To finish with….

It survived the C2C route from Whitehaven to Newcastle ( North Shields)

Both wheels are still absolutely true even after going over some fairly rough, unmade paths and the unconventional saddle was really comfortable.  There was some creaking from the crank at one point that was cured by torquing up the two bolts on the crank again (done for me at Keswick mountain bike hire FOC!) and some click on each turn of the crank that seems to be down to a dry and slightly worn right hand pedal, (old pedals I had stripped, relubed and presumably failed to put back together properly!!!)  The rear mech hanger was slightly loose but held in place by the rear wheel.  There are a few chips to the paint job which unfortunately show through as a kind of orange colour.

Anything I would change? the casette needs changing to a mountain bike one with as big a range as the long Tiagra rear mech can cope with (11 to thirtysomething) for touring.  I am not that worried about keeping an absolutely steady cadance so tend to change 2 or 3 at a time and run out up hill.  Alternatively I need to lose weight, get fitter and start worrying about the cadence!!!  I did fit my bar tape the wrong way around, (told you so says wifey) after years of fitting tape to a Galaxy with bar end shifters I thought I could go the other way , (start in the middle and finish at the end) It is now all rucked up from sliding down to the brakes and from pushing.  lastly I might well fit the cyclocross brake levers from one of our other bikes as the ability to brake from the top is so usefull at times.  (Pushing the bikes through Newcastle fully loaded meant I had to reach for the drops whilst actually not on the bike to get enough leverage to slow the bike down on a hill) (feel a bit of a prat like that, it’s a little like making brum brum noises whilst in the car but without the engine on.)

Orleib classic rollers are great!!

Cateye EL135 front light fits nicely to the forks, so avoiding the barbag.

C2C 2morrow..

I am doing the coast to coast with my wife for the next few days, probably the narrowest bit of central Britain to do it, White Haven to Sunderland.  For those that don’t know this is a designated Sustrans Route, sign posted all the way, and occasionally having diversions for the the nobbly tired brigade to go chase the local wildlife.  I haven’t posted for a while but the bike is still going strong, the saddle got changed for a wierd Selle SMP one and a Cateye TL1100 rear light is permanently fixed to the rack.  We are doing this as a sponsored ride for the Ellen MacArthur trust, pictures and report to follow.

Not a lot of cycling going on at the moment

But I’m now off for 12 days so should get a few good rides in during that time, plus now the sun won’t be so low at “home-time” I intend to do some of my regular commutes (14 miles each way) by bike. Hopefully the second coming of winter will go away soon as well, I wouldn’t mind if it actually snowed but all it did was rain, really cold and slightly solidly!

 Busy organising a “bike to work week” as well for the end of April.  After the CTC ride I did check over all the bits and pieces and tighten up the bolts.  Nothing really to tighten though.  The cranks give you torque settings but in the absence of an acurate torque wrench I just tightened them up as tight as I could with a short lever.  Having checked since I was within about 10%!  The rack and guards were all still tight, I did use fibre washers (visable on the rack mount below, they are red) between the frame and anything metal so these were fairly compressed and would take up any loosness at the moment.  I’m sure as they age the compression will become permanent and so they will need tightening then.  I have also found my old 535 pedals, and popped these on instead of the single sided spds I had borrowed off the tandem.  No sign of my “free” innertubes from Shinybikes, I guess he might have forgotten.

Also visible here is the ”anti rub” patch that I cut up and stuck on the fram around the mudguard/rack mount to stop the paint getting damaged.  The bolts all had some regular grease on but when I have a little more time I’ll probably remove them, clean them and put them back on with a little copper-slip.  The other thing I’d like to do back here is attach the mudguard stays to the upright on the rack but nearer the top, partly to save weight and partly to give less room for them to rattle. 

Well it didn’t drop to pieces..

In-fact I’m fairly sure nothing even fell off it, not even the pilot.  49.99 miles later (I should really have done a quick lap of the car park to make it 50) and the bike no longer looks quite so pristine.

Everything seemed to work quite well with the exception of the driver’s bottom!  I had to fiddle a little with the barrel adjusters on both derailleurs as they both seemed to stretch a little and I had one incident of the chain coming off the large chainring so a little more adjustment is needed there.  Now I’m off to lie down, 50m might not seem too much to some people but it is 3 times as far as any trip I have cycled in the last 10 years!

At last!

I have actually been out on my new pride and joy, and other than an annoyingly rattle/rub from the front mudguard all was perfect.

The group set finally arrived, 8 days after it was ordered, and as you can see above this is what was in the box. One triple crank (note; tool needed for winding in the plastic end plug), one Bottom bracket (note again; a special spanner is needed for this), one cassette (12-25 I think), one chain, 2 shifters and cables (including barrel adjusters , bottom bracket plastic guide for cables and reach adjusters for brakes), front mech, rear mech and no brakes.  These were removed by Shinybikes as I already had them and I was refunded the price.  ( I don’t think this would normally happen, this was Shiny being nice to me as the groupset got delayed, unfortunately for them DHL then seemed to loose the groupset delaying things further)  This was all rather frustrating but in shinybike’s favour I was always able to get hold of a person, Fraser,  to try and find out what was going on.  The second delay was rather embarrassing all round and I was offered a couple of inner tubes to make up for the delay.  Anyway enough of that and onwards with the proof that you can build a bike as a rank amateur, and if you are lucky it might even stay in one piece.

