Let's offroad / mountain bike / mtb / ride dirt

eBay seller sent the Deore brake and lever without the pads fitted and without the plastic spacer between the pistons, first thing I did when it arrived was to pull the lever to give it a try. I wondered why it felt so weird, so I pulled the lever a few more times... Resulting in one of the pistons partially popping out of the caliper, and fluid leaking over my carpet and hands. Pushed piston back in, but that definitely needs bleeding now.

This was my fave. It's probably fucked now.

This is like a case study in why it's sometimes a terrible idea to buy used MTB shiz.

Bought Dialled Prince Albert frame from STW - Frame came with a headset and SRAM GXP BB installed and Truvativ Stylo (2x) GXP cranks not installed

Bought and fitted 30T RaceFace Narrow Wide chainring to Stylo cranks
Bought all remaining parts minus brakes, gear cable outer, and pedals from @furious_tiles plus a cardboard box full of 26" tyres
Attempted to fit everything to the frame, cranks wouldn't install properly - NDS crank arm bolt threads wouldn't engage with the threads on the axle. Initial investigation determined this was due to the axle needing to be about 5mm further through the BB than it was managing to fit. No amount of grease and hammering/malleting would force the axle through the BB any further. I also couldn't fit the gear cable because the frame required full length outer, which I didn't have at home, only shorter sections.
Out of the box of many tyres, only the Nobby Nic fitted on the front wheel and none on the rear. I snapped about 3 tyre levers and punctured 1 tube in the process of attempting to fit other tyres to the front and rear wheels
Bought a brand new Nobby Nic for the rear wheel and a brand new Deore rear brake and lever as they were on discount at CRC, and I returned all the other used tyres back into the cardboard box, sealed it up, and put it in the shed
Bought a cheap, but "like new" front Deore brake and lever from eBay
Fitted the new Nobby Nic to the rear wheel, it fitted very easily and only 2 tyre lever actions were required. It made the ~4 hours I wasted trying to fit all the other tyres seem like a total waste of time
Fitted rear brake from CRC, but because I am short and as a result the frame is so small it needed the hose shortening - with no experience in this I didn't want to risk trying this myself so it still needs doing
eBay seller sent the Deore brake and lever without the pads fitted and without the plastic spacer between the pistons, first thing I did when it arrived was to pull the lever to give it a try. I wondered why it felt so weird, so I pulled the lever a few more times... Resulting in one of the pistons partially popping out of the caliper, and fluid leaking over my carpet and hands. Pushed piston back in, but that definitely needs bleeding now.
Asked @furious_tiles for some help on fitting the cranks via WhatsApp with lots of pictures, both of us stumped, he offered to send me some cranks that would fit my BB.
Truvativ Howitzers arrived from @furious_tiles - they did not fit my GXP BB and my RaceFace Narrow Wide chainring I bought was also a different BCD to that of the Howitzers.
Decided to buy a Howitzer BB from CRC for £30 as they would deliver fairly quickly, but after completing the purchase I realised I had forgotten to also buy the chainring! I went back onto CRC and realised that to make the free cranks from Tim work, I would need to spend about £65 in total, not far off a decent used 1x Shimano setup which I'd much prefer.
Scour eBay and find a barely used Zee crankset with 32T RSP narrow wide chainring fitted and HTii BB with a seller who's quick to respond and willing to take a couple of quid for quicker delivery.

Yeah. I found out how tricky MTB stuff had become the hard way too. Frustrating and expensive.

errrr... I was just about to come into this thread to ask for advice about buying and building my first mtb from second hand parts... Maybe I'll just go back to browsing new bikes.