For forks sake!!

Its in......I managed to press the headset in today with a nifty gadget I made up. Not the hammer and lump of wood I was looking forward to using but a length of threaded bar I had sitting around the shed, as you do. This together with a couple of nuts and a few square washers.

This is the set up I used. Its a bit basic but it worked really well. the threaded bar runs through the tube and the bearing cups are fitted, a liberal amount of copperslip grease was applied. This will hopefully stop any rust forming in the long term. 

ACME head set press

Then two large washers were put on top of the cups and then a nut at each end. I then used a spanner to tighten the nuts up. The washers kept the baring cups straight so they went in a treat.





This is how it looks now.........


Very happy with it. After this I fitted the Front fork. This was a bit more of a challenge. There is another bearing cup the needs to sit on the bottom of the steerer tube. This is an interference fit and needs to pushed in. In order to do this I ended up having to heat up the bearing cup to make it expand a bit then use the ACME bearing press (pat pending!) to press it on. Once the bearings had been cleaned and greased up with a bit of lithium grease I managed to fit the fork too. Which was nice.

Assembled front end

After this, I used the threaded bar to mock up the bottom bracket by fixing the crank to the bike with a couple of washers and nuts. I then had a job to adjust the crank to match up the rear chain line by adding or removing extra washers. I managed to get it as close as possible and worked out I will need a bottom bracket with a 110 mm spindle! So come pay day that's what I'll get.

Cycle-logical change.....

....See what I did there! Anyway. I find myself looking at old bicycles that are chained up at various points around town and thinking what they may look like after a quick spruce up. Its getting a bit of an obsession! I'm thinking of sneaking around under cover of darkness and setting them free!
I've been trawling the internet for inspiration for the finished look of the bike which has resulted in me thinking about the next build already!

foffa bikes have the facility to build your bike on-line and choose the specification of the equipment and colours of even the tyres.

Pitango bikes is another bike building site where you can even choose what colour chain you want!

What I have been doing is looking at the equipment specifications on these bikes, bearing in mind they cost upwards of £350, and going onto e-bay and seeing if I can source them cheaper. For the most part its possible to get things like old style brake calipers for around £20, brake levers for around £17, its when you start looking into the individual components that the real cost starts to show itself. There are different prices for the same stuff! 
I like the bull horn style handlebars: These are £59.95
  
and these are £21.95
Its like everything else if you want to pay for a named brand then you can spend a fortune. If you want a similar look for cheaper its possible. Which is just as well for me!