Protection- Part 2

Crank arm caps and protective clear stickers applied here.

Last week I mentioned that I received some Zefal products to test out that are designed to help keep your gravel, mountain, or road bike clean and shiny. Well, as I cleaned up from Saturday's ride I decided that I should apply the protective devices on my Twin Six Standard Rando.

The "stickers" are really just clear, sort of rubbery deals that peel off a sheet and are applied to the frame directly wherever you might get cable rub, chain slap, or where you intend to strap on bags. The Zefal kit comes with one chain stay sized "sticker", one massive sticker for a down tube, (most likely use), and several rectangular and circular patches that probably work best wherever cable housings might come in contact with your frame's finish.

Sure, there are any number of ways to accomplish this task to get the same effect, but it is nice to have everything pre-cut and ready for you. Plus, the application can sometimes be tricky with other means to this end. Not so with the Zefal stuff here. I found it to be sufficiently tacky, but not so sticky that if you wanted to pull it back a bit you couldn't. Plus, it conformed to the undulations of my "S" bend chain stays without wrinkling or lifting in spots. That's the "rubbery" bit working, I reckon. Finally, it lays down and doesn't give you fits trying to work out air pockets. In fact, that part was easier than with anything else I have tried. Kudos to Zefal on that feature alone.

The selection of patches you have to work with. The top one is the huge, longer one meant for the down tube. 

I put the biggest patch on my top tube to protect it from frame bags.

The Standard Rando has cables that run underneath the down tube in full housing runs held on by special frame clips that are removable and configurable. Because of this, rocks have little to no chance of contacting the down tube as they get spewed off the front tire. So, I opted to use the patch normally used on down tubes as a top tube protector so frame bags and top tube bags won't roach the pretty green powder coating.

You can see how rocks have already dinged my SRAM Rival crank arm end.

So, you may not think your crank arms are getting dinged on your gravel going rig, but they are. Yes, most likely, they are. So, if you have some of those fancy, carbon crank arm dealios, this may be of great interest to you, as carbon isn't very friendly with indentations. That leads to things we'd rather not think about. Aluminum just gets nasty looking, so, if you care, even you aluminum crank arm users may want to check this out.

Capped off and protected. Put a helmet on it, Soldier!

Maybe you don't give a rip about rock dings and you want to flaunt that scarred up component as a badge of honor. Your gravel miles earned such damage. I get that. However; some folks kind of want to maintain the over all appearance of their rigs for as long as possible for whatever reasons. I get that as well. If the latter describes you, then these crank arm end protectors are for you, perhaps.

So, I'll run these the rest of the Summer into Fall and then I'll check back in with my take on how this stuff holds up and how it does its job of protecting.

NOTE: This stuff showed up on my bench at work, with no note, contact info, or anything. So, I am trying it out for free, and I am not being paid by Zefal, or bribed by them to get this info out here on the blog. If anyone would like to step up to claim responsibility for this stuff being presented here, I'd be glad to give them credit. So, there ya go.........