Who's the boss?

Well not me it seems. I had expected small hiccups in the process of putting this bike together, but really I didn't expect them all to come at the end. I feel like I am at an evolutionary dead-end. The forks arrived this week, and yes they are all they were descrived to be. Certainly not the forks to sit on the machine forever, but good enough for some casual cross-country/downhill riding. They are also dual brake capable, that is you can fit disc brakes or the more low tech V-brakes (also known as side pull cantilevers). There is a snag. I could fit disc brakes to the forks, but the hubs I have are not designed to take the disc. I can't bolt on V-brakes straight away because the forks lack the brake bosses needed to fit the brake arms. This would not be a difficult proposition if there was a surfeit of brake bosses on sale. I think I might have found a kit for the forks, but it only mentions forks produced from 2007 onwards. This leads me to some concern as I am worried that my local bike shops will not stock the spare parts I require.

This is what leads me to feel at an evolutionary dead-end. The trend is towards disc brakes on sports mountain bikes, and although V-brakes are common on low end leisure bikes, no-one takes a high spec sports bike and puts V-brakes on it. A problem for all those retro-bike builders out there. Soon the spare forks will only be off leisure bikes, which are not capable handling the punishment or a more aggressive riding style, and we will no longer be able to ride some of these classic frames. The bikes will not be superceded because they were unable to compete in the environment, but they lack the input of the manufacturer's resources. The world has changed and moved on.

Fork it

Change of plan, I had thought that getting a fork for the bike that was as good as or better than the Suntours lent to me by Uncle Riotous would be impossible for under £30. So imagine my surprise when I managed to bag a pair of Marzocchi MZ Comps for £21 on eBay. Now from what I understand about them they will not take any great hammering, but they are supposed to have 100mm of travel. They will do either as replacements for the Suntours on the P3 or on the Salcano. The process of fitting will be the same, and obviously I will need to fit the crown-race to either fork. Since I planned to add a very cheap pair of forks to the Salcano I think I should return the Suntours to Uncle Riotous who had planned on fitting them to his son's rigid frame, before he loaned them to me as an emergency replacement.

I think experience has shown that the Salcano is not capable of taking much more than the occasional drop and so over expensive forks are just a waste of money. I really don't want to spend a lot on getting a bike which will be used for family cross country rides up and running. Perhaps the best option is to now save like mad and get some bigger forks for the P3 and then transfer back.

Now though, I have the bike building bug. I am already planning on the next rebuild. Should Santa be kind and allow me to buy a good touring bike to replace my hybrid city bike, I may change it to a fixed wheel, now that would be an adventure into the unknown. My first bike was my grandad's bike which was a fixed wheel with a Sturmley archer hub. I resprayed it and cleaned up the gears, but I can remember nothing more of restoring the bike. It was great fun, it survived a side on impact by an inattentive driver, as did I. Then some git stole it! I ask you it wasn't as if it was expensive even in the 1980s. Then of course there is getting a full-suspension MTB and then there will need to be a full racer and then...........

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.

One wheel on my wagon

Holiday has put rather a crimp on buying bike parts and so has the monetary realities of being halfway through the month. Luckily it was my birthday so I have some cash with which to indulge this new hobby and buffer me against the latest purchases. I returned to the world of internet (mountainous regions do not have a good record for mobile signals) to find a crankset with bottom bracket and chain box unbid for. Perhaps due to the slightly high starting price, but when you totalled it up there was some wriggle room for a bidding war, you just weren't going to get an absolute bargain. The pics looked good and the bash guard looked pristine so in the last hour a bid was placed and bingo the whole lot for £50 as opposed to about £80 to buy separately.

Then there was the surprise purchase of a pair of wheels for £40 with an 8 speed cassette. OK so it's not my final destination, but the hub will accept a 9 speed cassette, so we are up one there. Plus the hubs are Deore LX which is a big step up and I suspect the rims will be slightly better than the budget ones I currently use.

So aside from a 9 speed cassette to get we are ready to load the bike with parts. In otherwords the fun really begins as I attempt to fit a style of bottom bracket I have never used before, align mech hangers and replace threadless headset forks (also a new horizon). I will be using my trusty Zinn as a guide and relying on Uncle Riotous' practical knowledge to get over edge of this horizon. Hopefully, a day or so of work and we should be out riding the trails.

Parts buying

Right we are almost upto date - the previous sections cover the last month, and in that time I have not been quiet on the sourcing some second hand or cheap parts. A pair of SRAM X.7 shifters of which I now only need one now from ebay. Along with some sale front and rear mechs SRAM X.7 and sale XT Brake arms from Chainreactioncycles.com. Then there are the front and rear Deore SL mechs I bought off ebay and then decided to divert these to a new project (my hybrid). So far no luck on bidding for new wheel/s for a 9+ speed and I realise that the current hub may take a 9 speed cassette as a result of its relative youth. It was clearly a bike put together with the cheapest parts to retail at the highest sales value before the buyer realised they were ripped off (sorry G but you said it). So I need to get it to Professor Riotous for an assessment as I have never seen a hub that accepts 9 compared with one that accepts 7 speed cassettes. Oh and I have double stocked on cables as well.

Current ebay pursuit is a Truvativ Hussefelt Cranks with Chain Guide, handily in Whyteleaf, various potential front forks (including a Z5) and an XT rear mech. I have as a result of being forced into a single chainset decided to try and return the bike to its original setup as much as possible.