The Story of Bike in three acts

The Bits

Parts I got from a large variety of sources, Amazon, eBay, other online stores, a local bike shop, and the like. Anywhere I could find things cheap and light.

The frame I ordered from Nashbar. It is nothing fancy, but light and stiff at least.

This is a Suntour downtube shifter with 6 speed index and friction shifting modes. I plan to use the friction shifting option as it is robust and seems fun.

Aeromax wheelset with Vuelta hubs and aerodynamic flattened spokes. I strongly doubt there is a better wheelset out there for $100. The only problem was the hubs were severely overtightened, but some cone wrenches fixed that.

8 speed SRAM cassette. For the rear wheel obviously. It has 11-28 teeth, there was also a 32 option but I was not convinced a short cage derailleur could wrap that and they would have been pretty widely spaced gears.

Vuelta Pista crankset (square taper). I found a good deal on the pink and thus was the color scheme of the bicycle forged.

This is a seat post. I might cut it down some day to save on weight, but for now I am still hoping to wake up 8 feet tall some day so I'll keep it.

I don't know what this is but it appears to be some sort of small spaceship.

Found some super cheap bullhorn bars and decided I would give them a whirl for something different. They are incredibly light. In this picture they are attached to a stem already in case that wasn't blindingly obvious.

These bits came with the frame and hold the derailleur a bit away from the frame. Bonus: you can read my palm. It says I need to moisturize.

Sometimes things aren't greasy. This changes that.

This is the headset, with the star nut perched on top for show. It comes apart into many different little bits but I was slightly worried about getting them back in the right order so I didn't photograph the bits individually. Later during installationI managed to briefly get them in the wrong order anyway. Oops.

The bottom bracket. It had to match the square taper of the crankset I got; initially I accidentally bought the wrong sort of bottom bracket, foolishly assuming that there would be just the one kind I had seen before.

BBT-22 bottom bracket tool, these come in several different types matching the several different types of bottom brackets there are but I counted my teeth and got the correct one on the first attempt. Basically you just use a wrench of the socket or crescent variety and grab this and tighten.

This somewhat similar looking tool is for the cassette. Exactly the same principle as the bottom bracket tool, but this one doesn't have a socket wrench slot. Oh well, crescent wrench is just as easy.

This is a homemade substitute for a commercial headset press. Basically a bolt and a variety of different sizes of washers capped by a nut that is slowly tightened to force the headset cups into place. In a while you will see why I chose very poorly with the bolt I used.

The Build

Building it all took a couple months, largely because that's about how long it took to acquire all the parts. I had very little prior knowledge as well so I couldn't just order all the parts at once, but rather got them a few at a time as I figured out what would go with what I already had.

I decided the shiny but ultimately non-matching grey coat of paint that came with the frame would have to go, so I removed the old with paint stripper. It required quite a lot and I tried the cheap stuff first. Bad idea, didn't work. I ended up using "Klean-Strip Premium" aerosolized paint stripper, which was effective and fun to be with. Some day I think I will get a frame anodized instead of painted, as it could look quite cool and be light and durable.

Here it is after some groovy painting adventures. The clear coat went on somewhat poorly so I'm not sure if I will have to repaint after a while but we shall see. Also in retrospect I should have used a stencil instead of trusting my shaky hand for the lettering. Lesson learned. LISTSTRONG is a reference to adventures unrelated to performance enhancing drugs. But I bet the bike will be dope.

I covered up all the parts I would eventually need to thread with blue masking tape during the painting process to prevent anything from getting gummed up. As you can see the right downtube shifter attachment (the only one I plan to use) came out quite nicely. The bottom bracket, head tube, etc. I also taped over.

The shifter attached. Notice how in the earlier picture it had a metal ring on it? Well not knowing anything about shifters I decided to tighten the crap out of it and snapped that right off. Needless to say it was far too tight, but fortunately with needlenose pliers and a bad deal of force it is possible to adjust without the metal ring.

68mm "English" (whatever that means) threaded bottom bracket recepticle. Notice how it is all shiny from not having been painted. Nicccccccce.

Putting in the bottom bracket with the BB tool. One side is threaded one way and the other is the opposite. Fortunately the bracket was labelled left/right (from the perspective of someone riding the bike) so I didn't have to second guess which was which and accidentally muck up the somewhat soft aluminum threads. I used just a tiny speck of grease to get it going because it was rather stubborn at the beginning.

Each side of the bottom bracket uses the same tool conveniently. It turns out that it is very easy to screw in one side too far so that the other side can't go in as much as it should, thus it is a good idea to tighten both sides a little at a time and get them even.

This is the other side. It looks very much like the first side, which is good. I got them evenly screwed in.

Front view showing how deliciously aligned it is. You might notice this picture is less blurry than basically every other picture, that is because the shutter speed on my phone is a bit low and my hands don't keep still well. Here I could rest it on the frame.

The cable guide gets attached to the bottom bracket area. This little part came with the frame, which initially I did not realize and so bought another one.

The bottom bracket hanger goes on quite nicely.

This is a regular short cage derailleur. Nothing fancy, but very sturdy.

Showing how the B screw goes on the derailleur hanger.

I got some cables (Bell brand, for better or worse) for shifters and proceeded to try cut the end off one of them so I could thread it through the rear shifter. I did not realize they would be so tough to get through, I started with a side cutter but ran into metal sheathing.

