Bike builders love to focus on bars, tires, gearing and paint or powder-coating—things that make a bike unique. But what about the smallest details you can imagine? Are they worth the effort?
If you’ve read this blog for the past while, you’ve likely seen “Nik’s Sick Haro Klunkerson.” Nik was our first Reader’s Rides submission and we’ve emailed back and forth a bit.
But I kinda fell off, and I’m really, really late posting one of his updates. So here goes.
A few months ago, Nik emailed me to show some tiny details he’d added to his Haro. We’re talking near-microscopic level stuff here. In his words, he tells us how it came to life:
While out riding, ago I got caught in the rain. I washed the bike off when I got home, towel dried and placed it in front of a box fan to assist drying. Checking out the bike later in the week, I noticed the dreaded surface rust had made its presence felt on the inside of some of the caliper bolts! I immediately jumped on the web and ordered the appropriate size caliper allen bolts in stainless steel.
While I had it in mind, I also ordered some blue Ti rotor bolts. It really makes the wheels “pop” a bit now! While I was into the brake calipers, I replaced the cable ends with a pair of blue ones for a nice finishing touch (or as my wife says, I’m a nut that can’t leave anything alone)! 
That’s right—to further modify his bike, he added tiny cobalt blue rotor bolts and even matching cable ends!
When does it stop? (Kidding.)
Check out the pics he sent below—and then let me know… are such little additions worth it?
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As the saying goes, (The Devil Is The Details). Sometimes there is too much of one color on maybe your car motorcycle and this case your bike. With a bicycle thank God doo to todays world economic disaster the simple fix in maybe just some fancy valve caps or some plated parts as shown up above. So park your ride stand back ten or fifteen feet and imagine if you will. The answer will follow to make it appealing to ride or just be cool to glance at passing by as you take the trash out. Kind of what ever works. It ‘s maybe just me but going on a parts safari is the exciting part. High end parts to make your ride not only look good but make it fit or perform better that you cannot afford but somehow if you search long enough you found it at the right price. So you found your trophy and now you’re going to install the fancy part that’s probably got plated bolts or some kind of finish. My question is to you the reader are you looking for some simple advice to help those plated bolts look nice without getting all scratched up? Simply put glad rap over the plated nut before you put a socket or open / box end wrench on it to separate the two surfaces. This also works on allen head bolts by placing rap over the bolt head and pushing the allen wrench into the bolt head. This really helps quite a bit. After the bolts are done being tightened or torqued take a quetip with a light amount of WD40 and apply and let it dry to protect the bolts from rust especially Allen head bolts as they collect water. Make sure to dry those bolts after washing your bike. If you run a seat with springs spray and isolate the spray with a rag with either a silicone spay orWD40 and wipe after a few seconds to help maintain the finish as well and avoid the rear tire of course. If you can blow up the image of Klunker D’S new chain adjusters look at the axle nuts finish. The finish is a bit scratched up on the axle nut that can be mostly be avoided with the glad rap trick. Remember the finish is not only there to be pretty but to protect as well. Hope that’s a help with those new fancy parts one might be installing. It will keep thinks looking newer if anything.