Spiral GFX - Review - Ride It Out

We’ve been running Spiral GFX kit on our team bikes for all of last year. Emyr Davies looks back at how they’ve held up from a seasons worth of shredding and frame bashing.

So having been racing in the UK now for 10 years, from my youth days, struggling to clear a 5ft double, to now breaking a top 5 in Elite at national level. There is one problem that is still just as annoying now as it was then – Getting big dirty scratches on your DH bike. Whether it be after an epic crash in a rock garden (these usually involve injury to the body also) or watching your bike getting mashed by a foreign handle-bar-end on an uplift (usually at Moelfre!).

Scratching your beloved paint work sucks big time so there are two options when it comes to solving this issue –

Option 1
Be an idiot at the uplift queue and let everyone else go on first and go on last and hold on to your bike while everyone else’s bike gets destroyed!
There is a funny story here that happened a few years back involving a pro rider (you know who you are) and my mate Buds (manager at Antur Stiniog). The pro rider was one of these ‘above’ types, and Buds, being new to the concept of uplifting at the time, wasn’t having any of this waiting to go on last business. Buds, coming from working in the deepest darkest slate mines in Wales, dealt with it like any Welsh man would, he told him to “**** off! Or I’ll knock you out!” That quickly solved option one.

Option 2
Get some quality frame protection.

This year the Rideitout team was sponsored by Spiral GFX, they provided me some custom made frame protection decals.

These high end stickers did a fantastic job of protecting my frame all season long, so now when the time comes to part with my bike, peel the stickers off and she will look absolutely prime.

Application is pretty key with these graphics, the longer you take to get them on perfectly the longer they will last. Heating up the graphics with a hair dryer does wonders, this helps soften the vinyl and glue aiding ease of getting them stuck over the contours of your frame. That’s one great feature of this product – it sticks to uneven surfaces like welds without an issue, just give it a bit more heat and you’re winning.

Spiral Graphics are an MX graphic company at heart, this is where many of their vinyl products have come from. The MTB specific graphics are a little different though, slightly thinner and lighter for the MTB market, but still tough as hell.

The other function of the stickers is they look mint! You have control over what they look like. For us at Rideitout it was great as we were able to print our team sponsors on them, and I even got me name on there like a right pro!

If you wanted to trick your bike out even further, or yourself, then have a look at the rest of Spiral GFX product range, ranging from crank decals through to Leatt neck brace decals.

The Spiral GFX frame decals are a custom kit that is already cut into shapes that fit each individual frame perfectly, no faffing about making templates out of paper, and cutting clear heli tape, just stick em on, make your bike look rad (you can even have your name on there kids!) and go out riding without worrying about where the next scratch is going to come from.

Over the past year our bikes have taken a beating both on and off the track. When properly applied these graphics seem to keep superficial frame damage at bay. Twelve months down the line and the original graphics are still stuck on strong, doing their protective job and looking the part.

Frame decal kits start from £38.95, if you are after a fully custom kit though expect to pay more. If you like to replace your bike year on year, you’ll easy make the money you spent on the stickers back selling a scratch free frame. Protect your bike for the 2015 season and stand out from the crowd!