finished pictures

I apologize for the lack of finished pictures. I really wanted to get some nice pictures of the bike in a good locatoin. I really haven’t had much luck finding that spot though, so these pics will have to do. I think I may cut the bullhorns down some and possibly wrap them in a week or so. But for now, this is it.

assembly

Despite my frustrations from the night before, I decided to start putting the bike together. Afterall, that’s the fun part, right?

Here is your first glimpse at the new frame color.

Bottom bracket installed.

Front fork.

Wheels on.

Crank, chain, seat post, and seat.

Chain line…I think it worked out well.

Now I just need to figure out what to do about my stem and handlebars.

frustration

I was super excited to hear that the frame was finished being powder coated yesterday.  I even had to borrow money from a buddy to make sure I could pick it up on the way home.  They definitely did a much better job this time.  I guess I didn’t mention it before, but they did it once and it didn’t turn out very good.  I asked them to redo it and they were willing.  It just took forever.

Frustration #1:
This was my fault.  I didn’t ask them to mask off the threads for the bottom bracket when they did the powder coating.  I guess I thought I would be able to turn it in there and it would just chew it up.  Well, the coating is really tough and my lame plan didn’t work.  I ended up having to use Aircraft Remover to get it all out of there.  I masked off the outer portion of the frame, but Aircraft Remover is such nasty stuff that it seeped its way through and ruined some small areas of the powder coating.  Most of it is on the bottom of the frame and around the rim of where the bottom bracket attaches.  It’s pretty small and I’m sure no one will ever notice, but I’m still not happy.  Lesson learned.

Frustration #2:
The tubes won’t fit within the tires.  It’s in a small area right where the valve stem is on both wheels, but I know it’s not right and I wasn’t able to correct it last night.  I thought airing it up with a compressor and working the tube would fix it, but that didn’t work.  I’m not sure if I can fix it.  I know I need to though.  Why is it in the exact same area on both wheels?

Frustration #3:
The stem adaptor I bought doesn’t fit down the head tube of the frame.  I thought all of these things were universal fit?  Does that mean I need to switch back to a quill stem?

Edit: Now that I look at it, it seems that I ordered a 1-1/8″ stem adaptor and I likely needed a 1″.  I’m taking this time to question my stem/handlebar choice to see if I should get something different.

handlebars and stem

The Sekai has a threaded fork, but I knew I didn’t want to use a quill stem. So, I bought an inexpensive adaptor and an even less expensive stem. I think the stem was $9 shipped from Sierra Trading Post. The problem is the only one they had that came in the 1-1/8″ and 25.4mm was 130mm long. I think it looks too long, but I won’t know how it is until I put it on the bike. The other part I’m not sure about is the graphics. I want this bike to be simple and I think the Easton logo is pretty lame. If it were a sticker I would have already peeled it off.

I’m relatively happy with the handlebars. They don’t have any overpowering logos. They are pretty straight too. Ideally I would have liked something straight and the same diameter throughout. I’m not sure why I couldn’t find what I was looking for. I think that is a pretty simple request.

I ended up cutting 2″ off of each end of the bars to make them shorter. Again, I won’t know exactly how that will be until they are installed on the bike.

The grips are ok. I thought they might compliment the black leather seat, but they don’t have the same shine to them. Again, I wanted something simple and black, but that wasn’t as easy to find as I thought. I can always swap them out if I decide I don’t like them when the bike is complete.

bottom bracket and tools

The bottom bracket I purchased is a Shimano BB-UN26. It definitely isn’t high end, but it will work well for my application.

I had no idea when I started this project that my extensive collection of mechanics tools wouldn’t cut it for working on a bike. I was able to disassemble the bike in about 10 minutes with the tools that I had, but when I purchased my new parts I realized the tools I used to take the bike apart weren’t going to work. In the picture above you can see the $10 bottom bracket tool I had to buy. I think that will make assembly a lot easier. And below you can see the cog/lockring tool I bought. It worked so well that I was very glad I spent the money to buy the right tool for the application. I figure I could have gotten away with using the tools I had, but this made it super easy.

seat and post

I knew after looking at a bunch of pictures of fixies that a black Brooks B17 saddle would be perfect for this bike.  My parents were cool enough to hook me up with one for Christmas.  Here it is mounted to the factory seat post.  I may change that out for a black one in the future, but for now I’ll stick with it in the hopes of keeping the price down.

cranks and pedals

I looked at cranks for quite a while.  I initially thought that I would get a set of Sugino Messenger cranks, but I didn’t know if I really needed to spend that much.  These Origin 8′s turned out to be just what I was looking for.  The design is subtle, they come in black, and they aren’t too expensive.  Perfect.

I wasn’t sure what I was going to do for pedals either, but after looking around on Wheel and Sprocket’s ebay store, I came across of pedals from the same company that makes the cranks.  Again, they are simple, they come in black, they match, and they aren’t too expensive.  I think this setup is going to work out well.

wheels

I’m still waiting for the frame to get back from powder coating.  I don’t like waiting, but it did give me a chance to order a few parts.

I ordered a Weinmann Deep-V wheelset.  I wanted something that was black on black and didn’t have a machined surface for brakes.  These wheels were really the ones I could find that met that criteria and had a reasonable price.  I bought them on ebay and used the live.com discount to get the price down even further.

I also ordered a set of take off Kenda K125 700c x 25c tires and tubes on ebay to keep the price low.  I picked those up for about $31 shipped.  Not too bad.

Sorry for the lack of pictures.  I’m sure I’ll be more into that when I get the frame back and start assembling the parts.

start

Let me just start off by saying that I don’t know the first thing about bicycles.  I have owned a couple in my life, but I have never put one together.  I know very little about the terminology…and most of that has only come from searching for parts for this project.  I’ll do my best to update the site as I go, but for now…check out what I started out with.  

It’s a $25 Sekai 400 that I picked up on craigslist.  Nice.