How hard is it to build a bike?

Rigged

OK, so I'm an absolute newcomer to serious biking and wanting to buy my first road bike but would love to build one myself if possible. I have no real knowledge of building bikes but I'm generally fairly good with a spanner and screwdriver. My question is, is it possible (or perhaps sensible) for a newcomer to start by building their own bike when they don't know what they're doing? All your opinions are welcome!

nochekmate

Feeking easy - plenty of videos/advice available online. Not always cheaper than buying the full product though! You will need a few basic tools mind (which adds to the final cost)

pbt150

It's easy, if you know what you're doing!

There are loads of Internet tutorials and books out there, so know-how isn't really the problem. I've always found that the main problem is not owning the right tools for installing bits like bottom brackets and headsets.

Might be worth buying a built bike first, getting the hang of it, and maybe building a winter/single speed bike in the future and ask your local bike shop to do the fiddly bits. After that most of it can be done with Allen keys and screwdrivers.

alfablue

It is easy, if you understand the components and you have the tools. In terms of cost it will always be cheaper to buy a complete bike unless you seek out bargain (or ebay or secondhand) componets, so don't bother on cost grounds.

Satisfaction wise, I can see some buzz from building your own, but when you realise it is not a lot different from choosing and assembling lego bricks, its not that great. There is no great craft to it. If you can assemble an Ikea flat pack well, you should be fine. The ability to select each component to your own choice is good, but then lots of sellers do that too (Ribble, Condor, to name but two) and you get it for a price you couldn't achieve buying the components yourself.

nmcgann

It's not the cheapest way to get a bike, but it is very satisfying knowing you are riding something you built yourself.

The only two things that need bike shop assistance will probably be headset and bottom bracket-related. e.g. cleaning and facing the bottom bracket shell and fitting the fork crown race and pressing in headset cups. (although you can avoid this completely with an integrated headset with split crown race)

ShutUpLegs

Building the wheels will be the hardest part

Uchiga

Building a bike is easy, so long as you have the tools, and you watch/read the appropriate instructions on the tinternet! As for headset installation and fork crown race, I cheated and used a long bit of threaded metal, two nuts and a few washers and some large bits of mdf with a hole in the centre to make my own headset press, cheap as chips and works like a dream! Crownrace fitting i found an old vaccuum cleaner tube with a plastic/rubber end on it which was exactly the right size! Lucky me and then hammered my crown race in position with some well placed and even hammer strokes. You want both the headset and the crown race to be put on square otherwise it'll be out of place or you bend and break things.

I worked out i could build a scott speedster S10 cheaper than i could buy it, until i realised i had a club discount... so with careful looking around it might work out cheaper building a bike but it's very difficult to find a worthwhile saving, if you do, go to a bike shop and explain and say "Look ere i can build the bike cheaper, will you be willing to price match?" chances are they'll probably go, "Oh really?! Hold on let me see what we can do" and they'll go away do a few calculations and will probably give you a bit of a discount.

mrwibble

I would buy a bike first then get to know how that works before you do something more serious.

AndyOgy

Much easier than buying a bike ready built. It seems that every 'ready built' bike has at least one major flaw, whatever price range you look at.

Building it yourself means that you get to spec it to your hearts desire.

The learning curve may be steep to begin with but, I can assure you, pretty much every aspect of it will be easier than you think it will be.

Take your time. Think things through. And, if you find yourself using brute force at any point, you're probably doing something wrong.

paul64

Easy and very satisfying. For peace of mind (or safety!) do what I did and get your LBS to then check it over and make sure you haven't gone wrong which is easy to do:
- using ferrules for brake cables as well as gear cables
- not quite aligning shifting properly
- checking bottom bracket tightness
- checking headset
- checking you are not a link or two too short/long on the chain which is going to cause problems when miles from home.

Think I paid £20 for this having bought the frame for £500 and only essentials which would not transfer from the old bike and so a damned sight cheaper than buying a new bike. You don't need expensive wheels like these but of course I could do so having saved it by building and transferring.

rake

steel is probably easier to weld for a first go, unless you have an autoclave then you can try carbon fibre.

Anonymous

It's a doddle. I bought this one as a complete bike...



Then thought 'How hard can it be'.

I'm really pleased with the results.

Rigged

rake wrote:

steel is probably easier to weld for a first go, unless you have an autoclave then you can try carbon fibre.

Think you understood me a little too literally

paul64

Any fool can see what's gone wrong there, you'll never reach the bars on the shop-built bike. Idiots! Glad to see you got it right on your own.

AidanR

It's not too bad building a bike, just remember that there will be at least one or two things that take a lot longer than you think they should, and one thing you f*ck up entirely.

andy_wrx

It's perhaps easiest to learn by pulling apart and reassembling, maintaining and repairing a built-up bike.

But then once you have that knowledge of how things go, building one up is a doddle.

A few years ago I decided to build a TT bike as a project, having 6 weeks off work after an op
I bought the bits cheap off eBay, not in a rush to get things, having time to wait for the right prices to come up
Then I bolted it all together and it was a real anti-climax, as it only took about 4 hours !

rja

I've just done that very thing, a steel project. Bought it on ebay, took it apart & started again.

See here...

http://www.bikeradar.com/forums/viewtopic.php?t=12770113

I would definitely recommend already having a bike that you can refer back to. I did this project as well as having a road bike, but to honest you learn most from taking a bike apart. All of the above is exactly what I found, I needed assistance with facing the bottom bracket shell, but managed to pick up the basic tools quite reasonably.

Youtube is a great source of information, and you can build some of your own tools like headset press and chain whip if you don't have them already.

Enjoy.

rja

I've just done that very thing, a steel project. Bought it on ebay, took it apart & started again.

See here...

http://www.bikeradar.com/forums/viewtopic.php?t=12770113

I would definitely recommend already having a bike that you can refer back to. I did this project as well as having a road bike, but to honest you learn most from taking a bike apart. All of the above is exactly what I found, I needed assistance with facing the bottom bracket shell, but managed to pick up the basic tools quite reasonably.

Youtube is a great source of information, and you can build some of your own tools like headset press and chain whip if you don't have them already.

Enjoy.

Cleat Eastwood

dont dont dont. Its like a disease. Once you've done it you start scouring ebay for frames that'll make decent winter rides.....only to end up with 5 of them at the end of the year. It is great to do though.....you just gotta know when to stop.

Most difficult (ie takes a bit of time) part is indexing the gears, all the rest you can pick up from youtube and what not.

Dmak

NapoleonD wrote:

Then thought 'How hard can it be'.

I'm really pleased with the results.

WTF is that!?

Anonymous

Dmak wrote:

NapoleonD wrote:

Then thought 'How hard can it be'.

I'm really pleased with the results.

WTF is that!?

Is it the toe clip pedals?

itboffin

Here this might help

Rigged

Lol i'm quickly learning NapoleonD is the joker of the forum :P

Thanks for the advice, I think I'm going to go ahead and give it a try. Now for the fun of selecting the right components....and probably blowing my budget out of the water and having to start again!