this week we have what I think is going to be a really special build it's a 26 inch Specialized
hardtail with some pretty good parts on it and the price has been dropped to 160 bucks
and I already know somebody that this bike will be perfect for let's go get the bike and i'll
show you what I have in mind all right let's get ourselves a bike how you doing
this is everything I hoped for everything's really scratched up but it's got potential I like
that it's got Marzocchi air fork used only for cross-country all-mountain freeride dirt jumper
do not use for free ride let's get this thing home and i'll show you what we're gonna do with it
so this bike is actually going to be for our dog groomer Heather she's the only person
who will agree to groom Oscar he's kind of a nightmare she calls him her special needs pup
and she mentioned the other day that she's looking for a hardtail now she's already got a really good
full suspension bike but she wants a hard tail for towing her son and she wants a bike that's just
going to get kind of a different type of abuse and we can give her a really good towing gear
so she can pull her son up those hills she was very sheepish about it she's like you don't have
to build me anything special i'll give you free grooms to pay for it we're gonna hook her up it's
the holiday season let's just go to town on this thing and see what we can do so let's talk about
the bike now comes with a really good suspension fork and although there are lots of scratches on
the crown from the cables there are no scratches on the stanchions and I think we can take this
thing apart clean it up have it running like new the amount of scratches and worn away paint
on this bike are just unbelievable but it's not gonna rust because it's aluminum and we can touch
those things up now Heather told me she likes green and purple so we're gonna try and theme
it a little bit so with that let's get this bike cleaned up and i'll show you what I have in mind
so first order of business is this suspension fork it doesn't look like it's been serviced in some
time I want to get inside it and make sure the oil is fresh everything's cleaned up so let's dig in
this is quite disgusting it's like mustard colored and it's like a
golden color when it's brand new so
wouldn't it be nice if I had gloves oh I only have a hundred
last thing I want to do is get into any sort of paint projects but can use some paint
so we got our stanchions and crown repainted looks super shiny and nice and our lowers I
mean it looks like a brand new set of lowers these used to be completely scratched up so
Marzocchi is indeed owned by Fox suspension but back when this fork was made they weren't but
they are now and I have Fox stickers I don't have Marzocchi stickers so that's what's going on here
just like it did before this just feels so so stiff
there's got to be a reason for that well the scary part is that you get nothing and then like the
hard hit of something hitting the oil I heard if you put too much oil in here hydro locks sure will
and then real bad stuff happens like this goes shoots out the top that comes up that way Pat
like instantly found an exploded pdf of this fork and it looks like I put way too much oil in it
it's supposed to take only 180 milliliters not 250. when we removed some of the oil it started
performing much better but it still sounds like macaroni in a pot we got a usable fork it still
makes the same sound but apparently that's what they sound like I watched a youtube video on it
I'm going full on wet sand there's no other way that I'm gonna get this thing perfectly clean
see this right here light wet sanding with 600 grit
bright white again
okay so the entire bike has been wet sanded and aside from the parts of the paint that are pitted
it looks pretty much perfect so why not just always do that
well look at it right now while it's wet and watch what happens as it dries
the paint's all completely dull now because we absolutely dulled the clear coat and in some cases
removed it entirely so we're gonna have to put a new clear coat on the bike to make it shine again
all right it's time we put the shine back in this bike frame or make a really big mess
so while we got all the paint stuff out we're in paint hell
we'll paint the brake levers the little rings around the grips yeah today's gonna suck
this lever looks brand new I'm so excited about it grips look awesome it's time to
stop messing around with paint and get the rest of these parts prepped
so the rotors have seen better days we're gonna take them off sand them down and then
reinstall them with colored rotor bolts to give the bike a little pop of color
it was really hard to get the tires off they were like seated in now it doesn't say anywhere
on here that these are tubeless ready but I bet you they're going to go tubeless pretty easy if
you want to make wheels that are not necessarily tubeless tubeless what you have to do is pile up
the rim take just a little bit extra so you can make that seal and I just so happen to have some
