I have noticed that the manufacturers have gone away from white rims or color matched rims. I think it is a bad move. I remember when a green Ninja came with green rims, you could get red rims on a honda cbr600 and white went with most things. Gold rims on the VFR750 were sweet! Cleaning rims isn't the most fun, but for a much better look, I would happily do it. Am I alone on this?
White rims collect too much crap real quick. I clean mine and a day later it looks like i haven't done a thing to em.
I'm partial to chrome too, but can't afford it I bought some mirror chrome powder coating to try out but I haven't yet. Mostly out of fear of disappointment with the results, I just think the rims on anything should "pop". Monocromatic scheme's can tend to just blend together & white(which I have now) as vman stated are insanely difficult to keep clean, especially the rear one. Black rims look cool some times too, kind of a dark manly look don't F' with me look.eep:
I always liked the look of white rims with the red but yea they are a pain to keep clean. I've stuck with the black rims I have now mainly because I don't like chrome ones with the red. Now if I had a yellow bike, definitely white or chrome rims.
I'll chime in here saying that I really loathe the black wheels on my '95. They do nothing for the bike aside from hiding the fact that they look so crappy that no one bothers to clean them anyway. I will admit, I do clean mine, and they do have a nice shine when polished up...but as T-Bone said, wheels should "pop", and the black ones don't even "fizz". The white or chrome wheels do a much better job of showing off that beautiful swingarm and look more high-tech in general. I think color-matching is pretty cool, and should at least be a dealer option....they are always looking for more ways to make money, right?....duh ! Of course, beauty is always in the eye of the beholder Mike
What about annodized? What do you guys think about annodized rims? I agree with TBone that rims should "pop" but most of us don't put out the time, effort or $$$ to make it happen. Seems like there was a time in racing (MotoGP, etc.) when even mismatched color seemed to be making a run -- or was that just racing teams making quick switches due to conditions (maybe)? At the risk of possibly offending with an opposing brand respresentation, a good example of an annodized look is on the bike below -- hey, at least it is a single swingarm! http://www.speed-design.nl/pages/images/MV-Augusta-F4-Tamburini_000.jpg Or a combo of chrome and annodized? http://www.geocities.com/untersa/augusta.jpg What do you think?
Annodized would be cool, you can actually acheive a annodized look w/ a transparent candy powder coat over mirrored chromed powder coat or just over polished metal/aluminum etc.
