- Look, I know you got your own freaking problems,
you don't wanna hear about mine,
but in the interest of being open and transparent,
I've got too many bikes.
(upbeat bright music)
Yes, this is in fact one of the better problems
you could have,
and it's a very easy problem to solve.
We can just give a bike away.
And that's what we're gonna do today,
but it's not exactly a bike yet.
Know the trade show circuit is not kind to demo bikes,
and sometimes you need to cannibalize a few
to make one whole.
And that's exactly where this bike came from.
Back when I was working with Diamondback,
they said, "Hey, Seth, we have like a pile of bike.
It's all good stuff,
but it's missing a lot of parts.
Do you want us to send it to you?
Can you do something with it?"
So it's been sitting in the storage unit
for quite some time.
It's an alloy released 29-inch frame with a rear shock,
a drivetrain brakes.
And if we can make it whole,
it's gonna be a really capable mountain bike.
And this could be a great opportunity to really geek out
about how you find parts and how you put together a bike.
The bike's going to a great cause,
and I'll talk more about that later,
but first, let's take inventory
of what we have and what we don't have.
(upbeat music)
Please have a rear brake.
This is missing some key components.
It's like 53 and a half percent of a bike.
We're missing a fork, a front wheel, a front brake,
seatpost, seatpost clamps, stem, handlebars, grips, headset.
I guess we're technically down a tire.
We'll definitely think of the other things.
So let's start with the easy ones.
Before I unpacked the bike,
I knew it was missing a front wheel.
So I found a set of 29-inch wheels.
They're carbon, technically, XC wheels,
but they're gonna be fine.
So oddly enough,
this bike was packaged with a dropper seatpost lever,
but there's no dropper post.
Luckily, I had one in the parts bin.
A KS LEV, which is what this bike came with.
Now, we can also tell from the website
that this takes a 31.6 seatpost,
and this is a 31.6 seatpost.
That is the outside diameter of the seatpost
or the inside diameter of the seat tube.
You can find that in the specifications
or measure it with a caliper.
And when you're using a caliper
to find sizes for off the shelf bike parts,
you're not gonna get exact measurements.
If you find one that's close,
you're gonna find one that fits.
Now, we also need a clamp
to hold the dropper post on.
Now, the clamp is not gonna be the same diameter
as the seatpost,
it's gonna be the outside diameter of the seat tube.
And so you have to either measure that with a caliper
or look on the website,
and it'll usually tell you.
Pedals, we have, thanks to Crankbrothers,
saddle and grips, we have, thanks to Ergon.
And I have a set of box carbon handlebars we can use.
The outside diameter of the center of the bars
is 35 millimeters,
and so we need a stem with a 35 millimeter clamp diameter.
And I have that too.
Now, we're also missing a front brake.
The rear brake is Deore XT,
and I don't have a front Deore XT brake,
but the murder machine has a front Deore XT brake.
And oddly, not a Deore XT brake in the rear.
I actually have the matching front brake for that,
so we're gonna do a switcheroo.
Then a big one,
we need a 29-inch fork with 140 millimeters of travel.
Now, you wanna get a fork with the travel
that the bike was specced with,
because if you get a lower or higher travel fork,
it's gonna change the geometry of the bike.
You can go within 10 millimeters,
but I wouldn't go further than that.
I'm hoping we can get a fork
before the end of this week.
Let's get this thing on the stand
and start prepping some parts.
So this is a big old, extra large frame,
extra large 820 millimeter bars.
But they're a little loud,
I don't know if they kinda match,
so I'm gonna wet sand them
and put some flat black paint on them.
Should look nice.
(air hissing)
So, as I said, this bike
comes with a nice 12-speed Shimano drivetrain.
We wanna use that,
but first, we need to move the cassette
over to our new wheel.
Now, the original wheel
has a Shimano micro spline freehub body.
The new wheels have a SRAM XD freehub body, not gonna fit.
And so my solution is put that awesome drivetrain
into the parts bin for use on another bike,
and we'll take a SRAM Eagle drivetrain out of the parts bin,
and we'll install that on the bike instead.
Today is tomorrow and the paint on our handlebar has dried.
We have most of the parts we need for this bike,
but we're missing a couple of oddball things.
Let me show you the first one.
The lever for the dropper post.
We have the lever,
but we don't have a way to mount it to the handlebars.
Let's look in the parts bin.
(upbeat music)
We did find another lever we can use in its place.
