I've asked some questions before about upgrading my old '88 Prologue which I intend to be my racing (tri) and training bike. But now I've had a lot of time to think about it and get a better idea on what to do and already started buying some parts for a modern 10 speed cassette conversion. I put this here instead of vintage specifically trying to avoid the vintage folks wanting to keep it all original. I love vintage bikes and have a few and plan on getting more. This build will be more about functionality than vintage looks although i want to keep it looking good at least. So for starters here is a good pic of what it looks like now except that I have a different seat on it...



Frame is red and white, and all polished components.

Originally I was going to keep it similar - and get all chrome components. However there where a few things I could not get in chrome and have to get black... like I got Profile T4+ black aerobars. I'm also using this as an experiment for a 1x10 drivetrain with a DropStop narrow-wide chainring and its only available in black (WolfTooth). I couldn't find any new wheels that were silver, lightweight, and aero (and reasonably inexpensive) but I could get them in black and white. I have some Fulcrum Quattros (special edition with white hubs) on their way:



I still thought the mix of white, black, and polished silver trim would be ok but I think I have too many colors going on. Seems to be I should limit to 3 colors... a 2-tone frame and one other color for trim would be ok. But 4 colors seems to be too much. Then I started thinking maybe I'd just ditch the polished look - white and red looks great and goes well with black. I'll keep all the polished upgrades for my metallic blue '88 Tempo I'm also modernizing, and then use black parts to complete this build (black crank, stem, seatpost, etc).

What do you think? Go with black parts or would it still look good to mix black and polished parts on a red and white frame?

This is the wrong place. This place is about turning a pile of tubes into a frame rather than turning a frame into a complete bike. Look more closely at the C&V forum. They don't have a problem with vintage frames updated with modern components. There is a thread, currently 198 pages long with almoest 5000 posts, dedicated to that very subject. I think it's titled "retro roadies-old frames with STIs or Ergos".

I moved this here from framebuilding. Do what you want, it's your bike.