Well it beats washing the car

Hooray - I have finally ridden the bike properly! I say properly because I have actually been on the bike round the park, but since that was as a means of keeping up with the kids while they cycled, I don;t really count it as a ride. Today was the first proper ride. Out along some local roads to a the nearest patch of dirt, mud and grass. Significantly it also has a small hillock on which you can pick up some reasonable speed over rough ground. Here at last then I can test some of the rideability of the bike and determine if there are any flaws in the build.

First impressions on riding out was that the bike was really comfortable. I had forgotten how much off the peg bikes are not designed round your length. So the distinct advantage of building from scratch was that I have been able to select component parts (mostly the headstem length) that factored in my body length. This also means my legs aren't cramping up under my arms, despite having a frame that is at the bottom of the size range for my height. There were two immediate issues that need some attention. The rear wheel isn't quite true, simple to fix. The gears have a habit of slipping, which isn't too serious and just needs some minor adjustment. Well at least I hope, but the worst case scenario is the shifter is more shot than it feels.

It felt odd to ride out with only 9 speed at your disposal, I kept reaching to change front rings and finding nothing on the handlebar. However, it really didn't dent my general speed over a rough, flat course. Very smooth would be my assessment of the overall ride, but I suspect it will glue itself to the ground on longer slopes. The front end did wash out in gravel on a twisty descent, but not seriously and no more than expected for a hardtail. I didn't push it downhill as there wasn't much and I had to be wary of other park users.

There is a pure joy in being able to do something and then look back and say I built that. I remember my uncle talking fondly in similar terms about a car and a motorbike he built from scratch. Its not the same sense of achievement of looking at a finished project and seeing others use it. Instead, because it is you using it there is a certain - connectedness.

let the good times roll

It is always good to get out on a bike, the feeling of freedom, speed and the pure adrenaline rush of turning the cranks are always a tonic. It is even better when you are riding the bike you have constructed from the frame up. Slightly different perhaps to riding a new bike, because generally you are certain that everything is set up correctly and all you are trying to do is determine how fast it stops and how tightly you can make the turns. So perhaps it is a good thing that I rode to our local park with the kids and so stopped myself pulling any crazy tricks before I was sure of my mechanical skills. A great leveller of ability, is when you have to stop to support and encourage your 4 year old on their bike.

So what did I find out about the mechanical soundness of the bike? Well, I need to make a small adjustment to the brake and gear lever as they aren't optimal, and I haven't quite aligned the limit screw to allow a jump on to the final cog. Apart from that everything else held together fine. The wheels go muddy, I wall rolled a few steep banks and popped a few (brief) wheelies. By the end of the trip nothing was squeaking or falling off, which is a positive. I washed the wheels off, not because they were muddy, but because of the risk that some of the brown stuff came out of dogs' bottoms, and the paint stayed on. All in all a good start to a career as an amateur bike mechanic and assembler.

Next steps, well I think after the small adjustments to be done it is time to get out on some tame trails near me, and then move out to the bigger challenges after that. I also think that now might be the time to reflect on what I have learned through this process, so I suspect the next few blog posts will carry the dos and don'tsl  in bike construction.

Cry "Havoc!" and let slip the dogs of war.

Finally, the bike is complete! There are a few niggles, like the fact that it is unrideable in its current configuration, but it is complete and I am hoping that the issues can be overcome quickly and cheaply.

brake boss line up

Finally, I have brake bosses that at least partially work with the XT brake arms. If you look in the photograph you can see the three versions that I managed to get. Look at the different size of the lip next to the screw and if you can compare the profile of each boss fitting. Not all bosses are the same and so when you get to adding brake arms it is clearly a question of the right ones for the job. I'm keeping the others in my spares box for anyother job. The one to the right is from Tiawan and made of titanium, but is far better quality and has a better profile than the others. Even so it does not provide a perfect fit for the brake arms, with a small 3mm gap between the frame and the arm. I am hoping that this will not cause to much strain in braking, because if it does I will need to see if the adaptor kit works any better.

