- Protecting your frame against knocks and scrapes
is a really good idea.
Especially if you have a new bike
or a bike that is fairly new
and the paintwork is still intact.
Now there's various different ways
you can approach this,
you can get entire kits to cover every part of the frame,
you can also get the bare minimum.
Now the bare minimum might be some chainstay protection,
or even going a bit ghetto and using old inner tubes,
bit of recycling there for you.
But in this video today,
I'm gonna fit some frame protection decals,
I'm gonna show you the best places to fit them
and the best way to fit them
in order to keep your bike looking fresh.
(chilled music)
Now firstly you're gonna need to get the right
sort of protection gear for your bike.
Now there's a lot of different options
available on the market
and a lot of different ways you can do this.
Now firstly, there are some pre-made things you can buy,
I.E this has a chainstay protector on it
that is designed for that purpose.
You can also get crank boots, little rubber caps
to go over the end of your crank arms
which protect them from paint scratches
when you do, inevitably, strike against rocks
and other things on the ground.
However, I'm gonna do a bit of a DIY kit today
using two particular things.
I have an AMS frame protection kit here,
in fact I've actually got a part used one as well
so I'm gonna use this first
in all the main areas on the bike.
And then of course I'm gonna use some of my trusty
Scotch M2228 which is just rubber effectively, sticky rubber.
And I'm gonna show you a few cool tricks
which you can do to silence your bike
and of course keep it free, hopefully, of paint chips.
Now preparation, this is absolutely key
for the adhesive to work correctly on your bike
and for it to stay in place
and more importantly look good as well.
If you don't get this stage right
you could suffer air bubbles
or even worse it could start peeling up
at the edges which is kinda pointless
it being there in the first place.
Now to clean your bike, isopropyl alcohol
is the best thing for this purpose.
Make sure that any greasy residues,
any other adhesive that might be there
can be stripped away and it won't damage
any part of your bike, and this is ideal.
Now you can find isopropyl alcohol in certain
cleaners and products, contact cleaner,
that is essentially pure isopropyl alcohol
and so I'm gonna use that.
You can also use brake cleaner.
Essentially anything that has isopropyl alcohol
and will evaporate afterwards, that is your friend.
Try and avoid any household cleaners
that you think might be good because a lot
of them tend to have silicone in there
and silicone is awful against adhesive
and, sooner or later, your adhesive decals will peel off.
So, on this particular bike there's quite a few
special areas I wanna be applying stuff.
So the first one is the top tube.
Now you might wonder why I'm gonna put it
on the top tube when rocks and stuff ping up
on other parts of the bike.
But actually on a nice paint job like this,
got a nice glossy finish on there,
your jeans or your knee pads,
or even just your legs, in day to day use,
will actually rub the finish away on your top tube.
And because this like a free ride hard tail,
I'm probably gonna use this for jumps
and a bit of messing around
and quite likely to use knee pads.
And I'm also quite likely to sit on the top tube sometime
just when I'm maybe chatting to Blake at the side
of the trail or something like that.
That all has an effect on the paintwork so
I'm gonna protect the top tube on my bike
and I'm gonna show you exactly
where the best part of that is to do.
Now you might notice here that the kit I'm using
has actually got some chevron style patterns to it.
Now what I wanna do cos I want the GMBN on this one
to just sit past here on the top tube
because that is the most important bit
of the top tube and I don't wanna mess around
with this graphic here by covering it up.
So I'm actually gonna make a little mark here
and trim this so it sits and follows the line
of the graphic on the top tube there.
This is where you can get quite picky
with your own designs and make sure they sit nice and flush.
It's all about lining up the center of the decal
and following it along the top tube there
until it's in the right place.
And just make a line along the center of it as you go.
Keep this in place here,
just to make sure it stays nice and straight.
As you'll notice this has a slight
honeycomb construction to it.
Now the honeycomb actually makes it a lot tougher
and actually fairly resistant to bashes.
Little bit different to the Helitape.
I'm just gonna continue wrapping this around.
Get that nice and smooth.
Looks pretty good.
Next up is around the head tube of the bike.
Now again there's no additional protection on here
against cable rub, I.E when you turn the handlebars
through the motions those control cables tend
to rub against the paintwork, they dull it down
and even worse, in time they will completely
rub it raw, back to the bare metal.
Now this isn't really the end of the world
but it's not gonna look very nice
and I want this frame to stay
looking good as long as possible.
So I actually want quite a large piece on here
because there's a chance
of the cable rubbing throughout here.
So I'm actually gonna put one
of these nice long sections on.
And again, make sure the middle
gets on there nice and firmly.
Smooth that on.
And work it to the edges there.
And that will work a treat I think there.
That's good.
I've gotta lower my dropper post position
which brings that cable down slightly
and there's actually a bit of cable
to pull through once I lower the post in the frame.
It's in the work stand at the moment,
that's why the cable is this tight.
