And a brief hiatus

Rear derailleur now installed as well.  I also managed to get the headrest to install finally, to do so, I removed about half of the rubber sleeving which has allowed me the wiggle room to get the ends of the headrest past the bottom clamp.  That's now tightened in with one clamp on the uncovered part and one on the rubberised part.  Hopefully that will now hold.

I finally sorted out the BB removal from the old bike and reinstall here.  It seems that Shimano have about 5 "standards" for their external bearing road BBs, 43mm, 41mm, 39mm etc. Finally got the tool for the BB9000.  Bearing cups came off no problems at all, both had been well greased with copper anti seize on assembly by the LBS a few years back. Only issue was extracting the central plastic sleeve.  Eventually it came out with a great big chunk of ice, but damaged.  Luckily it's an after market spare so I shouldn't need to purchase a whole new BB assembly - new one is on order, hopefully arrive monday/tuesday. Old frame has now been set aside, I'll have to give it a good check over later for corrosion in the BB shell (not sure how the water was getting in) and take a look at a few suspect areas on the downtube.

Plan had been to mount the cranks and seat to allow me to sort out boom length. I've mounted the cranks temporarily for now, confirming the BB compatibility if nothing else.

All components except the front mech are now mounted, not much point with that until I have the BB fully mounted - don't want to risk damaging it when removing and refitting the mech.  I've set the boom and slider length now as a starting point, adn mounted flat pedals until I'm used to the bike.

Next steps are to begin the cabling, and I think I now understand the cable route for the front mech.

Chapter 3 - Component install

So here she is, in the workstand, wheels on, cranks on (even if only temporary) and starting to look like a bike



I took it off there and onto an X-Tools display stand to give a bit more room walking around it without losing too much stability. Note the fan heater on the floor, it was about 1.5C in there at that point, snow that I'd tracked in the day before was still frozen. It had got up to about 3.5C by the time I left about 90 mins later. I was wearing three jumpers and two pairs of merino wool socks

Next steps, pedals, seatback. I only have 4 small nyloc nuts and bolts in my pack, I'm assuming they are for attaching the seat, rather than bottle cages. Seat was temporarily fitted to get an idea whether I need to cut the boom or not. I assmed the holes in the wings are the mounting points. I like the CF seat here, but much prefer the mounting for the M5 seat with threaded holes in the wings and countersunk bolts with a combination of rubber and steel washers to spread the load - perhaps next iteration on the Cruzbike?


Good news is that I don't think I'll need to cut the boom, I think I can get a relaxed elbow position with the boom around the 3-4 mark, so I've nipped up the pivot clamp on the slider to get a position to work from later.

Next, install brakes, brake levers, bar end shifters. I have a pair of long-drop 521 brakes, front fits no problem, but the rear needs another look at. At the moment it seems that it might foul the tyre - can't see why as the front has the same drop and the brakes are a pair. The rear also seems to have developed some stiffness which I want to take a look at.



Bar-end shifters mounted no problem. Couldn't use the torque wrench though as they are a backwards thread to tighten into the inside of the bar. Ended up over torquing and then using the torque wrench to undo, feeling the crack and then a smidge of movement to set the torque. Brake levers mounted easily enough as well. They will eventually be paired with an orange bar tape to match the frame highlights as well.



So far this is all going easier than the M5, bu then that was my first build and I chose a recumbent to do it.

Tomorrow, hopefully front and rear mechs. I'll wait for cabling until I have the BB/cranks properly installed.  Seat position is great by the way