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6 simple ways to pimp up your bike Sept 20186 simple ways to pimp up your bike
Adding a couple of coloured components or accessories can really improve the look of your bike. We’re not suggesting you go all Timmy Mallett about it – less is often more – but consider these six easy ways to pimp up your bike.
1 Fit some new handlebar tape — £4.99-£40.49
Replacing old, worn out handlebar tape can make a big difference to your comfort and it’ll also make your bike look a whole lot neater and more appealing to ride – mechanics sometimes fit new tape to pro racers’ bikes to give them a little psychological boost (true!). Lizard Skins DSP (read review) is very grippy and it’s available in loads of different colours for £25.
2 Saddle up — £24.99-£195.00
If you’re on the wrong saddle, you’re not going to enjoy your cycling to the max – that’s obvious. You don’t have to spend a vast amount to get a good saddle, you just need to find one that’s the right shape for you.
3 Replace your headset cap —£16.95-£74.95
Kapz offers all kinds of headset caps, including full colour custom designs so you can personalise your bike. This engraved Union Jack model might be pricy at £32.95, but it comes with red, silver and blue headset spacers.
4 Get new bottle cages — £1.99-£70
Bottle cages can start to look shabby over time, especially after a few months of wet weather when grit can get in there and scratch away at the surface. The polyamide, carbon and glass fibre Deva bottle cage from Tacx is available in a bunch of colours to match your bike, priced at £12.99 each.
5 Add a new computer mount — £41
Every bike computer comes with a mount in the box, but you can often get a better one aftermarket – or at least a better looking one. K-Edge’s mount for the Garmin Edge 1000 / 800 / 810 is CNC machined from 6061-T6 aluminium and allows you to position your computer centrally. It comes with a lifetime warranty and in red, blue and gunmetal, as well as boring old black.
6 Go fully pimp with a Token Bling Box — from £50
Sometimes it’s cool to be understated, but if you want to bling up your bike you could try adding coloured parts like bolts, jockey wheels, and so on. Token even offers a Bling Box comprising a top cap and bolt for your headset, a down tube cable adjuster, a cassette lockring, and the like.
Mat has been in cycling media since 1996, on titles including BikeRadar, Total Bike, Total Mountain Bike, What Mountain Bike and Mountain Biking UK, and he has been editor of 220 Triathlon and Cycling Plus. Mat has been road.cc technical editor for over a decade, testing bikes, fettling the latest kit, and trying out the most up-to-the-minute clothing. He has won his category in Ironman UK 70.3 and finished on the podium in both marathons he has run. Mat is a Cambridge graduate who did a post-grad in magazine journalism, and he is a winner of the Cycling Media Award for Specialist Online Writer. Now over 50, he's riding road and gravel bikes most days for fun and fitness rather than training for competitions.
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36 comments
I have to admit to a brake cable outer sheath fetish
For example fitting red cables on a black bike.
There I've said it.
I confess to going all gooey over translucent Casiraghi cable outers. Usually in a contrast colour. It's not my fault, I grew up amid the BMX craze of the '80s.
I saw a bike set up with the silver Nokons in a bike shop, visiting customer. So bling. I had to do it. eventually I did, and they were good and shiny. They properly glinted in the sun, unfortuately they rotted a bit quickly, and a bit pricey to replace quickly. But the shifting and braking were so good and for so long. Eventually replaced the cables and the "tube" with enough spare "beads" to replace the dissolved ones.
For the Ultimate Commuter I got a full set of black ones, full cable runs for the Rohloff, the anodising should last even though they don't look quite as good. And a set for the Good Bike to replace the now very tatty silver ones.
All with regular coats of ACF 50 to try and protect them form our sometimes awful winter conditions.
Of course there are many colours available.
Token make some lovely looking coloured parts but their valve caps screw onto the core. Quite tight, so if you have tubes with removable cores (the logic for which escapes me) then you have a decent chance that the core will unscrew with the cap, and then you'd better hope that you have the right tools to separate them at the side of the road, having punctured in the rain on the way to work...