schrader tubeless valve stems from miles wide so we're gonna give that a try right now see if
they seal up all right so I have no sealant in here let me see if it sort of seals up
okay how is it holding air you can't even believe it right all I gotta do is drop some seal in there
how you doing pretty good that's got to be our stem
which is good because I can't build this bike without the stem
so from the parts bin I have these handlebars and off the original bike I have this seatpost
they both have red on them which doesn't match the color scheme so we're going to paint over it but
in the case of these PNW bars I don't want to hide the logo because it's a cool company it's a cool
part and so I think if I paint over it lightly it'll still show through because of the relief
we went way overboard with almost everything on this we have all the
parts laid out so we're gonna slap a seat post in it get this bike up on the stand
and start making it look like something that you can actually ride
we managed to scrounge together a nine-speed drivetrain the only
thing that's really used is the cassettes again we can put it back in the parts bin
and make a bike that's barely working work great
these platform pedals came with my new bike I used different ones so we have some nice metal
pedals to put on this thing with replaceable pins and everything
so the shifter cables on these older mountain bikes go in segments so you have all these
different interfaces along the way they don't really do that anymore because they're just
more areas for dirt ingress into your cable housing I'm gonna actually drill these
out so that we can run the cable all the way up to the front with no breaks in the cable
so I'm trying to complement these green lever grips with some splashes of green around the bike
it's just not working I think we're going to go all purple I think I'm going to take these off
we take color coordination very seriously here at Flip Bike
I feel like the caps on the outside of the disc brakes we should pick
I gotta stop sometimes the best thing you could do when you're color customizing a bike is show
some freaking restraint it doesn't need more this bike is sick I just want to stare at it
put Fox stickers on it but it's really that Marzocchi they're owned by Fox he dreams look
at that because he's like mommy I can't draw a bicycle I said we'll just draw a circle and
he's got all the cool alligators on bicycles and stuff we tried to put it on his balance bike but
because I had a dropper seat we couldn't attach it to my mountain bike the good thing about this
is if the kid gets tired you can tow them and then you can disconnect it and then it can shred ready
you're doing great
oh
it was really fun riding with Heather and Simon although we didn't sell the bike for a profit
we are going to barter groomings from Heather she's Oscar's dog groomer and so I have some
calculations to do to figure out how many grooms that's going to be so we had some
used handlebars in the parts bin we'll put a value of 20 on those stem was 30 pedals 20.
drivetrain was partially used we'll call it 150. we used a lot of paint and that was 20. we also
used a lot of miscellaneous hardware like tubeless sealant and valve stems and cables all that came
to 25 that seat we repainted will call fifteen dollars new brake pads ten dollars brand new
crank set and bottom bracket was only 56 bucks and the bolt-on skewers were ten dollars so all the
parts we put on the bike were 356 dollars that's a lot for a bike that really didn't need any parts
if we were trying to sell this for a profit and make as much money as possible I wouldn't have
changed anything on the bike I would have serviced the fork swapped out some cables and little tiny
things and just gotten it running and I think we would have made a big profit but on that note we
put a lot of perfectly good parts back into the bin the seat was just as good as the one we put
on so fifteen dollars handlebars five dollars stem five dollars drive train thirty dollars
cranks at twenty five dollars pedals five dollars for a total of eighty five dollars the bike cost
us 160 and so a little bit of math shows us that we spent a total of four hundred and thirty one
dollars on the entire bike with all the parts and the credits and everything I'm really happy
with how the bike turned out Heather is stoked about it Simon is really stoked to be able to
rip down trails with his mom and I just had a lot of fun doing it if you like watching us
tinker in the shop with bikes you should watch our other Flip Bike episodes where we actually
try to make a profit I have them all in the playlist below and if you subscribe to Berm Peak
you can watch the new ones that are coming up this year and if you're interested in
Berm Peak merch like the youth jersey that Simon got you can go to cognativemtb.com
and pick one up for yourself thanks for riding with me today and i'll see you next time
he's scared he's like it's Heather