Spraying spokes and hubs

pthompson73

Looking for a bit of advice from anyone who might have sprayed their spokes and hubs a different colour.
I own a set of Zipp 404 clinchers and fancy "pimping my ride" by colouring the spokes and hubs a colour to match my frame.
Would you......or Coulld you do this......if so HOW????

Stuy-b

strip the the wheel down, take the free hub and barrings off/out of the hub, then set about spraying

litttlestwoo

You will need to key the surface (remove the shine with some wet and dry) to make any new paint stick, could be a disaster if either the paint goes on badly or starts to peal off after a while

Monty Dog

Yeah! Make a grand's worth of wheels worth 50p! Unless you strip down the wheels to the components and get the parts refinished professionally, it'll just look cr@p. You could get the hub shells stripped and re-anodised. Spokes would need to be powder coated.

moonshine

Get vinyl stickers for them rather than a respray. That way you protect your asset value & can change them easilt if you want to,

local signwriters? better than trashing a set of wheels

pthompson73

Thanks for the advice guys.

Very concious of wrecking some expensive wheels just to make them look a bit bling!!

What got me thinking was seeing the Lightweight wheels used by Team Milram with the white spokes and hubs which appear to be different from those on offer to Joe Public.

Obviously these are Team issue so are probably professionally done by Lightweight themselves.

I was going to strip the wheel down to its component parts (spokes and hubs) and I happen to know someone who runs a vehicle body repair shop with his own spray room, and ask him to spray those parts to the desired colour.

I have entrusted him to sort out my car when I have ding'ed it and he has always made a sound job.

Do you think that sounds wise.......validation or otherwise please!

litttlestwoo

I would think that painting them would be a really bad idea

With cars you are putting paint onto something which was meant to be painted in the first place, dull unfinished metal, followed by an adhesive primer, followed by a colour and then Laquered to seal (modern car paint is water based so needs laquer to protect it)

SHiny metal parts, anodised parts ets are much harder to coat and a guy who does good work on car bodies is not nessesarily going to be able to do good work on your bike parts.

I would think that you are looking at special finishing processes to sort these parts out how you want them. Powder coating sounds reasonable, but bare in mind it is very possible to get bad finishes with powder coats, anodising for the hubs as Monty Dog suggests is probably okay as well.

I think the question is whether this is all worth the hassle. 18 and 24 spoke wheels are not going to be the easiest to put back together either. Anything not factory finish quality I would think you'll be disappointed with

softlad

pthompson73 wrote:

Do you think that sounds wise.......validation or otherwise please!

if you want to look like a drug dealer - go right ahead....

chriscdesign

If you really, really wanted to do it, I would look into anodising. Aluminum takings to this treatment like a duck to water. Cost? I have no idea but I would imagine it would be reasonable. Still, you have to strip the wheel down to it's basic compenents, anodise annd then have the wheel rebuilt.

If you could get the stickers off the rim, get a graphic designer to draw something really sweet and then have the artwork made into laser cut decals, that might be an easier way to 'pimp your ride'

pthompson73

God forbide that I turn my bike into something that Tim Westwood would cream his pants over!!!

After listening to everyones advice I seem to think this idea might be a complete ars@ on for what is a fleeting idea.

Dont think I am prepared to go into the depths of research required on the off chance the wheels would emerge the other end of the process in the style that I wanted.

Thanks for all the feedback