Working a job you hate to buy things you don’t need...

I bought some Challenge tyres about 3 months ago with a view to fitting them to my daily commuter. However, they proved an utter bastard to fit and I didn't end up using them. So they remained on the shelves gathering dust with all the other cast off bits.

The tyres have this picture on the back

Look how easy fitting tyres is! What I did notice missing from the pictures is the one of snapped thumbs, blood everywhere and a wheel being launched across the garage. Challenge lie like a walking lie machine - these tyres are an utter bastard to fit....

Anyway, I'm at my mums at the moment looking after her whilst she's not well. Fortunately she's playing her part and sleeping a lot which means I can spend my time building up shit bikes from bits I have in the garage.

I have a lot of shit bikes in the garage, 9 frames as of this morning (plus 5 completes!). Anyway, one of those is my old airborne Carpe Diem and fortunately said frame will happily accept the Challenge tyres in a fruity 30mm flavour. It's not without its issues though, not least because of the slightly 80's paint scheme. It also has three sets of bottle bosses (so Adventurist) but sadly one has a snapped off bolt very much 'welded' into it. So I dragged it out and stuck it in the stand.

I then realised I don't have a clue what I'm doing and dragged it back out the stand and took it to my mate Widget. Widget is my best mate (ahhh) and collectively we own a paint/body shop in darkest rural Suffolk. I say own, he does all the work and I pay the rent. Anyway, first job was to remove the stuck bottle bolt

Here it is stuck in the frame

After much drilling, using some sort of tap thing and a helicoil we ended up with this

Hurrah - ready for 3-bottle adventuring. Mint.

Widget then suggested we paint the frame. Which involved prep. Now we (he) could have gone down the route of stripping ALL the paints off the frame and then filling any dings and what not for a mirror like finish. However I'm lazy and impatient and wanted to go get some lunch so I suggested we (he) flat back the paint, rough it up a bit and then paint it. Widget wasn't keen on this idea, but I was buying lunch and therefore that decision was made. Here it is being prep'd. It doesn't look much but the paint was crazy thick and frankly I was crazy hungry. Hunger won..Note the P2 steel fork also getting some lovely painty goodness. That thing weighs more than dark matter, however its very strong and its the only straight steerer fork I have. So its going on..

This is Widget masking off the BB. Everyone should have a Widget

He then got stuck into the painting. Now all joking aside he's a bloody good painter and has ALL THE THINGS to paint stuff. Like a mixing scheme that weighs paint and shit, you know - good shit. Anyway, I went with black because..well because it'll look mega with the skin walls. And it covers up the chips a bit better

Widget painting and looking like he's cleaning a crime scene...

So the end result. It looks great, although as Widget pointed out, if I'd spent more time prepping the frame I could have removed all the chips in the paint. Prepping doesn't get me breakfast, so obviously I ignored him

Tonight whilst making mum soup, I shall be re-lacing some rims on to a spare pair of Hope hubs I've got, and then trying to fit the tyres after they've been on the radiator for a bit.

Rest of the build will be whatever I have in the garage. It'll be 1x10, thompson post, BB7's, Fizik saddle and possibly some pimpy carbonz cranks depending on the BCD (I've ordered a Narrow/wide ring which may or may not fit.

Hoping to have it finished tomorrow to be ridden to Lincoln on Friday. From Suffolk...yeah, like thats going to happen