Education We Like to Ride Bicycles

I never had a road or MTB frame, with vertical rear dropouts, rather forward facing ones that allow adjustment for wheel alignment. May have changed now but, that is how it was when I was cycling.

 

yeah I know the ones you mean.

TBH once the tensioner is aligned this will make life even easier. One position for the wheel, and simply lift and drop the tensioner onto the chain.

I like simple.

 

Apart from my first bike as a sprog, I always had derailleur gears, so chain tension was never a problem.

 

I’m just a clumsy twunt. I’d wreck them tbh.

Thankfully I don’t need gears. I don’t use the roads, and the cycle paths I ride are nice and flat. Wind sucks, but yeah.

If I thought for one moment I could crash I wouldn’t have anything made of carbon or Ti. Absolutely not.

Apparently you get one crash and that’s it, you have to bin them.

I just love flying up and down between Aldwick and Elmer. Pure summer joy.

Trees area is amazing for riding too.

 

Yeet. So the first thing to do was get her out of hibernation.



I have very limited tools atm. So I removed what I could. Which turned out to be the seat (I put the post and clamp back in because it can't be used on the new frame) and the brake cables.



I had lined up a new kit of brake cables like the ones I had. £35 ffs. The only reason why I wanted to use the same ones is because they have these lovely stainless noodles that go into the levers (see in the pic, in circles)



Imagine my pleasure when I realised they were not part of the outer cables and can be removed.



Result. It means I only need to spend about a tenner on some red outer and a new inner for the rear brake. Front should be the same, but I have the old rear I can reuse there.

The frame has been collected, so that is a weight off. I had this feeling that after all of these years dreaming about a Ti frame they would refund me and not send it lol.

 

Always learning on here!

 

What a great morning.

 

Hit a snag.

I have never fitted the BB before. Mostly because it was missing the bolts. My pal machined some bolt adapters and shoulders for me, and that was only done very recently so I hadn't tried to fit it yet.

When I bought it I noticed that it said the shell was 70mm wide. This is not unusual (they are usually 68 or 70mm) but what did concern me was that FSA made the Platinum Pro in Euro (or British) which is around 34mm, *and* Italian. Which is well over 36. Before buying it I made sure to confirm with the seller, who said he had used it in his British threaded frame. So I bought it. Go to thread it in today and it is clearly far too big. BASTUD.

Did a bit of a deep dive, and apparently you can't service an ISIS BB or replace the bearings. Which I knew was a lie, so I carried on digging and found a guy who had done just that. ISIS bb prices were soaring because they no longer make them. And I found this.



I then smacked my one apart. The smaller side comes off easier, but the bigger one is pressed over the internal shell so it took some whacking.



I then looked up some ISIS bearings.



Farthest left, 31mm. Which not only matches the 31mm the guy in the first pic had, but also the bearings in mine.

This is amazing, because it means I just need to nick the end thread bearing holders from any of the BBs I have lying around (hint, it is a lot).

 

The stem has arrived. I will order up the rest of the red parts tomorrow and all of the rest of the stuffs needed.

 

Mega splurge.



I only need the spacers out of that. I brought it down to fit my frame but did not cut the axle, just the spacers. So I need to bring it back to 130mm.

I hope. I hope....









Suitable seat post.



I got this tensioner. I need to take it apart, as my frame has a hanger, so I only need the lower arm, spring and bolt.



Mondays Child herself



Cables.



slippy and grippy.





And I got two of these. Whether chain slap will be a problem is unknown (I doubt it) but what does piss me off is my orange frame has numerous scratches on the stays from bringing it up back into the flat. The stairwells are pretty tight and she's a big girl.



Still need one or two bits but we are mostly there

 

Forgot one...

 

Last of it. This is so I don't have to pee around.



I only need the bearing shell parts. Got some red bolts too.

 

OK I lied ffs. I wasn't done just yet.





I got this for cheap.



And then it dawned on me. It's one of them ketchup bottles in the cheap cafe when you were a kid on holiday lmao. Mmm, acidic vinegary ketchup ! I won't change it now, it makes me smile

 

OK so a little impatience. I ordered this yesterday. Should be here later.



I already have one, but I sort of broke it. I used it as a hammer (I know, I'm a dumbass) and the rubber handle now falls off all of the time. Very annoying, and you can't glue it as it would jam the mech. Besides I don't have it here, so that will allow me to strip more of the bike down and clean.

 

Bugger. The pains of bike building !

Firstly Amazon cocked up and said my torque set was delivered. It wasn't. In the end I found an allen key with a loop in the end. Put a screwdriver in the loop and managed to get the stem off, awesome. "I'll just slot the bearings into the frame and put the fork on and get a look". Nope !

The bearings don't fit. Panic ensued. I have never seen an integrated headset where the bearings don't fit the frame. Then the brain starts going..... "Maybe the frame is defective and that is why it was never used?" and so on. When I calmed down I got out my vernier and measured the bearing OD. 41.8. I then measured the head cup. 41.1. Hmm. After a lot of digging it turns out 41mm bearings are a thing (fookin new on me !) and I was able to order a pair for £9.



I still think my frame was either a one off (which they did offer) or a prototype. It is model 2, with the wavy down tube and curved seat stays, but the model 2 is supposed to use a FSA 040 headset which is 1.5" at the bottom cup. These are the same both top and bottom.

At £9 I can't grumble. TBH the bearings I was going to use are now 16 years old and have been used for 7 of those years.

 

OK so the new BB arrived. It is here in the pile.



And here is how I did it. To get the small side off is easy, it pulls off by hand. The pressed side is well, pressed. So it is on there tight. I wrapped the threads in cloth to protect them, then put a set of grips around it (not tight, I used the lip end as a stop) and then tapped it apart.

To get it back onto the other BB I put headset spacers against the hand fit face, stood it on a piece of wood, stacked and taped more headset spacers together, then smacked it home.



Which worked beautifully.



I will keep the rest of the £12 bb as spares. Well, the bearings.

I also made the executive decision to rebuild the orange bike. I have all of the original parts sans the heavy cranks, but I have some far better ones to go on there up in the loft. I also found a wheel I bought last year as an upgrade, then realised it was quite heavy (it was only £18 new) so that can be its front wheel, leaving me to find a rear (easy in this size).

 

OK decals for the rear wheel are done.







I need to trim the stroke on the E on one. The plotter got a bit jammed so it is a bit peed. Sadly that was the last of the 3M so I had to make good. It's not cheap that stuff.

 

Slowly the deliveries arrive, but with RM it is like pulling teeth.

The bottle cage came in yesterday but that was it.. Mum owed me some cash and told me to spend it on Amazon (use her card like) so I did. I am going to put the tyres back to 28c wide. 23 are like riding on rocks. The rear will cost me, and be a pain in the ass (tubular) so I got the front first.



And another bottle in black that arrived earlier with Amazon.

 

Sigh. So after chasing this guy for six days over a fake tracking number the grips (that are not for the bike now) showed up.

This is what I ordered.



VS the fake ass **** that showed up. How do I know they are fake? well it's simple. Beside the fact they are nasty looking and rock hard ALL ODI products are made in the USA.



I mean at least if they were as described I could have gotten a few rides out of them (with gloves on) but alas they ain't going anywhere near my dream bike. So I ordered these from Amazon. They weren't cheap but I don't care. They have skulls on.

 

I got a refund on the bogus grips, so that was nice.

Not happy with white brake levers. I will never, ever build a bike like this again so I am going to do it once. I bought these earlier. They weren't expensive (£21 IIRC).



These however, were.





Same price as Ali (who won't ship to me any way) but on Amazon Prime.