just a small gap

Confident that I would at least have some braking potential, and finding my Sunday afternoon surprisingly free, I continued on completing the last jobs on the bike. First up chain onto the bike. Simple enough, I'm not going to explain the ins and outs as it is done well enough in Zinn and in other bicycle maintance books. I had not appreciated how much you need to be an octopus though. I was most pleased that I was fixing the chain together with a powerlink and not having to force a pin into place with a chain tool. Really simple, but a little more fiddley was the task of aligning the rear derailleur (mech). Setting the high and low screws to match the limits of chain movement is simple in theory. I found that holding the derailleur over the low position and looking at where the limit screw was holding gave me more confidence that this phase was set up.

powerlink

I then needed to cut the housing for both the brakes and the gears. I wish I had a proper wire cutter for this as it was hard work with the cutter on my old pliers, but they worked adequately. Fighting to not strip the wire as you thread it through the housing is also a must. Not only does it make it difficult to thread, it will also weaken the cable.  Finally, I fitted the handlebar grips, (some lizardskin ones which have lock down bolts) and adjusted the shifter and brake levers into position.

I have however, created a bike that is a little overdeveloped in the tyre department. There is an alignment issue with the rear wheel which I think is easy to sort, but there is one major problem that is preventing me from riding the P3 today. The tyres are too fat. Inflated the rear tyre is one large balloon wedged between the downstays. Not so bad at lower pressures, but it still rubs the frame badly. The original tyres that came with the wheels, I seems to remember, were fine. So I will try a switch back. In the short term there is a potential to borrow some from Uncle Riotous who is storing a load of spares. The ultimate will be a rebuild of the hub on a narrower rim. Whilst I have enjoyed assembling a bike from its components and I even feel that framebuilding might one day be an option- I have visions of being an old man with a shed in the Welsh mountains building custom frames. Wheel building is an art that requires specialisr equipment, much patience and many hours. So to rebuild the wheel I think I may need to employ my local bike shop.

The beast nearly ready for action

Oh arse!!

There are always times of frustration in the progress of any project, today the P3 project encountered another one. The bosses arrived in the post and I went outside to fit them in a spare 5 minutes at lunchtime. They looked a perfect match, the thread an exact match for the screw in mount housing on the forks. The the first grrr moment. In order to screw them in I was going to need a 9mm spanner - I had 7,8......10, 11?!!! What the? Where? Resigned to not finding the missing spanner I walked up the road to the local hardware store and bought a cheap replacement.

Almost, all in and the bosses are getting tight. Wondering how much further I slide the XT brake arms on to the bosses, only....they won't reach. Not they won't reach because I need to screw the boss in further. They won't reach even when screwed in flush. Arse!!!

I unscrew one, extra time wasted, and extract one of the brake arms from the old bike out of the shed. This slides on perfectly. I go and check the XT arm again, no dice. There is a ridge on the boss which allows you to tighten the boss in the mount. It is also where part of the brake arm locks in, it is too bid for the XT arm, but not for el cheapo fitting. I'm left with a quandry, do I fit el cheapo and look for an alternative? Do I file off the excess? Perhaps a little chat with the suppliers and a chance of an exchange? First though, I need to get the other boss off the forks, and its stuck! The cheap 9mm spanner is bending under the force. I give up and get on with living the rest of my life. I can have a real crack at it some other day.

Storm in a H cup

Certainly they had a go at wrenching it off

Finally, a few moments to work on the bike today. Boy does it take a long time to complete the work when you only go at each stage bit by bit. The frame came with a set of FSA cups still fitted, but they looked pretty beat up. I guess the previous owner had tried to remove them, but without the correct tool. Cups are an integral part of the headset of the bike, this is for want of a better description the linkage between the bike and the forks that hold the wheels and the steering bars. Without them, you are going to have a pole that rattles around inside a tube. It is quite a clever bit of engineering linkage, and overtime has evolved different methods of holding the fork steerer to, eventually, the handlebars. The setup we are going to use is a threadless headset, I am not going into the details, of stuff you can look it up on Wikepedia and several other websites if you are interested, but the whole process is, in theory, quite simple.

not a wing pylon, but a cup remover inserted into the steerer column

First you need the correct tool, the cups are simply slotted in the frame, so you could rip them out with a strong arm and a pair of pliers, something I think the previous owner had tried. As alternative, you could tap them out using a hammer and and an old screwdriver. It would be a slow job as you would need to go round moving each side evenly to prevent the whole thing getting wedged. Otherwise buy and cup removal tool, or borrow one. The cost a tenner, which isn't so bad. It's about the same amount you would pay the workshop to do the job for you. The tool is simply a split tube that fits in the steerer column, but the split will flange out to rest on the internal face of the cup to allow you to tap it out with a hammer. How simple is that? Feed in, tap and off it comes, the repeat for the otherside.

