Wednesday 27 August 2014

A Plea Direct to Brompton!!!

It was not that long ago that I owned a Brompton bicycle but did not know how to fix a puncture. The very thought of taking a wheel off was one that filled me with a sense of foreboding and dread. I have come a long way and can now do most jobs in respects of maintaining a Brompton bicycle. With this newfound confidence I decided to embark upon a little project. Today, I stood back and looked at my DIY efforts and after some careful deliberation, recoiled in horror at what I had done...

I have a thing about the colour orange. I can't help it. Brompton have started to offer various parts in different colours - grips, saddles and mudguards. Mudguards!!! They have yet to release any of these items in orange, although the saddle and mudguards do exist in the form of a special edition Brompton released a few years ago.

With a little spare time, I decided that I would paint an old pair of mudguards orange, so that I could realise a long held dream to add orange mudguards to one of my beloved Orange Brompton bicycles! If things went well with the first attempt, who knows...I could repeat it and have both my Orange Brompton bikes kitted out in Orange mudguards.

I must say that I contacted a few specialist bike sprayers, but sadly none were interested in spray painting mudguards. No...I would have to do it myself. I therefore bought flexible primer / orange spray paint and even a selection of ultra fine sandpapers. YouTube was consulted too.

The primer was a success. After a few coats I felt confident about applying the magic, the orange! That is when it all went spectacularly wrong!


I mean...just look at what I have done!


The orange spray paint I chose was a pretty bright orange and the cap (an indication of what it was meant to be like) provided a good match to the orange Brompton colour. I wish! The first coat was a shiny gold and reminded me of the colour Shirley Eaton looked in the film 'Goldfinger!'

The second coat - which I assumed would be better - could only be described as, Liberace!! The third and final coat made things even worse. At best it can be described as being mildly farmyard.

I have single handily ruined a perfectly good pair of mudguards all in the pursuit of my obsession with orange! Mrs Orange - in-between giggles of laughter - said that they weren't that bad and that I should see what they are like on the bike. On the bike!? Look at them! My daughters openly pointed and laughed at them.

Brompton HQ, should you read this I appeal to your better nature to make orange mudguards available for those of us suffering from the affliction of colour coordinating our Brompton bikes!

6 comments:

  1. All is not lost - what colour was your background primer? Dark-Grey would have been my choice. Spraying is applied so thinly that i think you would need a number of coats but the final colour needs to be the one you want, obviously. I would buy a small tin of both Yellow and a Red and mix your own and then, after thinning to the right consistency, apply with a small hobby compresser. Get the mix right and you then have a recipe for any ding or scratch for you bikes if required but certainly for the mudguards.....

    Just my two-pennarth FWIW.

    atb Laurie -

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  2. You used grey primer?

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  3. Oh dear!
    How about pin-striping with orange vinyl tape? The original fenders have a clear window that can be used as a guide for the pin-stripe. I imagine the tape will be easy to source on the interweb. I know that many motorcycle enthusiasts use this tape on the edges of their wheels. Think accent rather than boldness. OK, maybe that's not the point. Anyway...

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  4. It's a bit like Iain Watters, baked Alaska on BBC's, The Great British Bake Off, they are bound for the dustbin!

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  5. Don't chuck 'em away - you will only regret it when you envisage a method to achieve the desired result - mistakes are there to be corrected! ;-)

    Laurie -

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