My little bike project - Part 3

The hard bits of the job were now done. All that remained was my favourite part of this project. Putting all the new shiny parts that I had bought onto the frame. There is something very special about assembling shiny parts onto a clean set of threads with fresh grease. It's an almost Zen like moment, of yin and yang combining together to bring harmony to my world. Passion or obsession ? You decide..

First thing to go on were the stunning cranks. Once on, their beauty is in stark contrast to the cheap frame, but this contrast makes it look almost arty, I think so anyways.

Shiny Cranks

Next comes the new wheel, cassette and spacer combination. All securely locked together with a special Shimano nut, for which I had to buy a special £20 tool, which I will now not use for another 6 months at least ! I am going to digress here slightly to have a little rant. The bicycle is the perfect example of humanity's brilliance manifested in the form of some cutting edge engineering. Every part that holds the bike together has a long winded history of development from something simple to something brilliant. But all these diverse developments when come together in one single unit, you are left with a hundred parts, all requiring their own special tool to remove/attach. And these parts aren't consistent between different bikes. The bottom bracket for example, on this bike is a square taper, on my mountain bike is a hollowtech II. Both of these require special tools to remove and attach. I have used the mountain bike tool once, in the last 2 years, and the road bike tool once during a similar period. There is some merit to be given to simplicity in engineering.The bicycle at its inception was just this, the epitome of engineering simplicity, this is no longer true, and this is probably the only downside to owning and maintaining your own bikes. I dream of a world in which a bike can be stripped and re-assembled with just an adjustable spanner and set of Allen keys ! That's it, rant over.

New Wheel and Cassette

Finally, the chain tensioner goes on. Chain tensioned, new pedals attached to the cranks and tyre/inner tube put onto the wheel, and we are done.

The last steps

This is what the finished product looks like:

Job done, and still a wee bit of daylight left for a short spin. Couldn't have timed it better !