Bicycle project continues. Many of my bicycle parts have arrived - frame, bottom bracket, moustache bars, SPD pedals and shoes. 700C wheelset with flipflop hub should arrive today. Last night I went to American Cyclery on my way home from work and purchased a Sugino RD crankset (165mm), tires, tubes, a cheap seat post (didn’t know if it would fit), a chain (shop had many different colours, i went with normal), a pedal wrench (big sturdy thing), a bottom bracket tool (with Italian threads, I figure I’ll need to do frequent tightening) and some heavy duty lubricant.
With all this stuff, I was able to begin my process of discovering all the mis-matched and incompatible parts I had actually bought. Since I began this project with pretty much zero knowledge of building a bicycle, I fully expected I would make mistakes along the way in terms of buying parts. I figure if I have to buy another of some part to correct an error, its just an additional educational expense. The thing I was most worried about was the bottom bracket and crankset. Having an Italian threaded frame, it is a little more difficult to find bottom brackets. I semi-blindly purchased a fancy Truvativ GXP Team cups bottom bracket from eBay, in the hope that it would fit my crankset (which I had yet to purchase). It turns out that the Sugino RD crankset requires a square taper bottom bracket, 103-107mm width shell. I don’t actually know exactly what kind of crankset the Truvativ BB takes, but its clearly not mine. In any case, I need to get a new BB. Sugino make their own square taper cartridge BB in a 103mm size which I would be happy to purchase except for the fact that its not available in Italian threading. After some searching, I found that nashbar.com sell the Shimano UN53 in a 70×107 sizing, which should hopefully both fit in my frame’s BB and support the Sugino RD crankset. At ~$23 for the BB, this lesson seems to come at a pretty good price!
The second sizing issue I encountered was in the seat post. Having looked at Sheldon Brown’s entry on Italian bicycles, I figured the seat post diameter on my bicycle would be relatively standard. I asked the shop for a ’standard’ seat post (although the cheapest one) and they gave me what I assume was 27.2mm. It is slightly too large. I also tried the seat post from my current Trek road bike, which also was too large - again I presume it was 27.2mm. I intend to try to exchange it for a 27.0mm, which should hopefully fit. Another thing to note is that saddles are bloody expensive. Cheapest I saw in American Cyclery was $50 (in an ugly colour), and many were well over $100. I figure I will cannibalise the seat from my Trek for the fixie, at least for starters.
Tags: Bicycle
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