How To Personalise Your Bike
New bike day is an unbeatable feeling but as we all know, those periods between can feel like forever. Personalizing or customizing your ride can be a great way to get a bit of that new bike day feeling without actually getting a new bike. Here at Panda Podium we are no strangers to seeking out some drippy new upgrades or mods to breathe new life into our bikes.
Here's what has worked for us!
1. Colour Matching
Some people like to be subtle about this, others like to get loud and get their whole bike the same shade. Either way, colour matching bolts, bartape, chainrings or other components is a great way to give your bike a personal touch. You can do this with things like the Cybrei bolt packs or the tripeak oversized pulley wheels that come in some funky colours. There are some rules to this game though, the bar tape and saddle colour always need to match. If you’re going to throw on some crisp white bar tape you’ll also need to think about changing the saddle. If you don’t… the cops might show up at your house (You’ve been warned.)
2. Stickers / Markers
A bit of a controversial one but in some cases some well placed stickers or even drawings can be a great way to set your bike apart. Stickers are great if you are part of some clubs or want to rep some brands that you like. Markers are good if you want to get some personal doodles on the frame and almost give your bike some tattoos!
It could also be an idea to let your friend’s or family add some drawings too. We’ve experimented with both and have found that if you want to give your bike a new look this is a very cost effective way to go about it.
Our friends at at the Full Send Crit (Shoutout Mark, Yao and Elva) did a wicked job of customizing this Tavelo Attack! Was layered top to bottom with personal touches.
3. Re-spray It Yourself
Getting the spray cans out yourself and giving your bike a punch of colour can be one of the most fun ways to get a totally unique looking bike and the options are limitless.
You can experiment with using things like plastic bags pressed against the frame or letting the paint drip down the frame to get different patterns.
There are heaps of videos explaining how to do this on Youtube but the main advice is to just get stuck in and give it a bash. If it doesn’t work you can always strip the bike and try again.
4. Professional Custom Paintjobs
A custom professional spray job can send a bike to a totally elevated place. A couple of us here at Panda Podium have bikes which we think deserved some proper tricking out so we sent them to a local spray shop for some velvet smooth paint. This is a great option if you want to make your bike timeless and get it to its “final form.”
Here at PP there is big love for rim brake cannondales, there are five of them between us and a couple have been sent for some very tasty paintjobs. I think it’s safe to say that these are bike’s we’ll never sell because we’ve built them up to be exactly how we want them. It’s the ultimate way to get a bike that makes you do a double take every time you see it.
There loads of ways to customize your bike and give it a personal vibe, if you have any questions on compatibility for parts you'd like to put on your setup or are are interested in any of the upgrades we've made, shoot us a message and we'll talk you through what worked and didn't work for us.
You can also shop some of the products we used below like colourful chainrings, white bartape and colourful bolt packs.
CYBREI Chainrings
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Select options This product has multiple variants. The options may be chosen on the product page
EXS Bartape
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Select options This product has multiple variants. The options may be chosen on the product page
Tripeak Jockey Wheels
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Select options This product has multiple variants. The options may be chosen on the product page
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