New Toy Part 5

Now it's time to put all the bits together.

Firstly the bars and shifters set up in an approximate position. No reason to be first on the list other than I wanted to see what they looked like mounted on the bars. Unlike the previous version of Ultegra, the bolt to tighten the shifter onto the bar is located in a completely different place that requires the rubber pulling up as far as it will go to reveal the head of the bolt, you can just see it adjacent to my thumb in this shot. In the previous version the Ultegra SL, all you had to do was slide an allen key down the inside of the rubber hood and feel for the bolt, far easier...


In this shot you can see the shifters mounted but there was some adjustment needed as I wanted a smooth flat transition from bar to shifter. Here you can see that they are just a little bit to far down the bars so no nice flat transition. No worries, something to sort out later in the build








The next job was the assembly of the crankset, no pic's of the bottom bracket going in but it's an easy job, it's just like screwing on two large nuts but in this case one went on clockwise the other ant-clockwise, I forget which went which way, but it's easy enough to find out as each bracket has the side and direction marked on. Once the brackets were on and tightened up to the required torque it's time for the crankset to go on. Push the crank in as far as it will go then with a few hard smacks with the palm of my hand the cranks were nearly in the correct position. Next the opposite pedal arm was slid onto the exposed splined shaft and with the special tool (not supplied with the groupset) all that had to done was to screw it all up hand tight (as shown) which pulled the crank and the opposite arm together and then tighten up the two bolts in the crank arm to the required torque to secure the arm in position.


On with the front and rear derailleur, here the rear derailleur is bolted onto the hanger, so simple a job a monkey could did it, all that's needed is to pay attention that the 'B' screw doesn't get damaged as you tighten the bolt to the required torque, the 'B' screw here is the topmost screw of the three you can see in this shot. It is really easy to set the high and low limits by mounting the rear wheel with cassette and naturally the derailleur will be in it's most outboard position. Looking from the rear adjust the limit screw so that the derailleur is in line with the 11 or 12 teeth cog, your smallest cog. Next push the derailleur inboard and do so the same again this time with your biggest cog, set the limit screw. Easy...


In this shot I have put the chain on and am now lowering the front mech to the right position. The pen is there to keep the mech in the 'out' position. You see that red tag? on that tag is two lines, an upper and lower limit that you set the teeth of the biggest ring between. After this the front and rear brakes went on, the handlebars complete with shifters went on and all tightened up to the right torque.






All that's required now is the cabling, again easy enough if you have another bike to refer to and all I did was more or less measure size for size from my Ultegra SL equipped Focus and cut the cable housings to length. Cabled it all up and then the next to last job was wrapping the bars.










There is plenty of info on the net detailing how to do it so no need to explain it here, in fact there is enough info on the net to enable anyone with the smallest amount of technical ability to put a bike together, the skill comes in using google to find the info needed and that's not hard. Ignore the plastic pedals you can see in this shot they were just handy for the build, my spd sl's were still in the post...






In these next two shots every things assembled bar the correct pedals and with a temporary saddle mounted. All that's required now is to check all the bolts, re-torquing them, re-check the cables, re-check/adjusting the indexing and just generally making sure all the measurements are right for the saddle height, reach etc.





All that's needed now is to actually take it out on it's maiden trip to check everything is right, make sure the gearing is indexing right under load, make sure I'm happy with everything before I start to use it in anger so to speak and this I have already done as discussed in a previous blog entry of mine a few weeks back...

So that's it the end of the build of my new toy. It's been fun and enjoyable to build my own bike to my own spec with the componants of my my own choosing. I don't think there is much to putting a bike together it's just like a jigsaw puzzle, just put the right bits in the right places. Not much to go wrong just as long as you do your research and take your time. Would I do it again? most definately, and if I can do it anyone can do it....