I am the kind of person that likes doing things myself.  So when my BMX bike needed new parts, new paint and a new look I decided to fix it myself.

This is what my bike looked like originally in the spring. By the end of this year, it was developing rust and I didn’t like all the colors.

original bike

What actually made me finally go ahead and decide to change the look of my bike was that a good friend gave me an old frame. The frame was nicer than mine and it only had a broken fork that I could fix in my welding class.

Looking at my bike and deciding what colors would look best, I went with chrome black where I would keep some of my purple parts.  Rainbow bikes are cool but black and chrome always look good together.

The first thing I did was make my own personalized pegs. A set of 4 usually costs around 80$ .  Because I am in a machine shop class, I was able to make my own on the lathe for only 16$ from aluminum.  This how they turned out!  I have to say I was proud of myself.  They are the nicest pegs I have ever seen..and so cheap!

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The next thing I decided to work on was my hubs they were powder coated purple and they are made out of aluminum.  It was a bonus that I could sand them down and buff them.   They turned out looking just like chrome. The added benefit is that they will not rust.

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The next item that I wanted to chrome finish was the front of my stem.  That’s the part that holds the handle bars. I wanted the front to be chrome and the back to be black. I sanded the front part and buffed it just like the hubs.

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This is the before and after.  The end result was just how I wanted it to look.  A new one of these is around 150$

The next thing I had to get ready was my frame for paint. It had most of the paint removed from an earlier occasion using paint thinner.  It was developing rust.  Before you paint, you need a scratched surface.

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You can see the rust I took off from the first picture,  that would eventually rust out the bike and possibly cause the frame to snap.  It’s all in the details.

Simply just sandpaper for preparing things for paint works great.  However, if you have the opportunity to use a sandblasting cabinet it can make sanding to bare metal 10 times faster.

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With a sandblaster, you just put your hands through the sleeves (while wearing gloves), point the gun where you want to remove paint, pull the trigger, and it blasts it away. It’s so easy.

Some of the other things I did to my bike was buff the walls of my rims and clear coat them, die my seat that was orange and make it black,  and painted all additional parts on the bike black.

Overall, I am very happy how it turned out. It took a lot of time and effort but i feel great knowing that I did it all on my own.  I didn’t take the easy way out and I saved hundreds of dollars.

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parts hung and cleaned to be spray painted
original bike
Before
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After

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

My bike is unique now and nobody will ever have one the same as I do.  That’s a great feeling 🙂

Use the comments if you have any questions ..or comments obviously ha ha!  Thanks for reading

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