If you had to pick a color!

[Kingfish]

I am reconfiguring P0 to accommodate faster speed, hence the aeroshell treatment. Here is a current picture of the bike: Mainly black frame with red logos.


My panniers are Ortlieb Yellow/Black.

Apparel: I typically wear the bright yellow "Seattle Jacket" for visibility during the dark winters, but in the daylight, especially if it is warm - anything goes.

• Black is certainly stealthy, but not good for winter and hottest to touch in the summer.
• I was thinking white for a small front faring; bright, easy to see me coming from a distance.
• Sides could be blue, green, red, or yellow:
  
  • Arrest-Me Red is visually striking
  • Forest Green has that cammo-statement
  • Sky Blue is aspiring
  • Canary Yellow is dazzling...
  • while Cloud White might be best for urban assault
  • Fog-Gray and Natural would hide me best when raining.

Bah! I can't decide. Maybe I should have two or three to suit my mood


Example colors of HDPE opaque sheets.

What would you pick?
Enjoy, KF

[Zoot Katz]

For visibility, I can only relate my own observations.
Bright pink attracts attention and tends to hold the eye longer than other colours. It looks good with black.
Day Glo Fluorescent Hot Pink helmets stand out above all others both on bright days and dusk/dawn/overcast lighting conditions.
White is second best but better at night.

[amberwolf]

I tend to agree with Zoot Katz; though I prefer DayGlo Orange to Pink, Pink is more visible in daylight conditions from predawn thru twilight, and far less common on the roads. However, Orange is often more visible at night; something about it seems to respond better to any headlights or other lighting with a little UV in it, than Pink does. Or maybe in nighttime conditions the eye (mine at least) picks it out better?

Here in AZ, white is good as it keep stuff under it cooler as well as being very night-visible.

Something else you could consider for visibility and stealth: 3M stealth reflector tape. It can be black until light hits it in a beam strongly enough to reflect back, and then it's your usual 3M blindingly white (or whatever). Apply as racing stripes to your regularly-colored fairing.

What I personally intend eventually is to have the bikes in a sort of DayGlo flame motif, with Yellow at the front, orange in the middle, fading to red at the back. This also matches the typical lighting marker color of amber front red rear, and so people should be able to figure out which is the front and back of my vehicle even in daylight, no matter what wierd shape I might end up with.


OT: I see you're using a BioPace crankset like my DayGlo Avenger? Is it the 44-34-24? I kinda wish I could find them in bigger sizes (cheap and used like the ones I got already).

[Kingfish]

...
Something else you could consider for visibility and stealth: 3M stealth reflector tape. It can be black until light hits it in a beam strongly enough to reflect back, and then it's your usual 3M blindingly white (or whatever). Apply as racing stripes to your regularly-colored fairing.
...
OT: I see you're using a BioPace crankset like my DayGlo Avenger? Is it the 44-34-24? I kinda wish I could find them in bigger sizes (cheap and used like the ones I got already).

Reflector tape: Great idea

BioPace: AW, that is so funny you mention it:
The crankset is a Shimano Exage 400 LX Biopace. I inspected it last night and discovered that I had at least three chipped/worn-off teeth on the outer ring. Moments ago I placed an order with http://www.ebikestop.com and put in a replacement series.

The original is 28-39?-48 which matches quite well with my 11-28 7-Speed freewheel. I just can’t seem to find a decent 11-X freewheel anymore; I am not putting on the knockoffs (have you heard the sound of those noisy cogs?). The new series will be 24-38-54, with each ring specified as “No ramps or pins”; details:

1. Sugino 24t 74mm MTB Chainring
2. Sugino 38t 110mm MTB Chainring
3. Sugino 54t 110mm MTB Chainring

Sub Total: $83.85

The truth is that the Biopace wasn’t working out for me and on these 100-mile rides I found that I was experiencing pogo from high-rotation trying to keep up with the bike which affected my knees

~KF

[amberwolf]

Reflector tape: Great idea

Now that I have some, I kinda use it a lot. You can see it all over the kennel trailer and here and there on DGA; all but the red/white bars is the good stuff from 3M, in yellow, highlighter green, and white. The red/white bars are a friend's leftovers from HF, when he added a bike carrier to the rear of his car, and thought it wise to add something so people parking behind him at night could better see it without hitting it, when no bikes are on it, among other reasons.

Since I do not yet have a good paint job on DGA, I haven't put the tape on the way I really want to, so I don't waste it or screw it up trying to mask it/etc. when I do get the money to repaint it.

BioPace: AW, that is so funny you mention it:
The crankset is a Shimano Exage 400 LX Biopace. I inspected it last night and discovered that I had at least three chipped/worn-off teeth on the outer ring. Moments ago I placed an order with http://www.ebikestop.com and put in a replacement series.

Hmm...how much do you want for the old Biopace rings, shipped to Phoenix, AZ 85051? They *should* fit the LX cranks I have mine on. I was wrong on mine; I thought for some reason they were 24-34-44, but they're 28-38-48, same as yours, but these could be spares for later on (I have two complete cranksets found in a bike shop's used junk shelf, one in excellent nearly-new condition, and the somewhat worn ones I'm using now).

The original is 28-39?-48 which matches quite well with my 11-28 7-Speed freewheel. I just can’t seem to find a decent 11-X freewheel anymore; I am not putting on the knockoffs (have you heard the sound of those noisy cogs?).

I don't think I've ever had an 11T; I think 16T is the smallest I've had. I do have a 28" or 29" bike someone abandoned here over a year and a half ago, with a 9spd freehub cassette that I think is 11-34 or something like that, but the bike itself has a cracked rear seat stay (among other problems), and is an alloy frame, so I haven't actually ridden it more than to just check it out; I really don't feel like testing that frame much. I don't have anything else the wheel will fit on (except two old very tall 10spds that I can't even get onto, much less ride--standing next to them, the top tube is somewhere above my bladder ).

I *have* had plenty of cheap freewheels, and the only way I can make them quiet is to grease them, not just oil. At first after I do that, the pawls sometimes stick down, so it won't reengage, if it's cold. Fortunately it's hardly ever that cold here.

The truth is that the Biopace wasn’t working out for me and on these 100-mile rides I found that I was experiencing pogo from high-rotation trying to keep up with the bike which affected my knees

On any long ride I always have to take them slow so I would never notice that; I wouldn't be able to last very long even with motor assist if I had to pedal fast *and* provide useful power input. My knees are already shot, so that would be too much, even if I had the endurance for it. I don't know what the longest ride I've ever done was, but over 50 miles in a day, when riding around looking for scrapped stuff for my projects mostly. That was before my ebike projects really started, and before my knees got so bad; I don't yet have enough battery power to assist me thru such rides yet. With the early version of DayGlo Avenger MkI's friction drive, I rode maybe 40 miles as it's longest trip, stopping to partially recharge the worn-out SLA a couple of times, and trying not to use too much battery power; I think I would've been better off not having the assist in that particular case, as the SLA and stuff weighed so much vs the assist I could ration myself to that it about made up for the power it took to haul it around.

[kmxtornado]

I would choose clear simply so I could see through it. It'd also be less of a distraction from the rest of the bike. Any sort of fairing is weird looking enough. Adding too much solid colors would take away from everything else. I've never actually seen an aeroshell or fairing on a bicycle though. Do you have a picture of what you imagine it would look like? That'd probably give us a better idea to judge what color to recommend. Some sort of clear smoke color would probably go well with your ride.