Build a bike

Kanga,

I thought you would have been a dab hand at putting bikes together!!!!!!!

Well I opened the box with a knife if that counts!!!!

Foggy, reused old tyres I had, basically perfectly good ones, but swapped out before IMNZ for confidence and to save cleaning them for the NZ bio checks. Tubes ditto.    Pedals, the ones there in the photos are new ones from 'the shed', ones I'd got for the commute but not got round to fitting.  Will be used for a while before she moves to some Shimano SPD-SL R540 at £35.  Then again, pedals are rarely included in any bike price, that's part of the reason I left those off.

Sorry, forgot the saddle in the total, so with a top end saddle that's £700, and say £750 for a full ultegra build bike with a carbon rear frame including a £65 saddle, tubes and tyres.  So about £250 cheaper than a normal shop built bike?  Could have made it cheaper by spending less on the saddle and there were other cheaper options too, but this is now a very competent bike at a price I was happy to pay.  3 hours total time to order everything, build it and then fettle including chopping the steerer down,  taping the bars and swapping cassettes around (originally built using a spare wheel with a 9 speed cassette, so swapped for the photos, and then swapped back yesterday after I'd got the final wheels).

What I hoped by this thread was to show that the tools were minimal, the skills not really that high, the only thing you need is confidence. 

Clearly the latter part may take a battering  if I post early in the new year that I am a Widower after Wifey74 expired whilst out riding on new bike.

Actually, I suppose what I ought to do is to expose any 'errors' to assist.

So here goes:-

1) Front brake needs longer 'nut' to go through carbon steerer - forgotten that before when I was building my racebike, but it's a standard part and was £2 from LBS

2) Had mental block about which brake went to which lever.  Quick check in the garage on existing fleet helped with that one.

3) Cutting the steerer.  I did the right thing which was to 'go too long' on the first cut, and I'd underestimated the thickness of the top cap, so it was about 2mm too long to get any compression with all the spacers in place.  So had to do a second cut 5mm down to get the compression.  No problem, just meant double the cutting and taking out the fork again as I didn't want steerer dust falling into the headset bearings by cutting on the bike.

4) The thread on the driveside of the BB was a bit rough which meant that the bearing wouldn't screw in straight, and  in fairness it would have been very easy for someone to have just tried to force it and cross threaded it.  As it was, as soon as I couldn't tighten it by hand then I knew  something was wrong and so backed it off, cleaned the swarf out with a small electrical screwdriver and then it was fine.

5) Anti seize used on the seatpost, bottom bracket and pedals.  Chain de-glooped before putting on the bike.

6) Don't use the full chain length, put it in largest  at front and rear (I know, you don't use in real life) then fit chain with overlap 2 links with mech at limit.  This means you can't pull the mech off if you get the chain diagonal when out on the road.