Seattle Forrest

Thanks to Bike Snob NYC, I saw an article about Kanye West's glow in the dark bike. It has fred pedals and no brakes. But it glows in the dark, so that you'll never be called a ninja, even if your batteries die and reflectors fall off - which can't happen on this bike, because it doesn't seem to come with reflectors.

Dodgensince74

I read this thread earlier and while cruising the local craigslist I saw this one https://phoenix.craigslist.org/evl/bik/1968040272.html

unterhausen

most powder coaters will put glow-in-the-dark paint on your bike. I understand it's not very good. I was trying to get a painter to try some reflective paint, he said it was too difficult to work with

Speedo

I've seen some glow in the dark bikes in action. They are pretty underwhelming.

Speedo

meanwhile

You could have a decent GITD bike, but the cots would be horrific. Highly quality GITD paints are not cheap; you have to power a fair amount of money before a watch maker will give you a watch with killer lume, even though only small amounts of the stuff are used. (A $250 Seiko diver would probably be the cheapest - partly because they're 1/5 or less of the cost of an equally good Swiss watch, partly because Seiko sells lume to most of the world's mid and high end watch companies.) My guess for painting a bike in high quality lume would be $200-$500.

xenologer

Glow is going to indistinguishable from any normal light colored paint to a driver at night who's eyes are going to be not dark-adapted at all due to his constant use of headlights.
ie inadequate, put the retro-reflectors back on and utilize all that glaring headlight falloff to be visible...

Wizel603

Full frame and wheel illumination using tritium gas would be an interesting challenge, but the result should be quite spectacular. Though I suppose then that one could honestly blame the bicycle for any impotence issues suffered from riding.

billdsd

The glow is not that bright and lasts for a limited amount of time after the bike is no longer exposed to significant amounts of light.

Reflective paint would be a much better idea, but I am under the impression that it's harder to work with. With road paint, I've been told that they spray very tiny glass beads onto the wet paint to get the high reflectance. I'm guessing that's a lot easier with a flat horizontal surface like a road than it is with a curved surface like a bike frame. Seems like it should still be doable though.