Two removed H cups

Now the problem comes in not planning for fitting the otherones on to the frame. Simple investigation of the the cup and the frame reveals, that these are going to have to be set level and true. That means, you guessed it, another specialist tool. Simple enough to build, as it is only two flat plates on a screw column with some method of pressing both cups onto the frame e.g. a wingnut. The parts though probably cost as much as a secondhand precision engineered one. So I will need to look into that for the future, and see if I can borrow what is needed to get off the ground sooner. In fact, borrowing appears to be the order of the day as, I am unsure of the quality of other parts of the headset assembly attached to the existing fork. My first idea was to replace the fork with a better one, sooner than later, but pennies predict that this will not be happening any time soon. So I will try and not change, star nuts and crown races, but you never know. See what happens when I have a go.

Bottoms!

Today I decided that I would tackle the bottom bracket fitting on the bike. Now I have to confess this is not entirely new territory for me as I have removed and replaced one before. Essentially, so long as you are careful and don't lose bits it is a slide out slide in job. However, you do need some specialist tools for the job one of which is a lockring spanner.

Bottom bracket shell, TT Gigapipe and TT chainset with chain retention device

The first job is to clean the gunk and paint from the inside of the bottom bracket shell. This is a simple job of toothbrush, white spirit and a cloth to clean up. I don't need to worry about losing some of the paint at the exit as a) its a cosmetic cover up and b) no one is going to see it behind the lockring tool.

Now the real reason for choosing a spare hour and a half to do this is to check out the fitting of the Gigapipe bottom bracket (BB). This is new to me as all my experience is with old square taper brackets. The first thing I notice is that the usual method of locking into place is probably not going to work here. I think I need another tool for the toolbox. I have a bottom bracket tool, but it doesn't look as if it is designed for this type of BB. Curse the world of non standard international design. Shimano are the market leaders, but they do what they like, at least everyone else tries to work from a standard. Although I suspect they wouldn't if they could get away with it. Anyway, it is a Shimano BB tool not an ISIS one. Plus I discover as I look in the tool box there is no lockring tool either. Now where did I put that? Ah Uncle Riotous has it in his garage!  Looks like this will have to wait until the tools are assembled in the same location.

So lesson, learnt I pack it all away again (Bottoms!). Time to drop a message to uncle about said tools. Not all wasted though as having looked at the set up I can see that it is really much easier than a cup and cone or square taper style BB. As an all in one there are no ball bearings or cartridges to chase around and apart from ensuring it is all greased and done up tight the job itself is as simple as pie.

Specialized P3 2000/2001 specifications

Courtesy of bikepedia here is a list of what was on the frame when it was bought for £1,200 ish pounds

Bicycle Type	Mountain bike, front suspension
Sugg Retail	$1,399.00
Weight	Unspecified
Sizes	Large, medium, small
Colors	Black

Frame & Fork
Frame Construction	TIG-welded
Frame Tubing Material	Specialized A1 aluminum
Fork Brand & Model	Marzocchi Bomber Z-5, 4.0" travel
Fork Material	Aluminum/magnesium, triple-clamp crown
Rear Shock	Not applicable

Components
Component Group	Mountain Mix
Brakeset	ProMax linear-pull brakes, Avid AD3 Levers levers
Shift Levers	Shimano Deore LX RapidFire SL
Front Derailleur	Chain retention device
Rear Derailleur	Shimano Deore XT SGS
Crankset	TruVativ Hussefelt, 38 teeth
Pedals	Specialized aluminum platform
Bottom Bracket	TruVativ BB-01
BB Shell Width	Unspecified
Rear Cogs	9-speed, 11 - 32 teeth
Chain	Shimano, 1/2 x 3/32"
Seatpost	Specialized aluminum, 30.9mm diameter
Saddle	Specialized P.3
Handlebar	Specialized Special Rise
Handlebar Extensions	Not included
Handlebar Stem	Specialized P.3 riser
Headset	1 1/8" threadless Tange Seiki

Wheels
Hubs	Specialized STOUT
Rims	Alex Supra-E, 36-hole
Tires	26 x 2.30" Specialized Roller Comp
Spoke Brand	Specialized stainless steel, 15g straight gauge
Spoke Nipples	Brass nipples

First blind moment

I am faced with seat issues - not my rear but the seatpost itself. I had expected differing size seat posts, but I am left with two paths to functionality. Current seat post and a shim or a new post of 34.9cm. A larger area is better able to dissipate impact so new wins there. Current seat post is a little crappy and for safety I have already stolen the seatpost off my sons Hotrock 20" bike. So with an ex-stock EX seat post for £11 and a quick release seat clamp from Halfords I set about installing the seat post.