I used a hacksaw to get through the metal sheating. Then there was a hairy sort of fabric sheathing underneath that.

It was no match for my side cutter.

The round end has a matching slot on the shifter so it goes right in there.

This is after I've strung it tightly. Notice how the stop on the shifter is aligned to prevent it from rotating further forward than parallel with the tube.

A short section of cable casing gets cut and used to take the shifter cable to the rear derailleur.

Now it is time to attach the crankset. Yum.

It just slides on the square taper of the bottom bracket, and then the bolt goes on and tightens it down. It is a hex head bolt but very large so I had to get a special very large hex wrench.

Same thing for the other side. Tighten tighten tighten. I briefly debated about attaching the cranks at an orthoganol 90° angle rather than the usual directly opposing 180°, for the sake of humor. In this image you can also see how the rear derailleur cable goes on the cable guide, i.e. in the way it obviously should.

Coming together. Excellent.

Putting the cassette on the rear wheel. The lock nut gets some grease on it and then the cassette lock ring tool goes in and tightens it quite a lot.

Finished tightening the cassette lockring. Looks about right.

Test fitting the rear wheel. SRAM chain.

I got some Serfas Seca wire bead tire with some pink stripes that are rather light, highly rated, and supposedly somewhat puncture resistent. That is good, I have a solid knack for getting punctures.

Turns out the stickers came off fairly easily from the rims with care, as long as I went slowly they came right off. I think they look quite a bit better now.

The fork after painting. You'll notice where it used to have brake attachments, I didn't care for them so I cut them off with a hacksaw.

Close-up of where I cut off the brake attachments. This fork is heavy, it will probably be the first upgrade I make, because of the weight and the fact that it doesn't work with my caliper brakes.

Speaking of not working with my caliper brakes, here's what the front looks like. These are supposed to be long reach so they should be more than sufficient. I blame the fork.

The rear works much better. I will use only a rear brake for now.

Close-up of the rear brake attached. It has a locking ring that really bites into the brake and frame, preventing it from getting swivelled off to one side.

On the biggest ring, the derailleur is quite extended but still able to handle it (after I removed a few links at least). I see the chain is slightly off the front crank, oops.

On the smallest cassette ring the derailleur is very compact, the gears are barely separated from one another but barely is enough.

Close-up of how close the derailleur gets to the chainring on the largest ring.

On the largest rear chainring there is quite a lot of sideways travel required of the chain. I suspect it might not be very reliable, but we shall see.

The seatpost clamp. It has attachments for a rack, which I might use at some point.

Handlebar wrapping was fairly easy, using my own electrical tape. The provided tape was not nearly sufficient. But electrical tape is cheap.

I did not use enough overlap on the tape, and might have to re-do it later. particularly with these bullhorn handlebars I had more than enough tape, and should not have been so eager to cut it down to size. Oops.

One side done, the easy side because of no brake cables. A couple days after I finished the electrical tape began to peel back because I had stretched it tightly, but I was able to fix that by wrapping tightly at first and then finishing with the tape not tightly stretched.

The fork with the crown race put on. I'm not going to say how I got it on there because I am ashamed of it. Let's just say that I am very impressed with the hardness of the metal on this headset, and next time I will do it properly with a PVC pipe or similar tool.

Bottom bearings of the headset. This end rests on the crown race and allows the fork to turn smoothly.

Getting ready to press in the bottom bearings. It is extremely important for it to go in straight, so I only did a half turn on the nut at a time or so, and then tapped and adjusted to keep it going straight. Took a while.

On the bottom is just a bunch of washers. You could try press in bottom and top at the same time, but I think that would be just asking to get them in crooked. Also, my bolt is not long enough for that.

Partially pressed in the bottom of the headset. At about this point, as you might guess, the top of the bolt started turning and since I foolishly picked a bolt with a round head I had no way to grab it.

Or DID I? After it was pressed in most of the way I was able to back off the nut just enough to get a crescent wrench in there and grab the square part of the bolt to tighten it the rest of the way. Not ideal, but it works.

The bottom one went in similarly. The important part is just to keep it going in straight with gentle tapping and readjusting. In this picture you can also see some cup holders, which I have since removed because of their mismatching color. I shall paint them later.

Pounded the star nut into the fork. Normally the step here would be to cut off the steerer tube to the appropriate length, but I wanted to raise the height of the stem by a little bit with spacers, and as it turned out the steerer tube was already close to the right length so I didn't have to. Score.

Stuck the fork in, added the fiddly bits of the headset, and screwed in the cap over the stem.

First the brake lever goes in the end of the handlebar, then tightened in with an allen wrench, and the brake cable is threaded through and attached.

Taping the brake cable to the handlebar before wrapping.

The cable housing goes down to frame.

And another piece goes from the back of the frame to the rear brake.

The cable goes through the housings, into the brake, and gets clamped down.

Finally, I wrapped the handlebar keeping the brake cable inside the wrapping as much as possible.

The Bike

I'm pleased to say it is the best bicycle riding experience I have had thus far. The bike weighs in at 21.5 pounds, so its a bit lighter than my last bike, and more importantly the frame is 60cm center-to-center (62cm center-to-top) so it fits my legs quite nicely.

The friction shifter will take a little while to get used to I think, but even without any practice it doens't seem too hard. I have also never used legitimate bike pedals and bike shoes before so that is new but I haven't had any trouble clipping out and falling over.