As you know, I love how the R5 looks. I'll admit to actually taking the time to stop and look over that bike more often than I find to be healthy. It's a stunner. The only thing that bothers me about the look of the bike is the FSA bar I'm running. The bike is a nice grey/white/blue/black colour way and the FSA bar is carbon/white/red. the red bit, and the fact that there are little tiny words and numbers under where the stem face plate is drives me crazy. It's the only part of the bike that looks sloppy. So I'm fixing that.
Today it was slow at the shop because of snow, so I brought my bar in and spent a good chunk of time with a razor blade and sand paper removing just about everything. I kept the textured paint when the shifters mount because I don't like it when shifters slip and because it will be covered by shifters and bar tape. At the moment, I have left the textured paint in the center of the bar but I will be removing it shortly. I would love to put down my own coat of textured paint there after I finish the bar, but so far I haven't had any luck tracking any down. The reason I haven't removed that section yet is because I'm going to finish the rest of the bar and then tape off what is done, strip the center section, and then paint that black so I know where the center of the bar is. I would love to paint in black and then cover the black section with textured paint so the bar is less likely to rotate if I put a larger than normal stress on it. I have one of their alloy bars that has glossy white paint with no texture and it has never slipped, but I'm actually a function over form guy, despite all of the written evidence in the three paragraphs that I just wrote contradicting that. This project is a DIY motivated by looks but I still want to be safe on my bike.
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