Hey everyone,

I plan on blacking out the rest of my bike this winter with powder (shields, ac, heads and pushrod covers) and recently starting thinking about my fork tubes.

I know they cant be powder coated because of the thickness, however I've heard and read a bit about PVD coating. It seems cool, but it only seems to make it a darker chrome. Ideally, what I want is black, like matte or semigloss black.

In my search for a local pvd coater, I came across a metal finishing company that suggests teflon coating (I know, I thought 'like my frying pan'? too). The finish is very thin (just like pvd).

my question/concern is, does everyone's fork seals leave a slight film on the bottom of their fork tube? or is it just mine and poor seals? Its barley noticable on the tubes because of the hard chrome finsh, however, I worry that with matte or semigloss fork tubes, it will become much more visible and stick out like a sore thumb.

Let me know!
Connor

 

Look into Titanium Nitride or Nitrate coatings, commonly known as TiNitride or TiNitrate. They are big in the MX world and drastically change the color of the tubes. Quite pricey but like a rich man once told me "You can't put a price on cool!"

 

yah seems to be the same thing. I think Titanium Nitride is just the material, PVD is the method they use to apply it. It looks good, but my sliders and trees are flat black, all the pvd coatings are very shiny (similiar to black chrome), I dont think it would look right with all the flat black on my bike.

 

Look into anodizing its really thin and also very durable....

 

Hey Hickey,

Check out these guys: http://www.lifetimecoatings.com/index.html

See if they would send you some actual color samples.

 

Anodizing can only be done on Aluminum.

 

I would think that any matte or flat finish is going to get polished rather quickly from the constant wiping of your fork seals. You'll end up with the top half of your forks flat black and the area above the sliders shiny.

 

Titanium Nitride is the only way to do it... i have tried shooting super thin coats on fork tubes with powder wetsanding and buffing and still not had luck, it is not just that they leak they will also not fit in the down tubes

 

Joe should know. Listen to him.