Disco Liam

As some of you may or may not have seen, I recently built my second fixed gear. His name is Patterson, and he is a gent. I thought I would share some of the building process with you here, and you can read more about him, his parts, and his planned upgrades, on his own page.

He arrived with me last Monday, after the #uksnow had delayed the fine staff at Parcel force. An unexpected knock at the door at half 6, just as I sat down for tea, and low and behold there he is. I finished my tea as quickly as possible and got on with starting to put him together, after quickly checking some instructions on the amazing Instructables.

I first went about finding all my bike bits and tools, and set myself up in the backroom. First to go in was the seat post as it was nice and easy, then the bottom bracket, which again was fairly easily achieved. I next attempted to install the headset, but as I was by myself and without the correct tools or even a workbench, I got nowhere pretty fast. I found some good tips on line about building your own headset press, so popped down to the local independent hardware shop the next day. Unfortunately this again didn’t work as I couldn’t find the bits I needed. At this point I gave up and decided to take it in to Cycle Kingdom in Fleet and get them to do the headset and cut down the the fork tube.

They did a fantastic job putting everything together for me, and it was excellently priced. A lot better than some other quotes a got and after going in and speaking to the lads I trusted them a lot more than other places I had been. I brought him back today and put the rest together. Handle bars, saddle, crankset and wheels all went on without a hitch. The only real issue I had was having to take a few links out of the chain, but that wasn’t to bad really. Overall it all went really well, and I’m ruddy pleased with the results. Its been a difficult time working out what bike I wanted, finding it in the country, then putting him together, but hopefully it will all be worth it.

As a final kicker the valve on my rear tube as gone, so after one last trip to pick up a new one tomorrow morning and he should be rideable. Hopefully. Ill leave you with a  photo, but there’s loads on Flickr.