Sunday, June 5, 2011

Step 4 - Components
















Tying up a lot of loose ends at the minute with this build, and most of those loose ends are down to the bikes components. As you can see, all the parts here are black, which is the general theme... black parts on a white frame. The wheels have come up really nicely. I got the original 8 speed cassette off and fitted the single speed conversion kit, great. The 700x23 Vittoria tyres fit and look superb. Just need to wait until the wheels are on the bike to sort out the spacing around the sprocket for sake of chain alignment. The black headset arrived, looks great. Got some alloy flat bars, looks good with the stem as they are a similar finish. Got a post from Ebay, but it's smaller in diameter than the  25.4 mm stamp on it, but all's good with the use if the silver shim you see around it. The carbon forks need a bit of a clean and the headset crown race knocking on to them. Keeping things clean and tidy will be helped by the mudguards, which are minimal lightweight items suitable for use with slim tyres and racing bike frame and forks.  All looking good, just need a few more bits like a saddle, chain, brake cable. But on the subject of brakes, I can't use the levers I've previously talked about. They are for oversized bars, my bars are standard size and I thought I'd be able to use shims to fit them. But placing them over the bars it looks like this wouldn't be realistic as the shims would need to be crazy thick, not an off the shelf item.

Step 3 - Painting the frame






















Here's my frame, literally hanging out to dry. I further proved to myself with this paintjob that patience is essential. As I live in the UK, I had to wait a long time for the weather to pick up so I could paint the frame. It rained every day for a week, and was not warm enough, plus I was dying to get the ball rolling. When the weather turned around though, I was straight outside applying the primer. I applied a bit, rubbed it down with very fine sandpaper, then applied some more, in order to get a smoother finish. I waited a day for it to harden before I went near it with the main top coat. Due to the strong colour underneath, this took a few very patient coats, but the coat looked great. Where I tripped up though and got a bit inpatient, was with the lacquer. I should have waited 24 hours, but rushing a bit I waited 12. This meant that the paint had not yet hardened properly, and this caused the lacquer to react with the paint and cause this problem...




















If you can't see the detail in this photo, it caused a spiders web sort of effect... not pretty. My impatience meant I had to wait for paint and lacquer to harden for another 24 hours, before I had to rub it down and apply more white paint. On the plus side the frame looks great, nice and bright. All I need to do now is wait another 24 hours, apply the final coat of lacquer and start assembling the bike... great! I tried my best to get a good finish with spray cans, there is a limit to the finish quality using them. I wont quite get a gloss effect, and not quite matte, more of a satin. But as long as it looks good I don't mind. I just need all the components now, roll on step 4...