Building My Own Bike
After four years and some 20000kms on my good ole' Orbea ?city? bike I felt like it's time to get things to the next level. During these years I accumulated plenty of experience concerning my needs when it comes to biking. I concluded that what the bike I'm looking for should be:
- Fast and light enough for 50-100km short trips
- Reliable enough for everyday commuting
- comfortable for day-long biking
- equipped with braze-ons for touring racks and fenders
- steel frame
Now a little explanation to the above:
Why fast & light? I regularly do 50-80km tours, sometimes in mountaneous regions, during these trips I like to ride as fast as I can, averaging 23-25 km/h with my 15kg Orbea. A «chopper» style bike wouldn't do!
Reliable for everyday commuting? I think everyday commuting (>10kms) can be hard on bikes: manouvering in heavy traffic, intensive accelerations/braking, potholes - and we have to be on time for work! A cheap bike bought in a huge we-have-all-you-need supermarket would break down after a few months. Beleive me, I had seen it happen many times...
Comfortable? Racing bikes are nice, but spending a whole day on one and trying to enjoy the view, no thanks! If you like to smell the flowers, take photos, etc, you need a bike with a touring frame where you are in a more comfortable position, where gettig on and off the bike is hassle-free, and you don't spend your day bent all over! Theoretically, one can fix up a racing bike with flat handlebars, but then you still have the problem of fenders/racks/etc, see under next point!
Fenders(&racks) Essential for commuting, very nice for touring. I never had a bike without fenders and a rear rack! The fenders are extremely useful once you have a wet road while carrying your stuff on a rear rack instead of your back will make biking much more enjoyable with less sweat on your back!
Steel, baby, Steel!For long I was impressed by aluminium frames - until I started seriously educating myself on bicycle frame materials. A nice introduction can be found on this page. For the really curious I can recommend using Google
Something I should also mention : I don't want to spend more than 800 Euros on this bike! Read on if you want to see if I managed to get it right?:)
The Frame
Where to look for touring frames?
After a little research over the internet, reading biking-related forums entries and visiting a few bike shops, I realised that finding THE touring frame one is looking for might be more difficult than I expected. The few choices you have:
- Search for it personally in shops specialized for bikes
The only solution imaginable for most, as you can see, touch, try before you buy. Problem: good bike shops are rare and most don't have touring bikes, let alone steel bikes! The hype nowadays is aluminium or carbon and shops sell either road or mountain bikes.
- Custom order it from a frame-builder
An option quite heavy on finances, starting at 1000$+! For someone like me, who thinks that a bike - unless you race for living - should not cost more than 1000$/E, this is clearly an overkill! The advantage: you can have it any way you want it.
- Stumble upon your dream touring frame after endless hours of research on the internet
This is what happened to me - found Surly and their Long Haul Trucker frameset! Other bike manufacturers to mention when it comes to touring bikes: Soma (Double Cross), Trek (520), Raleigh UK (Venture). Of course the list is not exhaustive, I listed those who have customer-friendly priced touring bikes or framesets.
I've Found This...
My choice fell on the Long Haul Trucker frameset of Surly.
Price
First of all, the price. Sold in between 3-400$, it costs about as much as I can still accept as a realistic price for a bicycle frame, and it is good quality CroMoly steel.
Geometry
I have found my present Orbea a pleasant ride with two obvious flaws. First of all, it is a bit too small for me - I'm 1.80 and the frame is 48cm. The other problem is it's weight: it is around 15kgs fully equipped - I could really appreciate 2-3 kilos less... Apart of these minor flaws I found the bike just made for me.
When checking out the geometry of the the Long Haul Trucker(LHT) frame I noticed that it's well-acclaimed long wheelbase (>1000mm) - providing the extra stability appreciated when touring with a loaded bike - is identical to my Orbea's. Some extra measuring convinced me that the Surly LHT is very similar to my present Orbea frame with a noticeable advantage : it is made in other sizes than 19"
Parts
Why Buy Low-End?
The whole idea behind this bike-building business is to make a bike based on a good frame, but keep the final price tag as low as possible using bas-de-gamme, quality parts.
My experience with Shimano components is more than satisfactory: my brakes, the crankset, bottom bracket, rear shifter are all entry-level Shimano parts for MTBs and they served me well over 10000km.
This is why I decided to use the Shimano Alivio product line for almost all moving parts of the bike - they are reasonbly priced and durable. I don't need no ultra-light crankset for 200+ Euros neither do I need to shift gears as quickly as if I was on a time trial of the Tour de France!
