We see it all of the time, most any road bike with more than
ten or fifteen thousand miles on it has the bottom of the
fork/front-hub all chewed-up by sand and salt. Wax is no
protection, even spray-on clear-coat doesn't hold up for
very long. If you live near the ocean the pits caused by
sand immediately begin to corrode, creating an ugly mess.
Clear-coat actually makes this WORSE - the salt getting
under the coating, where you can't polish it away.
This seems a universal problem. So, are there companies
that sell some kind of 'condom' that fits over the front
hub ? Yea, we occasionally see some bulky 'stylish'
chrome covers - but not everyone is going for that look.
What I'm looking for are close-fitting covers made of
metallized plastic (kinda like those flexible trim
strips you can buy at the local auto-parts store)
over-covers that can be easily fixed, bolted, even
glued to the front hub. Stainless steel would be OK
too. Even a thick clear plastic would be OK.
(Plastic-wize, a softer 'bouncier' plastic usually
resists abrasive particles better than a hard one.
Try to sand-blast a part with RTV silicone on it
sometime and you'll see what I mean - you can
almost eat away the bare metal before you'll
penetrate the silicone-covered layer)
Anyway, the idea is that when they get all nasty
and eaten-up, you can either just toss 'em or (if
metal) take 'em off and put them on a polishing
wheel. Most newer bikes have a little metal shield
that protects the lower ends of the actual fork
tubes, but the hub itself is left unprotected.
Seems like this sort of accessory wouldn't be very hard
for a manufacturer to make - you basically take a mold
or profile measurments of the hubs on popular bikes
(and bike-makers tend to use the same hubs on several
models so that cuts down on the variety). Once you
have your mold you can make 'em by the thousands for
pennies each.
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