At a glance
Price: 125 EUR
Buy Cleaning Products onRideWrap offers semi custom protection for your bike. Their full frame kit offers a see through protection on all major areas of the frame and forks to prolong the life of your precious ride.
About the brand
Founded in 2016 by Dan Seguin and Callum Rostron, Ridewrap is a rider based company out of Whistler BC. Born out of a desire to protect his own ride, Callum got out the scissors and a roll of protective film to create the first custom frame protection kit. After fellow riders were impressed and wanted to get their own, Callum spent many hours custom cutting frame protection. Nowadays they use high end 3d measuring tools and a partially digitized process to create their custom templates for hundreds of different brands, models and sizes.
When it comes to sustainability, there is little mentioned on the website. If you look at the nature of the product, it does prolong the life of your bike so in a way it is helping out. Also all the kits are made to order, and with production facilities in every continent they are able to prevent unnecessary long distance shipping.
The product
The Full Frame protection kit is custom cut for your order, bike brand and model to make sure it covers as much of the surface as possible. The material they use is a special self healing plastic, where small scuffs and scratches ‘heal’ when exposed to some heat in the sun. There is a hydrophobic topcoat that repels water and dirt making it easier to clean your bike. The film is available in either gloss or matte depending on your frame finish and once applied it’s hardly visible. They provide a whopping 10 year warranty on discolouration or cracking of their product too.
Out on the trail
Of course it starts with the application and I will be honest, I took several days of mental preparation in order to gather courage and get it done. Turns out it’s not as hard as it seems, and as with everything proper preparation makes all the difference. Create a good workspace setup to start with, where you can lay out your tools in a logical order. Take your time. That's the biggest tip. Don’t think you can ‘slap it on’ the morning before heading out for a ride or when you come back home after a long day of work. Take the day off, put up a no disturbing sign and some chill music and you’ll be good.
What helps as well is that Ride Wrap includes the most important tools for the job. A good quality microfiber cloth, a squidgee and the manual that has a clear order of which stickers go where. There is a nice build up too in difficulty if you follow their instructions. You start out with the easier and smaller stickers, and end with the big ones like down and top tube that can be a bit harder to get on in the first try.
Once applied, it’s amazing how invisible it actually is. Of course it depends a bit on your frame model, but with our bike, the kit is hard to spot. Protection is second to none, and as my ride sees a lot of gondolas, uplifts and ultra rocky trails I am happy to know it is protected from the worst.
Verdict
In my opinion it’s a no brainer. A few bucks and a morning of work to protect your bike that's worth a couple thousand. If the application itself scares you off, you can always drop it off at a local bike shop and have them do it for you. Your bike will look fresh and if you ever want to sell it, the resale value will definitely go up too. Thumbs up!
Buy Cleaning Products onThis review was in Issue 72 of IMB.
For more information visit RideWrapRelated
By Jarno Hoogland
Jarno's life has revolved around two wheels ever since he swung a leg over his first BMX at age 4. After a BMX and DH racing career, he moved on to work for bike shops, distributors and brands before ending up in the editors seat at IMB. Based in the ultimate testing ground in the Swiss mountains, he runs his guiding operation and makes sure every IMB issue is filled with top notch content.