The Painting of the Bike

When I got my bike I intentionally bought it in white so that it would be easier to customize. I originally thought that I was going to do some sharpie art an then just put a clear coat on the outside, but I decided against in favor of a more colorful option. What I ended up doing was paint the bike based off of one of MWM (Matt Wes Moore)'s bikes. His was a basic striped design with a few base colors then three overplayed colors. Each bike was painted in a group of colors. They were either all warm or all cold colors.

When painting my bike I first had to take my bike apart. This process was very informative. It was quite a learning experience! I had to go backwards through all the steps of putting it together an then some. I had to strip it all the way down.

Before any painting could actually happen, I had to sand down the paint so that the spray paint would have something to attach to. When sanding it down I didn't want to go all the way down to the metal because I had a perfectly good layer of white primer already on the bike. After all of the sanding I had to clean it off so I used some alcohol so that it wouldn't have any oil on it. When there is oil in the bike from my hands or anything else, it messes up the paint. It gives it a ripple effect. But when it is cleaned properly, the paint should end up perfectly smooth.

In order to paint my bike I had I find a place that would hold the bike for me while I sprayed on the paint. I decided I zip tie the bike to a chain and let it hang from that. The zip tie was looped around the part of the bike that I wanted I stay white so there was no worry of having the outline of a zip tie in the final product. This method of hanging also made it so that I could spin the bike to get to other areas of the bike that would have been much harder to reach had it been any other way. The only problem with this was that the painting was done outside so it was exposed to all the dust and grit that was outside. This, fortunate, didn't cause too much of a problem in the final product, but it would have been much nicer to have been able to paint indoors.

The first layer of paint that I applied was black because it was on all the joints. This made it easier to paint the rest of the bike because I only had to deal with all the joints once.


The second coat was yellow because it was the lightest color and I could paint over it in the other, darker colors, and they would not be affected. The yellow was the largest section of the bike and took the most paint. It also took more layers because the yellow paint is always so thin and transparent.

After the yellow, I progressed through the other colors until I finished red. I ten let the bike hang in the basement for a while and let the paint harden. Usually I don't wait long enough and end up messing up the pain job on other projects and then regretting it instantly.

The next day, after letting the bike dry in the basement, I hung the bike back up outside and put on two clear enamel coats of paint. This was to ensure that the paint was on there fairly well and that it wouldn't get scratched too easily.

After all of this painting and drying I put the bike back together again. This was surprisingly easy to do. The only thing that I had trouble with was the headset and the fork. I eventually figured it out though an got the whole bike back together.

Here's the final product!

Crank

The Crank is a very important part of the bike. It's what the pedals are attached to and what ultimately propels you forward.

The original crank on my bike was fairly flimsy and would bend whenever I put large amounts of pressure on it. It also wasn't completely parallel with the freewheel on the hub so the chain would make this very annoying noise whenever I was riding it.

The new crank that I was buying is a Shun messenger crank. It has 46 teeth as did my original crank. I was trying to stay with the same gear ratio because I was very happy with the hardness and speed on the original crank. Don't mess with perfection.

A few problems arose when I received my crank an put it on. The crank was further from the bottom bracket than I thought it would be so it was even less parallel to the rear freewheel cog. This made the noise much louder which was not what I wanted. This crank however was able to be removed from the sprocket so it was in two pieces. I was able to remove the sprocket and screw it in on the other side of the crank arms. This was a near perfect solution. It did make the noise much quieter than the original crank, but there still was a noise. Oh well...

The crank has been a very smart investment in my bike. It makes it ride
Much smoother, it is much more solid, and it is very cool looking. Adding some very clean lines to the bike.

Bike brakes

The bike came with some components that were sub par. The brakes, the brake levers, and the brake hoods were almost to the point of not functioning. Whenever I would press on the brake levers, the bike would stop, but at a surprising slow rate of deceleration. I saw this as a major safety hazard.

In order to fix this problem I began surfing the web to find a solution to my braking problem. The solution that I found that I thought would be the best were Tektro cyclocross brake levers. These are a combination of mountain bike levers and lighter road levers. So I bought them. They were only like twenty dollars. I also bought a front and rear brake from origin 8. These are dual pivot brakes and they are much better than the stock single pivot brakes that came on the bike. I could now brake with ease and even skid and endo. It was like a dream.

Bike assembly

When I received the bike I immediately began to piece it together. I just couldn't hold back.

The bike came in a fairly large box. The bike was already partially assembled. All I had to do was attach the handlebars and the front wheel and the seat and seat tube. This was pretty easy to do. But It took a surprisingly long time seeing as though this was my first real encounter with a disassembled bike. I would say it took a solid hour.

Buying the bike

The bike that I am using as the base bike for the current bike project that I am working on is the cheapest single speed bike that I could find. The cheapest bike that I could find was a bike on Road Bike Outlet's website. It was a white bike that had no affiliation with any of the bike companies. The frame was fabricated by a basic manufacturing company. The final cost of the bike came out to be somewhere around $200. This was really the only bike in my budget so I bought it.