Bright chrome saves lives.

 

I prefer gloss black. Doesn't seem to have been done too much. People either gravitate towards chrome or towards matt/flat black.

 

To much looks cheap and cheezy

 

if you can look at your bike without sunglasses you need to keep going

 

Chrome is great as long as it's a functional part of the bike-no dress-up stick-on covers.

 

I like a lot of chrome, within some parameters:

1 -It's gotta make the part look better than bare or stock
2 -It's gotta make sense. (That 100% chrome bike is crazy)
3 -It's gotta make the bike more interesting

I've got about 6 more chrome items to put on my bike, including chroming the swing arm, a chrome RC rear pulley, and polished stainless rear brake disc, then she's done. I'm doing those items because now they are highly visible with the stock exhaust removed.

Here is my bike as she sits now. The swingarm and the rest will be done right before everyone else turns their bikes in for the winter lay-up-

 

Remember the days when guys would constantly be working on their cars or trucks and only have them primmered?
Harley ran promo shots of the denim bikes sitting in front of a garage implying they were hotrods under construction.

 

If I had the coin to do it, I'd get rid of most all the chrome on my bike. I have removed a few things that I didn't have to replace (and a few that I did). I took the chrome coil cover off a while back and like the look a lot more, even with the stock coil hanging off there.

I had wanted a Springer for several years but wouldn't buy one because the forks were chrome. As soon and the Classics came out in 05 with the black forks, I bought one.

I don't want to be noticed and I don't want to polish, dirty chrome looks like **** and my bike only looks about 10% like **** most of time.

Gotta admit though, a bike with well maintained chrome is a pretty sight to see. My OL loves chrome on bikes. I told her I'll put on all she wants if she will clean and polish it. She said she don't like it that much.

 

I don't see the cleaning and polishing issue with chrome. I wash it with the same auto or bike concentrate I wash the whole bike with, and never have dull, oxidized, or rusty chrome. I wax it with the Meguiars carnauba wax same as the bike. It looks good all the time.

Don't be afraid to chrome things in today's world, the chrome is no problem to maintain at all.....

The only time I've "polished" chrome was the rear end of my BMW's exhaust pipes where they collected a lot of carbon build up after a long trip.

 

I think of chrome as something I did as a kid. My first few Harley's couldn't have enough chrome or shiny paint. My current one is a flat black FXDBI. I even replaced the biggest piece of chrome on her, the air cleaner cover, with a flat black one.