How to: Paint the Front or Rear Bike Rack

[katylin]

I'm sure some people are going to wonder why I would want to paint the silly racks but I love to eat Oranges but not look at them!! All Rad have available are ORANGE color basically everything!!  I just want to add a rear and front rack to a Radmin Step Thru I'm holding off on buying because they don't have what I want in stock.  So I got to thinking I can substitute the rear rack but can't find any other brand for the front rack...so the thought was what about like spray painting it?

If I do that what kind of paint process would I need to go through & kind of paint???  Maybe I can let my imagination go wild on the color LOL!!

[FortunatelyTheMilk]

Theres lots of YouTube tutorials, but essentially it boils down to cleaning and preparing the surface, priming and spraying.

I tend to use automotive spray paint, satin black covers a multitude of sins.

Warm the cans in hot water, use many light coats to build up the colours, and take your time!

[992023515]

After upgrading my runner I decided it wasn't really a RPB any longer so I painted over the down tube logo. I took a little 220 sandpaper to area and quickly got to a little bare metal. Made sure to wipe it clean and taped off the area for over spray. Any hardware store brand will work fine like a krylon and it's better to do a few light coats then one heavy. Did a few frame scratches also so it looks go as new but with out the annoying bright logo.

[jattjack]

 Hi we are talking your question I'm sure some people are going to wonder why I would want to paint the silly racks but I love to eat Oranges but not look at them!! All Rad have available are ORANGE color basically everything!! but suggest to get more information to search on google thanking for sharing this

[natchezz]

Orange is good for those of us that want to be more visible in traffic!

[senorfrisk]

Did you paint your rack?  I have a black one that I am thinking about painting.  I figure it can't hurt.  I might paint it several colors.

[RadJohn]

I thought the front rack on my 2020 RadMini 4 looked kind of klunky, and wasn't likely to be improved much by a snazzy paint job. Then it dawned on me that the main thing that was bothering me was that big flat mounting plate that was covering up the pretty Rad head tube badge (I noted my MRI-Denver Dual Bottle Cage Holder has a cutout that allows it to show through).

I did a quick Finite Element Analysis (in my head, yeah) and concluded that removing some of the center of the plate would only decrease the overall strength and resultant carrying capacity of the rack by 1.2 ounces, while increasing the bikes top coasting speed on BIG hills by 0.29 MPH, but I got a headache while attempting to calculate the overall improvement in aerodynamic efficiency, so I just started making chips fly.

I'm happy with the result.

The head tube badges/decals on some Rad models are prettier than others, the one on the Minis reminds me of the more elegant ones used some of the classic bikes of yore.