Now, we need to find a way
to hold the cable in place
at the bottom of the post where it's routed in.
There should be little cable jank right here,
little cylindrical thing.
I think I have one.
We did have one.
I have a whole bunch of these.
These are ridiculously expensive.
I've seen them sold as cable clamps, gas nipple,
and they're the same thing.
So if you ever misplaced one of these and need a new one,
it's worth searching for an extra couple of minutes
to find one at a fair price,
so you don't end up spending like $17 on a cable jank.
(upbeat music)
And we also found another essential part
this morning, the headset.
Our friends down the road came through.
Cane Creek gave us a headset,
but that's not all,
they also gave us like 30% of the bike.
(upbeat techno music)
Pretty classy looking fork,
and classy move on the part of Cane Creek.
When I told them what organization
we were donating this bike to,
they were all about it.
And they came through with the headset and the fork
on short notice.
Now, this fork is 150 millimeters of travel.
That will do fine on this bike.
It originally had 140.
Upping it by 10 is okay.
Makes the bike a little bit slacker, but that's fine.
So let's start by removing the old cups from this headset.
(uplifting music) (metal clattering)
So this frame fits what's called a Zero Stack headset,
abbreviated ZS.
What that means is that the bearing cups
kinda rest on the edge of the head tube,
and then the cartridge bearings
kinda go inside the frame.
So the bearings are not increasing the stack
of the head tube,
hence Zero Stack.
So this is the cartridge bearing
that fits up into the lower headset cup.
So it sits on top of this pretty little ring here,
just like that.
We have to press this onto the fork
or bang it onto the fork.
(upbeat bright music) (metal clattering)
So as I said, the topic of headsets goes deep,
so I left some links to some guides below
that will allow you to determine what headset you have,
what headset you need,
how to identify them.
Cane Creek has a really good one.
And if you're more of a mechanic,
Park Tool has a really good one as well.
So as you might noticed,
this steerer tube is very, very long,
and the stem is gonna sit somewhere around here.
And so these are designed to be cut down.
Anytime I take out a hacksaw,
Seth, did you know you can use a pipe cutter?
Pipe cutters do make a really straight and even cut,
but it leaves a gnarly bulge at the end of the tube.
Nothing a little filing or sanding can't take care of,
but I always have my hacksaw guide set up
for cutting carbon,
so I use the same means to cut everything.
Just found a dead snake under the toolbox,
next to the star nut I was looking for.
We have quite a few tools here,
but not a star nut setting tool.
And so I just stick a little bolt in it
and hammer it in as straight as possible.
So now we can install our fork.
(upbeat music)
I think the handlebars came out pretty sweet.
And that's kinda the last piece of the puzzle
to start building this bike up.
(upbeat bright music)
This isn't the same as the other lever.
The levers actually are exactly the same,
but the lever bodies are not the same.
I guess I just can't unsee it,
and it looks kinda weird,
but one of these things is not like the other.
32 pounds, 11 ounces, 14.7 kilograms.
That's an alloy bike, size extra large.
That's pretty good.
Let's stare at it.
(upbeat techno music)
(upbeat bright music)
The weather is a little bit better today.
Dave from the Dirt Therapy Project
is coming over here to receive the bike.
As it turns out,
veterans of the armed forces
have a really tough time reintegrating into society.
It's like culture shock.
And so the Dirt Therapy Project
uses mountain biking to help veterans reintegrate.
Anybody who's served in the armed forces and has come home.
Mountain biking gives them a sense of comradery
a challenge, excitement,
and it provides an escape,
so they can just focus on mountain biking
and forget about their troubles.
I think it's fair to say a lot of us
go mountain biking for that reason.
Not a lot of people talk about it
because it seems like you're in an uncomfortable situation,
now you come back home,
everything's gonna be better.
It's a lot more complicated than that.
The Dirt Therapy Project started in Texas,
and now there are chapters in several other states
including North Carolina,
and they're building their loaner fleet.
Now, Dave already has a few bikes,
but he is missing an extra large.
And so the bike that we built up this week
is gonna fill that spot,
and hopefully, help somebody in some small way.
I wanted this bike to find a new home,
and I did think it would be a good opportunity
to show you a few technical aspects of bikes,
how to find parts.
And that's kind of an excuse
to just build up this bike and put it someplace cool.
If you or anyone you know is interested
in finding out more about the Dirt Therapy Project,
I left a link below.
Thanks for riding with me today,
and I'll see you next time.
(upbeat funky music)