Friday, August 10, 2007

What Color Should I Paint My Fixie?

After the many months of summer I have finally gotten around to building my fixed gear, sort of. The stuff has all mostly been ordered or is on its way, so I'm getting ready to build it up finally.


In any case, I have been trying to decide what color to paint it. I bought blue handlebar tape already, and was thinking of making it orange. Yes, orange and blue, like on the right.

That was the original plan, but now I'm starting to wonder if that's a good idea. Another idea was to let the raw metallic shine show though and just put a few clear coats over the raw metal. This seemed like a great idea, except that I was unable to really sand in some of the smaller, tiny grooves and a few small areas where the pipes joined together. Additionally, I wonder whether the paint will adhere as well to the raw metal because if I put a clear coat on it I wouldn't be able to put primer on.

I was digging through my garage and found a few other options: chrome, black, white, and red. I guess any color is really available to me since I could just go buy a new can.

Here are some other thoughts:
- Black with Pink Handlebar Tape (light colored tapes have a shorter lifetime...)
- Blue with Blue Handlebar Tape (blue is nice)
- Green with Red Handlebar Tape (In the spirit of Ethiopia, or Christmas, whichever you prefer)

I don't particularly want to buy new handlebar tape though, so what are other colors that go with blue?

Really, I just want color suggestions for the frame that will go with blue bar tape.

Anybody have any ideas?

9 comments:

Katherine said...

I think bright orange would be great with blue handlebar tape. My prefered scheme for you would be: Bright orange frame (brighter the better), navy blue handlebar tape (so it doesn't get as dirty as the orange handlebar tape), and navy blue tires.

Ian said...

Definitely go with dark bar wrap-- the darker the better, but I think the blue you already have is dark enough. Also don't feel any shame about changing your tape frequently. It's this cheap little part of the bike, but makes a huge difference in the appearance. And appearance is everything, of course.

I think orange frame, blue tape, blue tires sounds pretty good. And don't forget, if you want to blow a bunch of money some day, get yourself some electric blue rims. bling bling!

PS: Megumi, they also sell these in Bianchi Celeste green.

kangway said...

Oh my god so hot. You shouldn't have linked me to those. So hot.

I got a pair of 700c wheels. I really only wanted the rear. It came with a 14T cog and a lockring, but I bought a 16T cog anyway. Actually I think I wanted a 17T but who knows...

In any case I blew some money on the equipment. Actually a bunch of money. I finally found a job paying $15/hr though, so I figure if I just work 4 days for 5-7 hours, I can make some good cash to finally buy a PowerTap. Just maybe. This fixie has definitely taken money away from my PowerTap SL fund.

Megumi said...

woah, actually i really like those electric blue rims. its crazy, i've never seen any colorful rims on the road... the strangest color i ever saw was purple tires.

kangway did you ever buy those michelin tires? if so, what do you think?

Ian said...

The Velocity deep V's are offered in no fewer than 15 colors: Black, Silver, White, E. Red, Yellow, E. Blue, Purple, Gold, Orange, Lime green, Ti Grey, Bright Silver, Pink, Brown, Celeste.

They say the V section is for strength and aerodynamics, but I think really it's to provide more surface area to show off your color. They are particularly fancied by bling-bling fixie nuts, because if you aren't planning to have any brakes, you can get them without machined braking surface, leaving more room for color.

Megumi said...

ohhh hahah, actually, i think my nutty cousin in japan has the pink ones...

incidentally he also had at one point in his life the ian shapiro 'fro...

kangway said...

Oh man, painting went terribly wrong! I sanded, primed, sanded, painted it orange but the coats were terrible! I was doing what I thought were pretty thin layers but then the paint just dripped everywhere! There were terrible drip marks on the top tube, all around the chainstays, everywhere.

I ended up buying a can of paint remover, stripping the whole thing down (which took two hours), sanded it, and decided that that the metal looked so awesome. So I just put two clear coats onto the raw steel. As it turns out the paint sort of fills in some of the small scratched lines which reduces it's metallic awesome glow. It sort of just looks gray and dull right now, but actually it's not too bad.

I'll post some pictures when I finish it up this weekend or next week at school.

kangway said...

Also, if my bike is now going to be steel and blue, like steel-blue, does that make it the complement of Katherine's Blue Steel?

Katherine said...

Oh man Steel Blue! That's awesome.