Bikes by Steve | Custom Bicycle Paint

Bikes By Steve.

For nearly 2 decades, Steve Gardner has painted cars primarily but made the bold decision last year to steer his skills in the direction of a life long passion - bicycles.

In a short space of time, Steve has accumulated a number of steady clients including locals Bastion, Curve Cycling and Prova Cycles, Luescher Teknik on top of a growing number of custom restorations and repair resprays.

Using the PPG paint system with an array of guns he can paint any colour under the sun and stars, as well paint to supplied Pantones for colour accuracy / matchy matchy.

Steel, aluminium, carbon and titanium are all available canvas materials waiting to be covered in lush paint.

The Curve Uprock+ Project

On the last Bikehack a rough plan was made to create a bicycle for 3 things. 82.5% Mountain Bike Trail riding (which is about as vague as it gets), 17.5% Bikepacking / hacking and 100% fun = 200%. Sounds about right.

Steve Varga from Curve worked on designing a yoke to suit a 3.0 tyre on a 50mm rim, and a few other tweaks to the the already race proven Uprock Ti MTB. I've been a massive convert of the 29+ platform since my first and subsequent dabbles on the Trek Stache, which has been released as the 1120 with bikehacking specific tweaks, significantly racks and mounts for carrying / porting cargo. Coincidence. Totally.

When paint came to mind I thought hard for about 13 seconds and was taken back to the early 90's where and when MTB had begun for me. Apollo Koscioscko's, Shogun Trail Breakers, GT Avalanche Triple Triangle, Oakley Mumbo's with splatter paint jobs, John Tomac's Tioga T-Bone stems and Glen Plake's mohawk. Many of the paint schemes on brands sold in Australia were probably taken from what was happening further afield in the US on Kleins, Fat Chances, and most other brands of the era. Admittedly I had a Hallmark 'Anchor' MTB - but I always lusted after a horrendously loud paint scheme with splats of paint and wild accents. Didn't we all.

I sent the Steve's this which took about twice as long to mock up on Illustrator as it did to think about the paint scheme.