Wheel finishing

[malcolm.johnson]

I have had this dilemma a couple of times in recent years with rims that are not tidy, but otherwise sound, round and true. These old, but good quality rims needed sprucing up and re-chroming was discounted for the reasons already given. In the first case I had one set sandblasted and powder coated in gloss black and in the case of the second for an off roader, ditto in gold. Both sets were done with stainless spokes and looked great even if not correct. The wheel rims cost £20 per rim to be done. The downside is that any painted or powder coated rims do require care though, when fitting and removing tyres. Otherwise a cheap, serviceable and good looking wheel re-build, which is guaranteed to lace up as good as it was originally. That is more that can be said about some modern rims, that are often incorrectly pierced leading to bent spokes and badly welded making it nigh on impossible to true correctly.

[keith.hodgenia]

If you go down the powder coat route the tyre bead will have a tough time gripping the rim. There is a thread elsewhere about tyres moving and causing problems rapid tyre deflation.

[malcolm.johnson]

I do not see powder coat to be any less grippy to the tyre bead than nice new chrome, stainless or paint. The guy who did mine does hundreds of rims, which many are not tubeless. I have never had any trouble with tyres moving on the rim whatever the finish, but having said that I am not a hard rider of my older bikes and the off roader has tyre security bolts at the rear anyway.