The next place is part of the down tube.
Now this does depend on where you ride
and a few other factors.
So, just for example, if you've got a pickup truck
and you hang your bike over the back of the pickup truck,
I would advise using a decent amount towards the top
because that is where your bike hooks
over the pickup pad on the back of the truck.
So that's worth taking into account.
Now perhaps you live somewhere that's extremely rocky
and rough, like the Alps
or anywhere there's lots of loose rock.
In which case, you're gonna get bits of rock
flying up all over the down tube here.
Now locally and in most of the areas I ride
I don't really have that as an issue
but the typical areas that rocks and things
do tend to fly is lower on the tube
and around the bottom bracket shelf.
So I am gonna pay a little bit of attention
to the bottom part of the down tube here.
Same rules apply as the rest of the bike,
give it a center first, then work it to the sides there.
Now if you're using rolls of heavy tape or anything,
you can cover the entire down tube if you like.
I don't like to do that personally,
I like to just cover the areas that are more likely
to get a bit of paint damage to them.
I'm also gonna put a bit of rubber on the BB shell itself
because I know from experience I've had some really,
really big chips on the underneath
of the bottom bracket shell
because you don't ever really see it.
Now one extra little top tip,
I know there's a lot of you out there
that will never do this.
On the underneath of your frame here,
on the bottom bracket shell,
you will see a number stamped into the bike.
That number is completely exclusive
to your bike, that can identify
your bike if the bike is stolen.
That's a really good thing
for your insurance to have.
Note this down, especially if you're
gonna cover it up, it's out the way
and it also means that, if your bike is
unfortunate enough to get stolen,
it can later be identified if it is found.
So a good thing to know, just note that down.
Next up is your crank arms,
now this is a personal preference thing,
I'm not normally that fussed about this.
But some people like to protect the crank arm
as you can get specific decals to go
on your crank arm so you don't rub away
the paint work on them.
But something that does bug me
is the ends of the crank arms.
Now you can buy dedicated boots
that slide over the end of them
and essentially when you're peddling through
rough stuff, you're gonna ground out
your pedals and your crank arms.
Now it's less of an issue with alloy cranks
but if you've got carbon cranks you definitely
wanna try and protect the ends of your cranks.
Well I'm gonna show you a little trick
to make your own little version that does
a great job of protecting them.
Same principal as with applying anything
on the rest of the bike.
Just try and mirror those surfaces
and get a good adhesion.
Now that is fairly invisible
when you're actually riding
and, yeah okay it might come off in the future
with extended use in bad weather,
but it's a very small thing
and very easy to protect.
Next up is the back end of the bike.
Now this will depend on your riding style,
how wide the back end of the bike is,
the design of the frame.
Now, on my particular frame,
the back end here is quite wide.
Now I am aware that sometimes when moving around,
riding flat pedals especially,
I rub my ankles on the chain stay slightly.
So, although this one has a pad on here,
I'm actually gonna remove that
cos I don't like these sort of pads.
We'll get to that when we do it but,
I'm gonna put some on the side of the chain stays,
an area where my feet might rub.
I'm gonna do that on both the non drive side
and the drive side.
And again, go for that central line.
Now that is gonna do the business there
for stopping any paint rub
and it's quite tough as well.
I'm also gonna have a strip along the top here.
Now I'm just gonna leave this going underneath
because the rubber will actually keep that in place.
The rubber itself comes in strips like this.
Comes in 50 mill and 25 mill wide.
The one I've got here is 50 mill wide
so I'm actually gonna have to cut this to fit.
Now the really good thing about this stuff
is it's stretchy and it's extremely adhesive.
So you can actually shape it slightly,
all the way along to get a really good finish.
And, because it's quite thick,
it dampens out the noise that you get
from the chain just ticking away on the chain stay.
And again, depending on how much you have,
you can really go to town on it.
You can put some on the top of the back
of the seat tube there.
Sometimes you get rocks and stuff
flick round as you're riding,
that can remove some paint.
And again the sides of your fork legs,
that's a really popular place for people to do that
and it's a really good place to put some.
Okay so that's the basics in
fitting frame protection to your bike.
And certainly some notable areas there
like that top tube rub,
the head tube for the cables,
under the bottom bracket, all that sort of stuff.
Now if you like the look of these AMS kits,
we have we our GMBN logos on,
you can get those on our store.
And I'm also giving away five sets,
so you could win one of five sets.
The competition link is in the description below
so head down there if you're interested
and the competition is live from now until the 4th of April.
So if it's after the 4th of April
you cannot qualify to win unfortunately.
But you can still buy them in our store.
Good luck.
And click up here if you wanna see a video about
the Toepig Tubey Booster, its a tubeless inflation system
with a little hidden trick up it's sleeve.
And click down here if you wanna learn about
installing a dropper post on your bike.
That's part of our essential series
and you'll be able to click through
to the rest of the videos in that series.
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