Technical & Reference Section > Tech and Restoration

bleaching

<< < (3/3)

ronnie360:
yes they are not to bad they have a few marks on them still but it is hard to see them and i am putting them on a bike i am going to ride so they will need washing alot i geuss  :daumenhoch:

duncan:
Both my wheels are out of the bleach now. Both look like new as far as colour goes.
I have a bit of work to do polishing the alloy hubs on the front one due to pitting.

There's two other things I noticed with the rear wheel:
Rather than simply bleaching the wheel, the bleach seemed to be dissolving the plastic!
This was a wheel that had sat outside for years exposed to the elements. It had a rough gritty texture, almost crystalline when examined closely, rather than the plasticky look & feel of a new Skyway.
After removing it from the bleach the surface plastic was softened and could be wiped off! Thankfully it was just a surface layer, and exposed clean hard plastic beneath.

The bleach also went to work as a rust-remover, but seemed to find pockets of rust under chrome plate on (and inside) the steel hub which had previously looked intact.
No, I didn't mistake sulphuric acid for bleach  :)  but  I thought I should mention these points. Maybe the wheel was so weather-beaten that the plastic had started to decay and the bleach hit it harder.
With a better set of wheels, I'd use weaker bleach.
This has been an interesting exercise but I'll probably get myself a new pair eventually, I'm not happy with the overall condition of any of the four wheels I started out with.

I just wondered, if I had left the wheel in the bleach for a few months, could I have returned to it and found nothing but a hub? A bit like a nail in Coca Cola...

oberonspacefruit:
you never know.

dordymush:
i bleached a elina seat a few months back.
left it in the bleach for a couple of days.
went to have a look how it was going.
and found the bleach had started to eat its way through the chromed steel under carriage.
i never thought it was that strong.

Navigation

[0] Message Index

[*] Previous page