Thanks to one Mr Steven Costa I received a free pair of GT fork standers with some other items I brought that just needed a little love to get them back in the game.
One of the pins where the peg pivots had bust so quick trip to B@Q located me a neat little bolt to replace it. Once I had done one it looked neat so I knocked the pin out of the other and did the same ( watch out you don't lose the metal washers from the end of the original rubbers when you take them off )
Second problem - the GT rubbers were green and the build I'm going isn't. After convincing myself that you can't dye rubber ( there's one US product that its supposed to do it but its $100 a tin! ) I was stuck for ideas and had decided to just spray them up for show.
Then I realized that seeing as I had them apart I could replace the rubber with whatever I wanted... and it just so happened that the nice AME grips I had waiting to do on my bike fitted perfectly ( to the diameter of the hole ) - but obviously they were too long. Also the ones I had were A'me Rounds and the pattern wasn't going to cut neatly.
I reckoned solution was to go for a coloured 'mushroom' type grip as that can be easily cut neatly. E-bay has loads of cheap mushrooms in any colour for £3.50 so I thought I'd try out these first. It would be even better to get some mini grips but there isn't too many around these days. The mushrooms also allow for the compression / expansion of putting the fork standers up and down... sweet! but there again - any rubber will allow this.
As for cutting - I was considering a kind of 'hot wire' technique as even with a sharp stanley knife they are hard to cut neatly - I did one well but the other side was a bugger! This is mainly due to the fact that once you cut the ends off they lose some rigidity - so its easier to get it right first time. Got there in the end though! I ended up sticking an old pizza tray on the gas and pressing the rough end of the cut grip down as I turned them around to get a nice neat end. Quite a bit of rubber smoke and a mildly irritated wife later I had some neat ends!
The Ame grips where much tighter when I slid them onto the bar than the cheapy mushrooms so, obviously really, better grips would give better results.
In the end I was pretty pleased for a first go - check the pictures
NEXT WEEK : How to crochet Haro Y-Fronts
