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.
36 thoughts on “6 simple ways to pimp up your bike”
Alloy chainring bolts are the
Alloy chainring bolts are the devil’s work
tom_w wrote:
Absolutely right. Never EVER use alloy bolts on a bicycle. If you find any on your bike, get the buggers right off and replace them with steel ones.
I once had an alloy bolt snap in a blind hole on a chainset granny ring. It was so rubbish that I managed to drill out the shank, knock in an allen key and extract it. Sod of a job to do though.
michophull wrote:
That goes for alloy spoke nipples too. A terrible idea for the UK…
Absolutely right. Never EVER use alloy bolts on a bicycle. If you find any on your bike, get the buggers right off and replace them with steel ones.
I once had an alloy bolt snap in a blind hole on a chainset granny ring. It was so rubbish that I managed to drill out the shank, knock in an allen key and extract it. Sod of a job to do though.— michophull
If you own a torque wrench and a tub of grease there’s no reason not to use alloy bolts so long as they are specified for the job in hand and you’re not mixing materials.
Say you have carbon cranks with alloy insets/tabs then steel bolts will encourage galvanic corrosion more than alloy bolts and removing seized bolts could result in you stripping threads from the expensive parts.
The same with bottle cages on carbon bikes.
tom_w wrote:
Indeed they are!
Lezyne CNC bottle cage doesn
Lezyne CNC bottle cage doesn’t age like the plastic ones, and looks bling.
tomascjenkins wrote:
wrecks your water bottles though
Matthewjb wrote:
It’s a f#cking water bottle….
Kapz offer a great service
Kapz offer a great service
Kapz are great, they have
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.
Anodized bling bolts all over
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
‘Pimp up’? Surely just ‘pimp’
‘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’?
captain_slog wrote:
Only if you are a British spy disguised as a policeman in WWII France.
Beatnik69 wrote:
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
.
It’s winter. I pimp my bike
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.
I’ve always felt
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’.
jpj84 wrote:
So you think i should abandon my Diamante encrusted water bottle start up company “pimp cup”
before i ask for crowdfunding?
Ratfink wrote:
me too – I had an idea for fancy decorated gardening tools called pimpin’ ma hoes – dayum!
jpj84 wrote:
+1 here
jpj84 wrote:
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.
Another zombie article.
Anyway
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.— rjfrussell
You could call it a sophisticated language. (Google “etymology sophisticated” if you don’t believe me.
)
I do like the headset caps.
I do like the headset caps.
On my Middleburn triple I
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.
Coloured polycarbonate
Coloured polycarbonate headset spacers.
copper grease for me on
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.
You know the old saying….
You know the old saying…..pimp on the outside, gimp on the inside
I dunno. In low torque parts
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.
7. Spokey Dokeys.
7. Spokey Dokeys.
8. Tassels on the handlebars.
6 simple ways to pimp up your
6 simple ways to
pimp up your bikemake your bike look cheap.There, fixed the mistake in the article title.
I thought about pimping out
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!
Token make some lovely
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 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
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 have to admit to a brake
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
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
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.