Weekend Projects

Over this past week and weekend I spent some time building a commuter bike for my girlfriend and did a favor for a friend. First thing on the agenda was a thorough bike cleaning for my boys Torelli. It really is a beautiful bike and probably hadn't been serviced or cleaned for a few years. So, I basically hooked him up with a $200 bike service for free, just because I am obsessed with working on and cleaning bikes. I stripped down his bike and cleaned everything on the bike... and also revamped his beautiful Campy set up. A very aesthetically pleasing Campy Chorus. I also added some orange tires to accent the frame a bit as well. I took a picture before I brought it back to him and thought I would share this with the world... It looks more like art work, after I cleaned it up I drove it back to him... I couldn't bear to ride it anymore.

Now on too my little pride and joy. I bought an old specialized crossover on Craigslist a while back, for about $60. after a while I finally decided to get it revamped and give it some style. Of course a lot of work had to be done here, the bike had been sitting around for several years and was also a beach bike. Operating it was pretty labor intensive, from spinning the knobby's to shifting the push button gears. The gear shifters essentially required the wrist strength of Mariusz Pudzianowski.

So I took her to the living room bike shoppe and stripped her down to the frame and sanded off the nasty green paint. I decided to go with a nice fire engine red for the frame color... I figured the black and red would look sharp. Unfortunately I only got one spray can so I was a bit short on paint for the underside... but it looked pretty good anyway. A quick visit to performance bike, which had a great sale this weekend, and I was able to pick up all new cables, housing, chain and a sharp little commuter rack for cheap. I've got to say that putting the bike together from the ground up was quite an adventure, and a super fun project. If I can liken it to another similar activity, it would be the equivalent of tearing down an old classic car and building it back up from the ground up. So needless to say I was very proud and learned a lot from my work.

The bike is now better than new... great shifting, comparable to shimano 105. I presented this to my girl this past weekend and she loved it... we went for some rides around the southbay. I am hoping this sparks excitement for her to commute to work a couple times a week. Eventually I am going to fix up and sell my old road bike as well, so be on the lookout, for both of these bikes will be available on craigslist soon. I will be trying to raise funds to set her up with a really really nice roadie style commuter. Probably something along the lines of the LaSalsa Casserole.

Build a bike... it's way fun