Whether it is pristine custom paint, cable housing rubbing on carbon or a chain slapping a steel chainstay, you should be protecting your frame. There are many options for bike frame protection for different applications. Figure out which one is right for your frame and wallet.
Helicopter Tape For Bike Frame Protection
The intention of the original frame protection tape, helicopter tape, is to protect helicopter rotor blades from debris that could damage them and alter the handling of the helicopter. The durability of the tape lends itself to protecting bicycle frames from stones you may encounter on the road or trail that could damage your frame.
Bike Specific Tape
The next generation of bike frame protection is bike specific frame tape. Effetto Mariposa Shelter Frame Protection Tape claims to have fifty layers of impact dissipating netting to spread the energy of an impact across the tape and not into the frame. This will preserve both the paint and carbon fiber frame integrity.
Lower tech but higher quantity tape is available to cover your needs as well. It will not have the same impact resistance as the Shelter tape, but will still be a good choice for most incidental impact and paint protection. You will have to weigh the cost of tape versus how much a repair or replacement of a broken frame from an impact with a rock, along with the likelihood of such a large impact occurring.
Watch the Cables
When you are building up your prized frame, watch the cable routing. Sometimes the worst damage comes from repeated small cable rubbing, not the big impact you are expecting. Try to avoid cable housing rubbing on the frame. If you cannot, small clear stickers of helicopter tape should go on the frame at the contact point.
Chain Slap
Chain slap on a road bike is not as common as on a mountain bike. Your road bike will be fine with a layer of tape on the chainstay for the occasional slap. On a mountain bike, where the impact is regular, you will want to put something a little thicker to quiet the frequent chain slap and offer more protection to the paint and frame.
The Hack Route
The cheap way to protect your frame uses more readily available tapes and will protect your paint from most impacts. If you are not riding on trails with big, loose rocks, this will probably suffice. The cheap option is also great for cable rub. For black areas, electrical tape does the trick. If you are really motivated, you can find colored electrical tape to match your frame. It is sticky enough to hold for the life of a frame and is easy to find, is cheap, and has many other uses.
The option for frames that are not black is slightly less easy to find, but is also cheap and is at your local sporting goods store – clear hockey tape. It is not as clear as the fancier clear tapes above, but it is far cheaper and does as good of a job protecting from cable rub or chain slap. Nobody will notice unless they are looking closely anyway. It is even good enough to silence exposed cables that slap the frame instead of cable doughnuts. Those bunch up at the cable stops anyway; the tape never moves.
Tape Up
For these tapes, and all others, feel free to cut the tape to length and shape to ideally fit your frame. A small piece of bike frame protection tape will go a long way to maximizing the lifetime and appearance of your frame.