OK that was unexpected, despite both being the same size they are not, and we are not talking about layers of paint out of size here. The seat post clamp is clearly smaller than the post. With much effort and prizing the seatpost clamp open, it fits on snugly to the bike frame and the the seatpost itself slides snugly in with a fresh coat of grease.

Abendessen des hundes

My eye runs over the matt black frame and alights on a sudden flaw in my plan. I can see two cable guides on the top tube. One for the rear mech and one for the brake cable. Where can I run the third for the front mech? There is no room in the existing guides, so that will be a non-starter. To the batcave Robin! Several hours of internet research later and I find I have two options. Braze on series of guides - possible as there is a local bike builder round the corner from me (Renowned Chas Roberts)- but pricey as I would need to strip the frame, and respray again. Epoxy glue a guide to the frame - a sore point in forum threads on the subject. Buy a seatpost clamp that adds the guide to the bike (Problems Solvers). I look back for the post where in my early research I had read that a P3 had been converted to a 3x7 gear bike. Yes you can, but quite frankly it looks like a dog's dinner and uses the seatpost clamp. Given that the seller has been using it as a commute bike, I am not entirely sure that it will survive much of the hammering it will get from me. So we are going to have to go for a 1 x ? combination and walk up hill, no actual change there then as my current stamina level is still low.

So for a very simple parts exchange and upgrade model we are now beginning to look towards a total rebuild. The shopping list now requires

Crank
Bottom bracket
Single chainset with guide if possible
 

with the following upgrades
9speed hub
9 speed mech
brake arms
new forks if possible to return the freebies back to the pool.

first small steps

The frame is far from the mint proclaimed, but then I never expected mint. Who keeps a frame in the garage that long without using it? Expecting to have only minor touch up on the paintwork, I'm a little disappointed to find some relatively large tool marks from where they frame has been stripped. A minor bit of epoxy filler work is all that is required, but the more I look at it the more the frame seems to require than the simple touch up paint routine. My heart sinks - its a respray job. I haven't done one of those since I was given my grandfather's fixie to do up when I was 13. There are several nightmare moments that await a respray - 1. you are only going to chip the paint again. 2. the pro companies use kilns to harden the paint 3. a spray gun is better than any other method. So no kiln and no spray gun and bearing mind issue number one I go for the overcoat method. Here the aim is to prep the surface to hold paint - apply a primer and then several coats of car paint.

Set up with some old dust sheets in the very small shed at the end of the garden I set to work with primer. Wow, I'm not bad at this, the old skills haven't completely gone. Nice even coat with no show through. Damn I've left a sticker on the frame!! Bugger it, I'll leave it as this a cover up not a vanity job.

Matt black goes on well and I have managed to find a sign printer who runs of decals, so I can brand the bike for those who care about such things. It seems that finally I am ready to start the swap from one bike to the next. All I need to do is start sourcing components required to upgrade the bike.

What am I doing???

There are plenty of things I have thrown myself at without realising what it is I am about to do. Facing the mountain never gets less intimidating even with increasing years. So it is again that I set myself against a new challenge. Bike building. Quite why I should be doing this is a lesson in a renewed love of cycling, economics, and the need for some hardware. Now I have to say my natural forte tends to be in the more theoretical aspects of life, but even so I do tend to manage to bodge and muddle through most tasks because I have at least thought the process through. So it is with the logic being:- I have a cheap mountain bike (given to me free), I have been out riding single track a lot, I am now entering the zone where the flexibility in the frame and some of the components are not going to be so tolerant of where I am trying to be on the hillside, (that is to say not down the slope in the trees). I enter the fierce arena that is ebay and come out with a Specialized P3 from around 2000/2001. My plan was to make a straight swap of components from the old bike to the new and then upgrade at leisure. I could never has been so wrong!