Other parts:
introduction
Headset
Bottom bracket and crankset
Derailleurs and chain
Steer and cables
Make the brakes and shifters work
Finishing up!
I've been a cycling enthusiast for a couple of years now. It all started out about 6 or 7 years ago, when I got quite an old bike from an acquaintance. I managed to destroy that one very effectively by driving it in a car. Luckily it was the car making the mistake of suddenly driving in front of me where he was not supposed to drive. The driver however was a foreigner and not really eager to involve the police. Since I was about 100km from home and I really needed a bike to continue, we agreed to go to the nearest local bike shop, to buy me a 'new' second hand bike. So we did and that's how I ended up with the bike I've been using for years.
The bike is a Koga Miyata which is older then I am. I still have a tremendous respect for this bike, surviving so many years with me as its driver. The groupset is a 6 speed Shimano Adamas (I never heard about it, a google will give a catalogue from 1982). The crank is better known: a Shimano 600. Anyway, I don't want to elaborate too much about the technical details of this bike. Just enjoy the picture and think about how beautiful vintage bikes can be.
Vintage bikes however do have one minor disadvantage. They need regular maintenance. And that's how I was forced into getting interest in doing small maintenance myself. For example, in a moment of great confidence I decided to disassemble the rear derailleur to clean it properly. Furthermore I was forced to replace the cogset and with that the chain. And numerous other little things.
And although I thought the love between me and my Koga was meant to be eternal, I slowly started to realize that I couldn't keep torturing this poor old lady for ever because parts kept breaking down (for some reason especially wheels) and it was getting harder and harder to get suitable replacement parts.
This left me with a great dilemma. Buying a new bike would go beyond my budget, but any new bike would need to be a significant improvement compared to the Koga. As a student you need to be creative when it comes to these things and for reasons I still cannot understand I thought I could be able to build one myself.
The reasoning is I would be able to buy all different parts for less money then a complete bike would cost me. I do know myself a bit however, and I was not so very confident I would be able to do the job. After all there are quite some small little bits and pieces and I could think of at least a million ways I could screw up this project.
But after yet another struggle with the down tube shifters on the Koga, I got frustrated enough to actually go for it. Thanks to another little hobby of me, photographing stuff, I decided to document as many steps in the process as possible. When I found all the pictures together, I decided it would make sense to publish them to help others around here secretly thinking about doing something similar.
Main purpose is to show that building a bike is much more easy then it might seem at first glance. A couple of steps are slightly tricky, but when you take your time there's not so much that really can go wrong. So with writing this I hope to make you enthusiastic about such a project and maybe remove the last bit of hesitation trying it yourself.
Most big and expensive parts I bought online, some at ebay, some at regular online shops. The small bits and pieces come from Local Bike Shops. For now, lets take a look at the end result of the project, so you know what to expect:
From:
Towards:
In the next chapters I'll explain how to install most of the parts. I'll try to elaborate more on the not so trivial parts. Feel free to comment on anything explained here. I'm open to suggestions and or questions. And one final tip: if you have any difficulty at some point: youtube is full of short movies about the installation of bikeparts and can be very helpful!
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