I replaced the old Gommitalia tubular tires on my Raleigh Team Pro with Tufo S3 Lites, chosen because they are light (<215 g) and were >50% off (and thus less than half the price of tanwall Veloflex). But the Tufos are blackwall. As I feared, it doesn't look right. The bike wants tan/gumwall tires.
Has anyone ever used something to "paint" the sidewall of a blackwall tire to simulate a gumwall? What would you use? Or would you just slap yourself hard and go deal with something that actually matters?
I think originally, gumwalls were made, not by painting, but by making the tire carcass out of natural rubber, without carbon black in it, then adding the tread layer, with the black, during pressing. Car whitewalls are made by adding a strip of white rubber on the sides during manufacture. If you look at old tires, the inside is a tan colour, while newer tires are black throughout. Of course it's much cheaper to manufacture an all-black tire, which is why they are that way now. No paint will stick for very long, and few white/gum wall tires don't look dirty quickly, which is why it fell out of fashion.