The Story
"It's the wizard, not the wand!"
OK Joe, but sometimes in the hand of a skilled wizard the wand makes all the difference.
I was riding with my mountain bike coach and friend Joe who, during a ride, had his derailleur finally give out after years of abuse, after which it promptly ate the chain. After a chainless run down Middle and Lower Boulevard at Trestle bike park, I decided I'd had enough of his clapped-out old workhorse and offered to paint and "improve" it for him out of my parts bin.
Taking what I think was my least favorite Trek paint scheme ("pennyflake", a metallic copper that is better in concept than execution), Joe and I worked to design a theme for the bike as not only a joy-inducing ride, but a teaching tool to engage his youth and adult students alike. We landed on a theme of "progression", with the idea of using colors and iconography to represent Green World (the beginner trail that stays fun even for experts), Paper Boy (the park's definitive intermediate blue flow trail), and Banana Peel (the park's signature, special-license-required double black expert jump and drop trail).
We bounced ideas around until Joe had the idea that the green could and should be captured in the overlap of the yellow from Banana Peel and the blue from Paper Boy. This led to a design where I leaned extra hard into the green in fading yellow to blue.
The design was quite technically challenging. It required extensive work to cut and apply precision masks for both the main and the shadow of the pixelated "Coach Joe" and "SLASH 8" logos. I also wanted to achieve both a stroke line and a drop shadow "behind" the white lettering, as well as drop shadows for all the icons. Masking was a lot of planning to get right.
Over the course of past builds, I learned to never skimp on wet sanding and then cleaning/surface prep between each stage (or say hello to rough textures and orange peel), and always give paint a full cure time (at least 12 hours) before masking. For the first time in my recent memory, the build required ZERO touch-ups from paint pulling up while removing masks.
On the build side, I replaced all his pivot bearings, all of which were worn and some of which had seized entirely. The bike had to be fighting against using its travel previously. I also swapped in a new headset and bottom bracket.
Joe had mentioned the idea of pairing this bike with silver, rather than black, components, and I liked that idea given the brightness of the build. I found a sale on some Reserve silver wheels, had a silver 35mm bar in my parts bin.
I bought silver spacers, top cap, and stem to put on this bike, but I realized this uses the "knock block" and requires proprietary Trek stuff to be compatible. So, I decided to just bead blast the components that came with the bike and they ended up matching the wheels and handlebars basically perfectly.
One thing that WASN'T perfect was the rocker link. I had painted it to pretty precisely match the overall fade of the bike, but I failed to properly clear coat it and when I tried to hammer out and then in the bearings, it scratched the paint up badly. I had to decide whether to touch up the paint (very difficult in a fade), repaint it entirely, or do something else. I chose option C and blasted it with glass beads, and it ends up tying the aluminum bead blasted vibe up into the middle of the bike as well, and I liked the effect and especially the idea of not having to paint any more stuff.
For the drivetrain, I felt like Joe needs to feel the pain of batteries, and knowing he's going to bash up his derailleur, I wanted to set his bike up with the bombproof GX AXS T-Type derailleur. And I had a spare AXS Reverb dropper. Joe gets to live dat AXS battery life, and I don't have to run cables.
Delivering the bike to Joe was an absolute joyfest. We celebrated with several laps, and I even test rode it. The thing begs to be sent into the air while being very tolerant of square-edged hits.
Joe, I hope this is something that sparks a thousand conversations and helps your students get excited for this wonderful sport we call mountain biking.
Gallery
