors were coated with, or a little lighter!] Spend less time cleaning & more riding, since nobody will notice that your wheels are dirty, unlike the cast alloy wheels on my SV, [first year], which are not only too light a color but have all sorts of nice little surface roughness to hold the dirt! I swear that bike is faster when I take it out after a good cleaning if only because I've removed a couple pounds of rotational mass from each wheel by scrubbing all the dirt out of the rim! Black wheels don't solve the problem either [altho' Suzi went that route later w/ the SVs], since black shows dust almost as much as white!

 

Go dark grey w/ the powdercoat. You'll thank me later, even tho' it make look mundane, it'll always look "right" so that people won't even notice the wheels & just say "What a great looking bike!"

+1 for the Grey/Graphite

[ponti_33609]

Hi,

 

I have a red frame and was thinking of going that way to tie it together.......will I regret it?

 

Bob

[Guest frankdugo]

not if you run away &join the circus bob