Bike Build Part 3 – Assembly
I am not a bike mechanic. I have done most of the maintenance on our bikes for the past couple of years, but I’ve never put a bike together from a pile of parts. I thought that with the help of the all-mighty and all-knowing Internet, I would breeze through building a bike in no time at all.
Almost true, but not exactly.
The first thing I did was framesaver the inside of the frame to prevent rust. “Steel is real”, but it can rust, and I want this bike to last for a while. Framesaver is a great product – it’s fairly cheap and quite easy to use. I’m guessing I used about 1/5 of a can for this frame, so a little goes a long way.
Most of the parts went on with no issues – seatpost, seat, bottom bracket, cranks, all went on with zero issues, all greased properly and looking good.
The headset was a different story. Headset presses are an expensive bit for the home shop that will install one, maybe 2 headsets every 10 years or so. I could’ve just taken the frame and headset down to the LBS and had them put it on, but noooo… I’m A) too cheap and B) too proud. This bike was going to be built completely by me, no outside help at all.
So I returned to the trusty Internet to provide a solution. Aha! A threaded rod, a bunch of big washers and a couple of nuts, and I’ve got myself a ghetto headset press. Here’s my version:
Homemade Headset Press
Perfect. Surprisingly, it did work. But…. let me tell you, it took some serious elbow grease and lots of cussing to get the cups to seat all the way.
The crown race was a major trouble area and my first screw-up. I checked online to see if it could be done without the expensive special tools, and, just like the headset press, it could – with some pipe of the proper diameter and a rubber mallet. But due to my extreme impatience at the time, I decided to just mash the thing on using whatever was at hand: a wrench, a framing hammer, some ill-fitting conduit, whatever. I did get it on, but damn, that thing was severely mangled. “Oh well,” I though to my self, “it should work just fine.” As you may be able to tell, my thoughts often have no basis in reality.
It turns out that a mangled crown race really does a number on the bearings inside a headset. And by ‘does a number’, I mean completely destroys it with no hope of using it again. So I ended up buying a 2nd headset to replace the damaged parts on the first one (strangely, a new headset which contains the bearings, cups, races, cap and star-fangled nut is cheaper than buying just the race and bearings.) The second time around I went back to the hardware store and got some more ghetto tools :
Homemade Crown Race Setter
I took the crown race with me and matched it to a small piece of PVC. The PVC is soft, so it won’t hurt the race. So I just slid on the crown race, slid on the PVC, next the iron pipe, and tapped it all into place with the rubber mallet. It was perfect.
The other part that is causing some headaches is the brakes. I read cantilever brakes can be a real pain to get right. They went on easy enough, cabling was quick and painless (and even looks good, if I do say so myself), but adjusting them to get the right amount of lever play is turning out to be a real chore – I’m still not 100% happy with how they feel, but the brakes do stop fine, so I guess it’s just a matter of working out the details.
Tags: bicycle, bike geek, commute, surly crosscheck