I had a tube do that on me as I was getting ready to start a 100 mile sportive last Sunday. Fortunately, they came apart with just a little brute force and survived quite happily (although I ditched the dust cap altogether).
I can see them being useful if you wish to remove a healthy tube and put it away for some reason, as removing the core makes it much quicker and easier to empty out the air completely.
It's not immediately obvious if a core is removeable or not and I've had them start to come away with the cap as well. Advantages include getting any sort of solution you're using into the tube and if the core gets damaged - some pumps are quite brutal towards flimsily little valve cores.
I thought about pimping out my bike but I'm not sure what to charge.
£5 for a 30 minute ride?
You better pay up though!
6 simple ways to
pimp up your bikemake your bike look cheap.There, fixed the mistake in the article title.
7. Spokey Dokeys.
8. Tassels on the handlebars.
I dunno. In low torque parts of bike it has never been an issue for me and I started pimping in the 90’s.
Alloy chainring bolts is plain bonkers however, as would be stem fasteners, brake bolts etc. Perfect for bottle cage bolts or gears cable bolts. I do use Ti bolts wherever the fancy takes me to replace the steel ones. Not really concerned with saving weight but like the purdy colours.
You know the old saying.....pimp on the outside, gimp on the inside
copper grease for me on everything that has a chance of seizing up and/or is going to be left alone for a while, so that's bottle cage, rack, mudguard, chainring bolts and so forth. I always put some on BB threads.
As for 'pimp', never used it, always thought bling was the correct modern terminology, 'pimping' or correctly procuring, means something entirely different to making something look attractive or pretty.
Coloured polycarbonate headset spacers.
On my Middleburn triple I have never seen anything wrong with colourful alloy bolts on the large and middle rings but the granny gets steel. My XTR triple has alloy torx bolts, but that was what was fitted as standard.
I use Park Anti-seize compound for different metal threading, grease is better than nothing but the metal particles in the anti seize stops galling better.
I do like the headset caps.
I've always felt uncomfortable about "pimp" entering our everyday lexicon as a compliment: I mean, a pimp is basically an exploitative sex offender.
I have a feeling that, in the pretty near future, people will be denying they used to use 'that word'.
So you think i should abandon my Diamante encrusted water bottle start up company "pimp cup"
before i ask for crowdfunding?
me too - I had an idea for fancy decorated gardening tools called pimpin' ma hoes - dayum!
+1 here
But language (at least ours- no Academie here) changes all the time, with words changing meaning or being given new ones. It's what makes English such a wonderful language.
Even the venerable OED recognises the modern meaning, albeit as a slang term.
Another zombie article.
Anyway
You could call it a sophisticated language. (Google "etymology sophisticated" if you don't believe me.
)
It's winter. I pimp my bike with mud. Bling for poor people.
Don't oil your chain and it will go a fetching shade of orange. Leave the mudguards off and create random patterns on your clothing.
'Pimp up'? Surely just 'pimp', as in 'pimp my ride'. If you ask your LBS to pimp up your wheels you'll probably just end up with a bit more air in the tyres.
How about 'vajazzle your velo'?
Only if you are a British spy disguised as a policeman in WWII France.
Ha, ha, I actually laughed out loud. I must admit to having a bit of a titanium fetish. My winter bike has titanium bottle, rack and mudguard bolts. Not particularly bling but I know my 12kg bike is 5 or 6 grams lighter than it would otherwise be
.
Anodized bling bolts all over my bikes. Love them and think they are fine for daily use PROVIDING you torque them correctly. 1000's of km's ridden without an issue (but have had a steel bolt snap on me). Okay I'm in Tokyo so the weather is a bit different to UK - humidity levels/ short rainy season in summer can cause problems, but relatively dryer in the winter
Kapz are great, they have been my kids default present to me for the last four Xmas/ Birthdays (they now need to think of something different as all my bikes have one). As a consequence they have become my default gift to any cycling friends.
Kapz offer a great service
image.jpeg
Lezyne CNC bottle cage doesn't age like the plastic ones, and looks bling.
wrecks your water bottles though
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