Fixie Project - Part VI

Wow, almost a month has elapsed since my last blog post. There's been some progress on the fixie in amongst getting the usual winter colds (day care centres should be renamed Infectious Disease Factories for the Hygienically Challenged).

The first and possibly most satisfying development has been the completion of painting the frame and fork:


The paint is in three layers: grey primer, then sky blue, then clear on top, all from rattle cans. I applied the stickers before the clear coat, hoping this would give them some protection. The stickers (from Cyclomondo) can be applied wet or dry; I applied them wet so that I could move them around if they were crooked. I'm really happy with how they turned out.

The next job was to press in the headset cups. As explained in part V, I used a home-made tool for this. Here's the top cup going in (it's also a good shot of the metal head tube badge):

The rope is just a crazy idea for protecting the bottom face of the head tube, and probably not necessary.

And here's the top and bottom cups both pressed in:






















Next up was the bottom bracket, a Shimano UN54 68x107mm job:


And then the left-hand crank and pedal (double-sided Shimano brand SPD).

It all looks so shiny now - just wait until my first ride when I forget there's no freewheel!