There is the finished bike.  It is brown, it has drops, guards and a rack, I’m pleased though. Apparently drops and guards are more effective than a lock to stop your bike being stolen!!  The frame is a delight, stiff when you push but it seems quite comfortable so far.  The tape is a little redder than i thought it would be but I guess it well loose some vibrancy over time.  The pedals are temporarily borrowed off the tandem and I fully intend to remove the reflector off the mudguard and bolt a permanent reflector/led light to the rack instead.  Any body else intending to do a build like this here are the answer to some of the questions I had but never had answered,  yes the STIs do include the bottom bracket guide and barrel adjusters for the downtube.  No it does not include little rubber things to stop the cables scratching your frame.  Tools needed are a parktools BB tool for the bottom bracket and crank, cassette tool, cable snippers, file for the cables, 4mm ball Allen key, 5mm ball Allen key, grease, small Philips screw driver (tools very kindly lent to me by my wife’s friend’s (Natasha) husband, Ged Tyrer (all round pedal head)).  For the rest of the pictures during the build click on one of the thumbnails to go to flickr.

In the meantime..

I seem to be getting quite a few hits on this.  My intention was try and put some information up that I couldn’t find (or at least couldn’t find easily).  This has slipped a bit with the frustration of waiting for bits but I will try and be diligent with the rest of the build.  I was tempted with a pre-made “winter trainer” of which there are lots around, incredibly well priced as well.  The frame and carbon fork with headset comes in at about £130, rather a saving over the Kinesis frame but.  I know that what ever I get I will always hanker after the next model up.  Some of the kit supplied was not what I would have necessarily wanted so would probably replaced it, this way it is built to what I actually wanted.  Why Kinesis?  Can’t say I have ridden one but have read getting on for 25 different reports on the racelight T and the slightly more expensive Racelight Tk i have never read anything other than praise.  So really I am just hedging my bets.  The rest of the kit is a mixture of well researched stuff, stuff I liked the look of and bargains (Big Piega bars at £7.50!!). I already know a lot more about bikes than I did before I started this.

So to anybody looking for info on building your own bike, comeback over the next few days and hopefully there will be some more info and pictures.  For now, just give me some cogs and chains and things……….

 Just to prove my reluctance to finalise anything on the bike here are the spacers;

Gareth, at Revolutions, had to take about 10mm off the top so his tool could reach to get the lower race of the headset in place but other than that it is still all there.  The carbon spacers do look quite pretty though:)

DHL………Arghhhhhh

So far it has taken them 5 days to move a package less than 50 miles (as the crow flies).  If a crow flew at this pace it would no doubt stall and fall out of the sky!  Still hoping to do the 50 mile audax near Chester this weekend, hopefully rather quicker than a DHL van could do it in, I think if I take more than 5 hours everybody goes home ! I will need to convince my wife that a bike I have screwed together will manage 50 miles without the need of a workshop!  Doesn’t look like a good week for commuting weather wise either.

In the meantime I’ve popped the rack on the back, I quite like the Tortec racks as the adjustable mount does not involve bendy stainless strips and the actual rack is made out of alloy tube so it only weighs in at about 400 grammes (the ultralight model) Here is the top connection showing the adjustable stays from the side.

At least something came in the post…

The Saddle and rack from Cycle Sports arrived with the postman, hurrah for royal Mail (don’t say that very often) at least deliver on Saturdays without demanding extra monies.  The saddle is an sport 1.1, a slightly odd looking beast as it has a removable bladder in the centre.  I shall not try and describe it further as there should be a photo to follow but from my first encounter it seems quite comfortable.  Difficult to tell properly though when you are sat on a stationary bike waving your legs around in fresh air trying to imagine where the pedals might one day be…..

Shinybikes…..Arghhhhhh!

I am just about paranoid enough to start believing there is a conspiracy involving various bicycle part stores and me.  I was expecting it all by Thursday at the latest but somehow it didn’t get sent until Thursday and it is now due in on Monday afternoon, at work, on my day off!  To add further insult to injury they are based in North Wales, I could have gone and picked it up myself.  At least they had it all in stock.  My intention was to have phoned the order into them on Tuesday 4th but I couldn’t get through on the phone so I settled for buying online, this didn’t give any options on postage speed so it was sent 48 hours, 48 hours after I ordered…..

In the mean time I have done as much to the rest of the bicycle as I can, namely pop the brakes on and line them up with the wheels, put the bars in the stem (replaced) and send the miss ordered headset back to chainreaction.  It is just gone 7 on Saturday morning now and I’m sat down stairs with a poorly son, must go to work soon but I will take the fork with me and get Revolution bicycles to fit the lower race properly at lunch time.

Tektro long reach brakes and as can be seen Revolution have fitted the lower race to the fork so it all lines up nicely now.

Ribble….arghhhh!

Whilst Ribble were excellent with the delivery of the wheels, brakes, guards etc they have spectacularly failed to deliver the groupset.  I was promised delivery – “they were in the post” last Thursday.  Nothing.  Chased every day, with delivery promised the following day.  Still nothing.  On further discussion it turned out that they had run out of brakes (which I didn’t want anyway as I had long reach tektros).  When the brakes arrived in, they ran out of STIs and chains.

Needless to day my patience has run out. Order now cancelled and placed with Shinybikes.com who are £5 more but include hubs ( later edit, no they don’t they just have them in the picture along with both lengths of rear mech)(which, like the brakes, I don’t want. Ebay beckons).  However, they  have everything in stock so should be here tomorrow. We shall wait and see….   Tick tock…tick tock….