Fatal Swan
Senior Retro Guru
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It's now a long time ago since my first post about my kids' bikes and I have two that are ready for essentially adult bikes, which means I can start to have some more fun planning and working on the bikes. One daughter is fast, athletic, competitive but uninterested in her actual bike as long as it works and is a nice colour - the other not so much at all, but loves to learn about bikes, the parts, understand how it all works and makes sure she has better stuff than her sister. It's a nice combination. Don't want to spend a fortune as they'll outgrow them in 2-3 years I'm sure - this thread is destined to be linked to in the next build threads... They're not (yet) into retro and to be honest, modern bikes their size tend to do look a bit cooler. So, modern it is.
For the first one I'll probably just buy something complete when the right thing comes up. For the second one we are doing a build together and as we've made decisions on most of the parts but not yet got them all and fitted them, it would be a good time to start documenting it.
Last year in preparation for this I bagged this lovely Giant frame from dablk (minus the forks):
It's a really lovely frame, nice quality, lightweight, perfect colour and nice finish.
For the rest of the build, I was hoping to use some of the long-hoarded parts at the back of the garage (finally, a reason!) plus some nice choices elsewhere to make up a proper bike.
It will likely be mostly used on road, but suspension matches the bike, so just some cheap forks to begin with. For the moment I'm going to put on these RST Gila I got from andybikes for £20 plus the post, but will keep an eye out for some better/lighter ones as they come up.
Next issue is the crankset. I've got a spare Hollowtech BB, so Shimano fit ideally. But regular cranks are too long and I wanted to aim for 155mm, which will be good for now, but also last a while now that people are starting to look at the benefits of shorter cranks anyway. Not much option at this kind of length, but my wanted ad alerted me to these from AliExpress, which for £36 look great, have a range of small lengths, a chainring guard and a choice of chainring sizes:
Those are the most important bits, then we have some fun choosing what will work from the rest of the garage. I have had a spare set of top-end carbon-hubbed Roval E5 26" disc wheels (approx 1.4kg) that I bought nearly 5 years ago and have never got around to using. It's overkill by a very very long way, but it would also be a waste to just spend money on cheaper wheels for this purpose, so it's them. We had the discussion over thin road tyres (I have some nice Panaracer Pasela 32mm) versus wider knobbly tyres and just as we were settling on MTB tyres despite them being harder work on the road, I turned up a wide pair of essentially new Schwalbe City Jets, which I didn't know I had and can't actually remember where they even came from. But they will be perfect.
Controls - there are several candidates in the garage but she settled on a low rise Truvativ T30 with some paddle-type grips with the built-in bar end bits. Actually they are very comfy and a good choice. We'll check the stem length once it's built, but the little Giant one that came with the frame looks llike just the job for now. Same for the saddle.
I'd imagined I'd cobble the groupset together from various parts, but actually I've got nothing complete as a groupset aside from the odd front mech, a few chains and a SRAM rear derailleur. With the crank bought I decided I wanted to go 1x to avoid the complication of front and rear shifters, plus it looks more like modern MTBs. I was buying the crank from Aliexpress already so I decided to get a new Deore 1x10 shifter/mech/cassette and a set of MT200 brakes at the same time. They cost next to nothing, I'm a bit suspicious but let's see when they turn up next week.
Will post updates here as the building-up takes shape...
For the first one I'll probably just buy something complete when the right thing comes up. For the second one we are doing a build together and as we've made decisions on most of the parts but not yet got them all and fitted them, it would be a good time to start documenting it.
Last year in preparation for this I bagged this lovely Giant frame from dablk (minus the forks):
It's a really lovely frame, nice quality, lightweight, perfect colour and nice finish.
For the rest of the build, I was hoping to use some of the long-hoarded parts at the back of the garage (finally, a reason!) plus some nice choices elsewhere to make up a proper bike.
It will likely be mostly used on road, but suspension matches the bike, so just some cheap forks to begin with. For the moment I'm going to put on these RST Gila I got from andybikes for £20 plus the post, but will keep an eye out for some better/lighter ones as they come up.
Next issue is the crankset. I've got a spare Hollowtech BB, so Shimano fit ideally. But regular cranks are too long and I wanted to aim for 155mm, which will be good for now, but also last a while now that people are starting to look at the benefits of shorter cranks anyway. Not much option at this kind of length, but my wanted ad alerted me to these from AliExpress, which for £36 look great, have a range of small lengths, a chainring guard and a choice of chainring sizes:
Those are the most important bits, then we have some fun choosing what will work from the rest of the garage. I have had a spare set of top-end carbon-hubbed Roval E5 26" disc wheels (approx 1.4kg) that I bought nearly 5 years ago and have never got around to using. It's overkill by a very very long way, but it would also be a waste to just spend money on cheaper wheels for this purpose, so it's them. We had the discussion over thin road tyres (I have some nice Panaracer Pasela 32mm) versus wider knobbly tyres and just as we were settling on MTB tyres despite them being harder work on the road, I turned up a wide pair of essentially new Schwalbe City Jets, which I didn't know I had and can't actually remember where they even came from. But they will be perfect.
Controls - there are several candidates in the garage but she settled on a low rise Truvativ T30 with some paddle-type grips with the built-in bar end bits. Actually they are very comfy and a good choice. We'll check the stem length once it's built, but the little Giant one that came with the frame looks llike just the job for now. Same for the saddle.
I'd imagined I'd cobble the groupset together from various parts, but actually I've got nothing complete as a groupset aside from the odd front mech, a few chains and a SRAM rear derailleur. With the crank bought I decided I wanted to go 1x to avoid the complication of front and rear shifters, plus it looks more like modern MTBs. I was buying the crank from Aliexpress already so I decided to get a new Deore 1x10 shifter/mech/cassette and a set of MT200 brakes at the same time. They cost next to nothing, I'm a bit suspicious but let's see when they turn up next week.
Will post updates here as the building-up takes shape...
I'm looking forward to doing something similar with my 2 when they make the leap up from 24" wheels. I got those bars as a stopgap on my daily commuter when I was messing around with different widths/rises and 10 years later they're still on there and still going strong.
