I know, I shouldn't do it. I'm stupid. Why am I wasting perfectly good parts? Becausing tricking out your ride is fun, albeit in an entirely different way from riding.

I have some aluminum cranks (mavic 631's found here ) and a pair of miche primato hubs that I want to paint black.

Any suggestions on how to go about it? I've considered to following:

Spray Painting: A little cheesy. I paid good money for these parts. I don't want to just spray paint them like a lameass

Anodizing: The real problem here is, the parts are already anodized. To re-anodize them myself, I would have to remove the current anodizing then reandodize them, losing some aluminum along the way (which I would imagine, would make a cog and lockring a pain in the balls to thread on, not to mention bearings).

Powder Coating: I can't find anyone who is willing to powder coat single small parts, and those kids are kind of expensive, when you consider what you'll need (a gun, powder, compressor. it's like $300 after everything is said and done).

Chemical Blackeners: There are a few chemical blackeners, similar to Black Oxide (used on steel gun parts, etc), but apparently, they don't work on anodized aluminum. Go figure.

So, any suggestions?

Sand off the old anodized aluminum on areas of the parts that do not thread. Leave the threading parts alone. Re-anodize. Dye. Seal.

i think you should look harder for a powdercoater that will work with your price and small parts needs.

I've baked enamael paints onto components. The idea is similar to pro- car metal and even copper enamaeling.

I did 120 degrees for 20 min, 3 coats. in the oven.

Glassed up good, took a major knock with a pointed metal to chip out.

Cheapest enamael worked best??? Generic 'Colorall' seeemed to work really well.

The metal has to be 'prepared' to have paint (sanding, cleaning)

An idea anyway. I don't know enough about post cast heat treatment of Alu to go for cranks tho- that would require some reaserch.

I'm surprised you can't find a powdercoater to do your work. I've heard a lot will offer cheap rates on small items as long as you're cool going with someone else's color. They just do your stuff at the same time as Joe's tri frame.

sell the parts on ebay and buy ones in the color you want. btw, this officially makes you a color weenie.

I think you should spraypaint them all gold, and then you can brag about how much bling your bike has.

don't forget to clear coat the gold...and do all of this is in a small, sealed room. Ah...huffin'

jeff,
is this spray enamel or brush on? do you bake each coat on or did you apply the three coats then bake it? i have some old 105 cranks i might give this a try on... i'm not too sure about the heat treat of cast aluminum either, but with welding 6000 series aluminum it needs to be heat treated by baking and quenching in oil, where as 7000 series aluminum is baked for awhile around 400ish degrees. so perhaps the 120 degrees wouldn't affect be hot enough to affect it...

Rattle can spray. I baked three times. I did a bashring, the upper parts of the seatpost...crank bolts, got crazy, then I stripped it all off.

I get bored.

It was hard enough to do a mtb bashring? It sure didn't come off like normal spraypaint.

It worked best on Alu with a stippled? etched or irregular surface, or emery paper a surface to get the paint to stick. clean with acetone..(or maybe Vodka) to remove hand oils before spraying.

jeff, thanks for the info. i scored some old 105 cranks off a bike that was covered in sap. i've sanded them down to get the sap off and was thinking of polishing them, but this idea sounds like fun. i get bored too.

why did you strip it off again?

i'll save the vodka to clean out my mouth. it's filthy, so i think it's going to take a good amount.

http://www.bikeforums.net/showthread.php?t=70134

My bikes a MONSTER. An incline frame so I guess wicked. Red is the fastest color, I was getting close to uncontrollable speed so I removed some red and doped the bike up with some black plastic to keep it grounded.

Now its just hella fast.

Ya, don't mistakenly drink acetone, you'll die.
I stripped it 'cause it looked stupid.

you can use picklex to pre treat before painting. oven baking at paint-curing temperatures will not anneal the aluminum. it will, in fact, contribute to strengthening to some small degree. it takes much higher temps to soften.
bling that thing for mad street cred.

Instead of colored rings and stuff, today I got some nice stickers of the Blessed Virgin Mary and put one as my headbadge and one on my stem.

The headbadge one is for if I'm laying in the road dying.

The one on the stem is to remind me to keep my temper with the cagers, we're all @$'les sometimes.

This is a good idea. I had thought about baked enamels, but not very seriously.

The main advantage is, the mavic cranks are 2014-T6 (2014 aluminum is *always* heat-treaded and aged, which is what the T6 means. Check here for more info), which means 120F isn't going to effect the metal. A problem is, I don't know what alloy is used on the mich primato hubs. ALL of the lit online says "anodized aluminum alloy," which tells me nothing.

I had doubts as to the resulting strength of my parts after powdercoating. They cure it at insanely high temps. Any metallurgists want to weigh in here?

So, jeff, some questions. Any top coats? What brands did you use? I couldn't find anything via google. Where did you get your enamels and roughly how much money did the whole process cost you? It sounds fairly cheap. Did you use your home oven? Is your home oven gas-powered, or electric? If the fumes are flammable, I don't want to blow up my whole house.

Thanks for the tips!

Smells great, use the oven and use coathangers. I tried ? tremclad, and cheap 'colorall'
worked best.

Get some scrap metal and test whatever half cans you can, compare and go buy.

I spent 3.99$. Electrical usage cost negligible.

I had color change around 140 degrees, the red went burgundy.

yer hub is probably 6061-T6, unless they found some reason to use a different alloy. 6061 is super easy to machine, you can really kick the feed rates up.