As you will notice, the wheels are an exception to this rule : altough I used Shimano hubs, I choose Mavic rims. The explanation is simple, I was buying online and I went for the cheapest double-walled rims possible. To compensate for strength I bought rims with 36 spokes, this combination should make a wheel strong enough to serve me over thousands of kilometers!
So behold The One List, where I present - grouped more or less logically - what parts I used to build the bike!
The List
Front Wheel
Rear Wheel
Transmission
Direction
Shifting, Braking, Locks & Racks
I don't intend to get into details about how to put all these together, you can find all relevant information on the net. To those too lazy to search using Google, a number of links are listed on the Links page, those should get you started.
Update, as of 25-06-2006: I have finished building three wheels ( one front and two rear), but the Surly LHT frame is still out of sight...According to their blog they are supposed to be ready the first week of July - I'm crossing my fingers! At least I had time to test the rear wheel I have built - it already served me for more than 600km with absolutely no problems, giving me quite a bit of confidence about my newly aquired wheelbuilding abilities!:)
The Finished Bike
Finally! after much waiting, the frame arrived the first of July - on my birthday! Oh boy, was I pleased...:)
The headset was installed by a pro - I don't have the simple tool to press the headset cups into the fork tube, so I asked the LBS guy to do it for me. Anyway, I had the frame back on the 4th of July and started assembling the bike right away, the result: behold the photo! For more, check out the Photo Gallery.
Things Learned
So was it worth it? Did I learn anything new about bikes while buying 20+ separate pieces and assembling them?
Sure I did! The most interesting and imortant one is wheel building. The rest is made up of some minor surprises. But first things first:
Wheel Building
The idea of building my own set of wheels came from my obsession of cutting costs - I was really pissed each time when I tried to buy wheels in large sports stores like Decathlon or GoSport, as their cheap, entry level pre-built wheels did not meet my khm. high standards:
- rear hubs were usually for more speeds than what I had (7)
- wheels became untrue really quickly, spokes were loose
- shitty noname hubs' got used after 5-6000kms - bearing contact surface got worn
- aluminium spokes...
- price still too high
Before you ask: in bike shops - at least here in Lyon - it is really difficult to find pre-built wheels for 50 Euros ( per whee, 2005-2006 price) That's why I gave up - and because I got fed up always asking ''Don't you have something cheaper?''. Uh!
When in october 2005 I had to learn wheel truing to true my newly acquired ( 1 week old!) rear wheel, I had enough! I decided that one day I'll learn how to build wheels - this way I hoped to both become able to fully maintain my bike and to shed this terrible dependence of GoSport and Decathlon products.
First thing you have to know, if you fancy wheel-building: it's not at all difficult! If you have some basic manual dexterity and you have already been tinkering around and repairing stuff, you can do it.
Secondly: get this book! You might be getting suspicious like ''This guy must be his uncle/father/friend/etc'' - no, I'm not doing any promotion for anyone...I simply recommend buying this e-book as it is of great value for the price. By the time I have bought it, I practically knew the most of the things included as the result of some Google searching. BUT! This book really has everything together from A to Z - this is why I don't write a single word about actual wheelbuilding, everything you need to know about wheelbuilding is there.
An advice: buy the hub and the rim first and take your time to measure hub diameters, ERD, etc. Then go get the spokes - I used Spocalc to calculate spoke length.
I almost forgot: brand new rims are round before you start lacing the spokes! If you really go by the book, the wheel will need only some lateral truing - radial symmetry is often lost when you have great differences in spoke tension.
To give you confidence: the first wheel I've built myself already rolled more than 1500kms and it's as good as new! If I could do it, you can do it, too! Now get dirty! :)
Sizes...
If you are buying a seatpost, the three most frequent dimeters are 26.8, 27.2 and 31.6 mm. Of course you have many more, if you have a vintage frame, either measure it or check out Sheldon Browns seatpost database.
Seatpost tube diameter - the same problem as for the seatpost, make sure you can fix the front derailleur...
Handlebar diameter - it might be simpler to buy the stem and the handlebar in the same shop. Handlebar diameter can be 22.2mm (7/8''), 25.4mm (1'') or 31.2mm (1.25''). The first one is mainly used on BMXs, the second being the ISO standard and the third is the so called road-oversized. The LBS did not have correctly priced ( <50 Euro), 25.4mm handlebar compatible stems...
