This all started several years ago with a pile of leftover parts and a "what could possibly go wrong?" attitude.

I was in possession of a beat-up black 26" coaster brake bike with orange rims and black hubs & spokes. I thought the bike would look better with black rims, so I unbuilt the wheels and rebuilt them with black rims. Once that black bike cleaned up and came together, it was great - so good that it sold in minutes for $200 at the height of covid to a woman who said it was exactly what she was looking for since before the mess. Yay. So far so good.




So now I have a set of 26" bright orange rims just yelling "buillld meeee!" So I laced them into a set of spare cassette hubs and installed them on the bike I call the "Great Pumpkin" - a Specialized in nearly the same shade of orange. Win-win!

Not quite. I discovered that the orange paint on the sidewalls didn't behave the same as prior colored anodized rims I'd had - no matter what brake shoe or compound type I used, applying brakes would result in unpredictable deceleration and a howl that embarrassed the Mafacs on my fixie. And the rim accumulated gobs of shoe junk on the sidewalls, too.





I finally decided that even though I'd already put a bunch of work into these cheap inexpensive wheels, I'd have to put in some more and remove the paint from the sidewalls. But hopefully without removing that glorious orange color from the rest of the rim.

After some trial and error, it seems the least-destructive method is scrubbing with a Goof-Off soaked towel and scraping the softened paint with a fingernail. The fumes are fun, and it's working without marring the sidewall or destroying the paint I want to keep, but it's sloooow. They used thick paint. So I'm only doing one small part at a time, then recovering by going off to do something more interesting such as paying work or pondering the fate of the universe, then doing a little more. But the parts I've finished look good so far.



At this rate, I think I'll be done by... July. Maybe. But most of my career has been "elephant-eating" assignments, so I'll just keep at it one piece at a time. At least I have the Goof-Off fumes to keep me happy...