frankenbike's frankenbikes

Hahah. What the hell 😂 eBay does come out with some proper crap brand names!

Don't you dare desticker that! ;)

Not a chance! Fits the aesthetic perfectly as is!

It lives.

I managed to ride it around the car park anyway. Please ignore the bars as I'm still moving them around. The chainring I was going to use is a 44t but turns out it's 1/4" width so doesn't fit the cog/chain. It's on the 50t ring for now; I like the ratio but I haven't tried going up a hill yet so we'll see. It also turns out that because the cog is at the disk mounting points the chainline is really wide (I think it was 53mm?) which means the big ring position is better. It's an 18t on the back.

Headset is very wrong. It barely turns but at the same time it's not tight enough as there's play when I hold the front brake on. I expect I'll have to replace the whole thing although it's possible I've somehow assembled it incorrectly.

No seatpost still. I think if I get the back brake working I'd be willing to ride it to the shop to get one though.

Will probably replace the cables/chain with new ones once I've decided how long everything needs to be (I'm using offcuts at the moment).

Edit - as it stands it rides like absolute shit as well. Flexy in all the wrong places, extremely sluggish to turn.

Put risers on it? Should handle a bit better with risers tbh.

Might do.

Obviously the big thing that's missing is the seatpost so I don't want to go too mad optimising my position yet. You never know, it might feel great when you can sit on it...

Also I kind of expected it to ride like shit, and that was part of the idea in building it; to deter thieves and hopefully injure my friends when they try to get on it

Been absolutely destroying my knees with this thing for the last week. Here's a picture from a couple of days ago.

The knee pain is partly due to very shoddy braking which is in turn due to absolutely horrible rims. I'm going to try to find a new front wheel, since the one I've got is ancient, and will true the back one, which should allow me to sort the brakes out. Brake levers feel awful to ride from the hoods because the rubber hoods are loose and it's hard to get a good grip on them. But they work in the drops.

I complained a lot about the position before... It's not totally horrible, to be honest. Quite aggressive but feels good from the tops. I might get some little cross levers to pop on there and I think that'd feel great.

Have got a pair of replacement chainrings here that need to go on. The first is a 53t (bye knees) which should sort the chain tension in the current fixie incarnation (I am forced to ride it with a chain tensioner at the moment, as otherwise the chain popped off every kilometre, but chain tensioners and fixed is bad according to @mdcc_tester and logic). The other is a 42t which will go in the middle position and be used as a 1x chainring. I just need to get a cassette - might "borrow" an 11-32 off my spare road bike wheelset for now - and repair a spare X7 derailleur that I've got sat around. I've got a SL500 shifter that can go in the bar end.

I was looking back through the thread and spotted this comment from @Batt and am now sort of pondering swapping out some parts to make it look decent... I'd have to swap out black/silver parts so they all match and probably spray the fork black on the cheap. And obviously swap the bar tape and saddle for spares that are not quite so hideous. I'd leave the frame in it's current funky sun-bleached yellow obviously.

I've also taken the rack off as that was basically only there to act as a "saddle" so that I could get to the shop to have the seattube measured. Side note; do not ride a bike sat on the rack, it's no fun.

One more thing; the headset is junk so I'll replace that at some point.

Thought you were going for the ugly look,
I liked that.
How much has this all cost so far?

I'd easily go with a 1x setup and bar end shifter. And I honestly love the way it looks right now, so insanely cluttered that it's actually amazing.

That’s rad!

It looks like the RH brake lever has the cable release open. Pull the lever a little and pop the stud to the opposite side.

@psg1ben probably spent about £100 all told... £26 on the back wheel (could have got something cheaper but was bored of waiting), £20 on bars and stem (which for some reason I thought would be difficult to find), £10 on levers, £9 on the sprocket, plus some amount on tyres, tubes, bar tape, saddle and seatpost and fork which were a couple of quid each.

About the ugly look... Maybe I'm just bored now that I'm not working on any of my bikes! But I'll have no income in 2 months so spending money to make my bike look nice is probably a waste.

@vp1337 I actually chucked on the bar end shifter, cassette and derailleur last night just out of boredom really. Once again I forgot that you need an inline barrell adjuster when you mix SRAM MTB/road components so I'll have to pop to the shop to find one of those. But it looks like it works anyway. Cross chaining is massive because I'm still using the big ring and my cabling is awful because I didn't bother to unwrap the bars yet, but I'll get a pic in a bit. Could probably do with a 11-40 or 36 if I can get one cheap.

@blacklisted I've sorted the brake lever since that picture. Need to properly adjust the cantis again now but at least I'm not getting RSI from stretching to pull the brakes.

Well that was fun as hell.

Got a nearly new Mavic Crossride for £15 and set of SPD/flat dual sided pedals for £1 (!) in the bike shop. Guy said the bike was "interesting". Forgot to get barrell adjusters and cross top levers.

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I think I'm going to christen it DeVito, after my favourite Frank of all time:

Potential end result if I tried to make it look nice...

It's looking a bit nicer at the moment:

Will get a better picture tomorrow.

Better photos. Still messing with front cantis and shifters so didn't chop the cable yet.

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I know this isnt an aesthetic build but a flat bar or stem and maybe black fork and it wouldnt even look bad just, built, yanarrhmeen?

It's becoming more aesthetic as time goes on and I realise how fun it is to ride and swap in nicer parts! I did prefer the position of the previous stem somewhat but the colour was a bit off so I thought I'd switch to black. This one is kind of nice as I can ride the tops for a very upright position and the drops on the road. But a bit ugly.

Black fork would be great but I haven't seen one cheap in the few days I've been looking. Saw a great one yesterday: lugged crown, lowrider mounts, correct thread length, nice and light... But it was 1" 1/8 unfortunately. Maybe I should buy it anyway and sell it.

I'm thinking £10 for a black seatpost next and a ~£25 11-42. With a black fork as well it wouldn't be totally ugly.

Even with some wide compact bar (Soma Highwayone, Ritchey Logic Curve, FSA Omega, Deda RHM) instead of those deep ergo's, or a dirt drop a la Nitto RM3, Salsa Cowbell, On-one midge etc.

Looking dope though.

Hmm hadn't thought about changing the bars... at the moment I'm committed to 26.0mm seeing as I have two stems for that clamp diameter, but it would make sense to switch to a more common clamp size if I change the stem up again. Dirt drops would be great if I could get ahold of some.

Fortunately these (second-hand) stems are costing me £1 a pop and (second-hand) bars will be similarly cheap so I have no problem trying a few out!

Keep the fork.
It goes with the saddle.
Blue seatpost? Cheap and abundant I reckon.
£1 stems?!

Yeah, a lot of these parts come from a bike recycling charity place. You dump the bike and they either fix it up and sell it on and tear it apart for spares. Consequently there's a crapload of cheap old bits. Unfortunately I went in last night and measured every black seatpost and there's not a single one that is 26.0mm. I didn't measure the silver ones. Nothing blue in sight.

Edit: got the tyres for £5 each - felt like I got ripped off a bit as one is pretty worn, but the other is basically new so fair enough I guess.

New parts. Cheapest 11-42 I've seen by a long-shot!

And you just know a €5 headset is going to be great.

There were no 31.8 mm quill stems available. One went for £10 on eBay but that was a bit much. Instead I got these 25.x mm bars for £2 each; which should I try first? The drop bars are more compact than the ones on there at the moment. The moustache bars would require me to bodge an MTB shifter clamp out of a plastic bracket for a light.

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quite frankly I'd love to see those moustache bars on it :) - bodgings fun right??