How to Make Cheap Frame Protection For Your Bike!

Today we’re making an inexpensive frame protector with materials you probably already have laying around the house. So if you’re cheap (like me), got a few minutes, and want to protect your bike, let’s go ahead and get started. For materials you will need an old bike tire you no longer plan on using, some good scissors, and some zip ties. Now if you don’t have an old tire, I would not recommend buying one just for this project, but chances are you’ve replaced tires and got some old ones laying around. I say some good scissors because mine are complete trash and it made this process more difficult than it needed to be. I ended up using some park tool cable cutters to cut the bead of the tire with ease! With the zip ties I recommend getting at least the 12” ones because I did this originally with shorter ones, had to double them up, and it looked awful. First, we need to cut the tire so it’s no longer round. If you have nice scissors this shouldn’t be too hard, but if you’re struggling cable cutters worked great. Next identify the area of your frame you want to protect. I chose to do the downtube as well as my chainstay on my hardtail. Now measure out how much tire you need and cut that piece off. You’ll also want to cut off the sidewalls of the tire or else it won’t lay flat on the bike and will look like this. Feel free to get creative with cut outs if you have externally routed cables or anything else you don’t want covered. Now go ahead and slap it on your frame as flat as possible and start zip tying it down. Depending on how long your “frame protector” is will determine how many zip ties to use, but I found 4 to 5 did the trick. And Viola! You’re expensive pride and joy is now a bit safer. Now this method does have some pros and cons, so let’s go ahead and touch on those.  It’s cheap granted you have a tire laying around you don’t mind destroying  It’s durable. Tires take a lot of abuse, so what better way to protect your bike? I think this will also be tougher than the stick on frame protectors. If I can get my hands on some, I’ll gladly put them to the test.  It’s easy. This took me less than 10 minutes to do, and one tire was able to cover two bikes with some tire to spare. You could easily cover the majority of your bike.  It looks pretty cool. At least that’s my opinion.  It looks awful. You may be on this side of the argument, and to you I say this isn’t the frame protection for you.  It’s heavy. This is a heavier option than a stick on protector, but if you’re that worried about weight, you’re probably a road biker. I hope you found this information helpful or at the very least enjoyable to watch. What do you guys think of this protection? Is it a great budget option or would you rather die before slapping this on your rig? Let me know in the comments below. As always if you did enjoy this video, please don’t forget to give it a thumbs up, and consider subscribing if you aren’t already. A new adventure on wheels awaits you weekly, and we’d love to have you here. Thanks so much for watching and until next week, stay rowdy within reason.