When we saw Philippe Gilbert blow past us on the cobbles of Flanders over the weekend, in addition to his S-Works Tarmac, we happened to notice that he was wearing a pair of fi’zi:k R1B shoes decked out in Belgian national champion correct red, yellow & black. While normally we would just assume that shoe sponsor Fizik had sent him a customized pair of shoes, it seems to have been a bit more work than that. Sponsors sent the former world champion and now Tour of Flanders winner the color-correct Boa parts and he got to customizing the shoes himself. Have a watch and see how you too can maybe add a touch of color to your shoes after the jump…
As you can see, it is actually really easy to replace the dials. The wires require a tiny bit more patience (making sure you cut them properly to length and wrap them correctly), but we just replaced a set on a pair of mountain bike shoes in about 10 minutes last week.
While Boa themselves sell replacement dial kits mostly in black or white for dials and black or silver wires through their own small parts store, several online retailers sell some varieties of color kits, and if you hunt carefully you could probably get a set of Red IP1 dials like Gilbert’s as replacements for Bontrager shoes from Trek dealers. Those yellow dials and red wires might require a bit more sleuthing.
