Angier -

I brought my control pushrods to a bicycle factory which does powder coating, and had them powder coated with white epoxy powder coat.  Note that you don't have to find a bicycle factory (we had a small one in Lompoc CA which made specialty bikes) since you can find powder coating places in the yellow pages.

I measured the before-and-after weights and while I don't have the number handy (it may be in my notebook at home) I recall a phenominally low added weight -- something like 2 grams on the flap pushrods, which are about a foot-and-a-half long and 3/4 inch diameter (or something close to that).

Before I started making pushrods, I dropped off the aluminum tubing at a professional alodining place and had them alodined for corrosion protection.  This is probably not necessary except for us anal-retentive types.... (The formal name is MIL-C-5541C Chromium Conversion Coating.)  When I had them powder coated, I requested that they NOT sandblast them first.  (Sandblasting is a standard practice prior to powder coating.)  I requested they solvent-clean them only.  I would also wrap masking tape around the part that you don't want coated, like the threads on the rod ends.  They will have to replace this tape with high-temp aluminum tape, since they bake the stuff after spraying on the coating.

A simpler approach to all this is the standard yellow-green zinc chromate primer.

- Rob Wolf