27 August 2012
More Stickers and Paint
When I first posted about adding some stickers to protect my frame from rubbing a couple of people helpfully posted comments about clear stickers.
During the process of changing my handlebars the places where the cables rubbed on the frame changed so I took another look at the clear stickers and decided to give them a go as I thought they would look better than the checkerboard pattern on my previous stickers.
The clear stickers are a bit more expensive than the others but you do seem to get a lot of them, or rather you get some fairly large bits that can be cut up into a lot of smaller bits. I went for a set meant to cover large parts of a full size mountain bike and I hardly made a dent in it.
After a while most of the clear stickers are still in very good condition. Below you can see the front fork. The lighter patch is the repainted area underneath the sticker. Note that normally the sticker is much less visible than this, here it was photographed in strong side sunlight.
The area where the front fork hooks onto the rear triangle when folding the bike seems to be an area of particularly strong rubbing. When I checked there the double layer of clear sticker I had put there had been completely rubbed through not just the stickers but the paint too.
So here I’ve decided to keep using the checkerboard stickers as they are much thicker and also seem to be tougher; so far it’s holding up well.
Whilst I was checking the frame over I noticed quite a few more chips in the paintwork, especially on the side and top of one of the rear triangle tubes which I’m quite surprised about as I have no idea how they would have got there:
I also found another area of cable wear:
I guess the moral of this is that I’m going to have to check the frame over every now and again for chips and cable wear and keep some stickers and paint on hand.
