Do you care about your bike so much as well? There must be a reason why you invested several thousands of euros in your favourite frame, right? Some of you might even talk about their bike as their "baby" ... When you care so much about something, you of course want to protect it. And that's where Clear Protect comes in handy to do so in an invisible way. Here's a short product test of this transparent protection sticker.
A few weeks ago I received two products from Clear Protect:
- the frame protection kit - pack L, 
for my Look 585 bike frame, which contains 12 protections for the horizontal and diagonal tubes, one of the seat stays and the two chain stays of the frame plus 12 patches in two different sizes which allow you to protect some chosen spots of the frame
- the crankarm protection for my Shimano Ultegra crankset with one protection for each side
The invisible protection of the bike
The goals of these products is to protect the bike with a protection film which is said to be very resistant to agressions (scratches, impacts, friction...) and when you realise the quality of the film by touching it, it becomes clear that's indeed what it does. Of course I haven't been able to test whether the film resists a stone falling on the bike since I don't want to voluntarily try and scratch my bike but while putting the product on the frame I really understood this product will protect my bike. I should just have put it on a few years ago when I bought the bike ...Indeed, I would highly recommend this product to anyone who just bought a bike in order to protect it from anything being projected on the bike but also from friction of brake or transmission cables against the frame (you must admit it doesn't look good to have a simple Scotch tape on your frame to protect it and if you don't put anything on there you might regret it).
For those of you who regularly transport their bike in a bike transport bag (read the product test of my Sci'Con Aerocomfort Plus bike transport bag about this) it might be interesting to protect your bike with Clear Protect products at the places where it risks to be exposed to additional friction if for example another passenger in the train moves your transport bag in a less precautionous way than you would have done yourself.
The anti-dirt effect
Once the product was on my bike, I didn't really realise it was on there (except from some small bubbles*) until the day, 3 weeks ago, when I was out for a ride in the rain. Indeed, as usual on the Parisian roads, my bike was completely black when I came back. However, I realised that at the places where the Clear Protect protection film was on the bike, the texture of the dirtyness was different. Indeed, there were traces of rain which started to remove the grease and mud. When I cleaned my bike it was a nice surprise to see that the Clear Protect film also allows to protect the bike against this kind of dirt because I simply removed all of it by going over it with a humid washcloth ... much easier than at other places where there was no protection.
However, at the places where the protected parts go over in non protected parts extra dirt might be attracted because there's always a place where the sticky part of the film is exposed to free air.The protection of the crankset seems less useful
While there's a real interest in protecting your frame with this protection film in my view (I'm still wondering though why only one of the seat stays must remain unprotected!), it seems less interesting for the protection of the crankset. Indeed, the crankset seems naturally more resistant to impacts and it's also less embarassing to have some scratches on it than on the frame. Anyway, when I wear shoe covers it happens sometimes that I touch the crankset with my feet and that would be the only occasion where I could imagine that the cranks would thus be better protected to frictions with this product. However, I'm not sure yet whether the protection is sufficient for it to be useful ...Applying the product
According to the user manual, applying the product is easy and very rapidly (it should only take 10 minutes to apply the 12 protections of the frame protection kit for example). This is however not necessarily the case in real life. Indeed, despite all my precautions, it's very difficult to apply the film without letting any air bubble get in.
The supplier of the film recommends to use a window cleaning product which contains alcohol to humidify the sticky side of the protection film so it will stick better and prevent bubbles from appearing under it, but despite my experience in applying accreditation stickers on cars, I didn't manage to do it without bubbles!I do however think that the air bubbles were mainly formed due to the important temperature difference between the moment I applied the product and the first bike ride I did a few hours later (from 22°C in my appartment the night I applied the product and around 0°C the next morning when I left for a ride on myt bike). However, one of the films was clearly damaged either due to a production error or a bad packaging of the product in it's cylindric box because when I got it out of the box it was immediately clear that one was malformed.
Conclusion
As a conclusion I would say that this product doesn't change the life of a cyclist but very well protects his precious bike. One thing is sure, you won't regret the little bit of money you'll pay for this product, especially when you apply it right after you bought your bike. A plus is that cleaning your bike becomes easier as well!
For the crankset, you really have to care about it a lot if you want to invest 12 euros in the protection of your cranks. A little bit overdone if you ask me, much more at least than the protection of the frame.
>> More information about these products is available at Clear-Protect.com. door Thomas Vergouwen
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2 comments | 9418 views
this publication is published in: Product test
by buffo over
http://www.les-actus-du-cyclisme.fr/article-clear-protect-protegez-votre-velo-sans-le-montrer-104800361.html
Moi j'utilise Skin Protect Bike il propose de faire ses films de protection sur mesure en utilisant plusieur épaisseur.... Moi j'ai pris du 400microns pour le cadre et du 1000 microns pour mes belles fourches Fox.... Et un petit bout de 2000 microns pour mettre en dessous du boitier.... http://www.skinprotectbike.com/