Building a new Bike Part 3

Hi It's Saturday today and I've made quite a lot of progress on the bike. The mini-v brakes arrived during the week and that let me set up the steerer tube and bottom bracket shell one night last week. Last time I wrote, I'd just started on the rear triangle: after several hours today, that is all complete. The work involves cutting tubes of chromoly steel and brazing them together. As well the holes in the precut laser parts needed a bit of enlarging to fit tubes at odd angles. I made about 20 "suspension blocks" from old bicycle tubes and these seem to do a good job as a suspension block.

Before starting on the suspension blocks, I made a wad punch for putting the hole in the centre of the blocks. This is a piece of chromolly tube with the wall made very thin and sharp all the way round. To make the blocks, you find an old bike tube, then cut square lengths, wad punch a hole through and finally cut a small triangle off each of the corners. I'll try to get a better photo of the suspension later. For the monent I'm very pleased, way lighter and simpler than the arrangement on my current bike.

All for Now!