First Road Bike Build - Orange Dynamo

dick_sternum

After years of riding mountain bikes, I've finally decided to dip my toe into road bike waters, whilst still holding onto my MTB roots, with this..



I remember lusting after one of these when they first came out and managed to snag this '92 example at the weekend. I'll build it up with modern components and after a couple of weeks spent trawling eBay, magazines, forums and anywhere else I could think of I've plumped for a Campag Centaur group (it would have been too easy to just stick Shimano on it). The headset is shot so that will be replaced with a Chris King, wheels will be Fulcrum Racing 5s and cranks will be a FSA compact double I bagged off eBay earlier this eve.

No idea on tyres, but erring on the side of a pair of Continetal 4000s, but any advice gratefully ignored

Looking forward to building this one.

DS

jonomc4

Best of luck - I have just finished building my new bike and I have got to say I loved the process - learnt a lot about components and how it all fits together (and got a whole new loads of bike type tools as an extra).

Apart from the above I found it very therapeutic to just play away in the garage - general rule - look at u-tube video then read part manual then do it - then uninstall and do it again but properly!

I built up a De Rosa - damn I must take a picture of it!

dick_sternum

Thanks

This will be joining my 2 mountain bikes (one of which is another Orange), both were bought frame only and self built, so no worries there. Actually I think I've only ever bought one complete bike and that was my first way back when (Giant Track if I remember right)... Will be interesting to play with road shifters and Campag stuff this time around.

DS

andy46

I love watching these type of threads where it starts with just a frame then as time goes by you see it evolve into a complete bike.

I'd love to do it myself one day, I may build myself a winter bike. Good luck with it, I'll look forward to seeing it finished.

HarryK

That is a really good looking frame! Looking forward to seeing the build progress.

Ber Nard

I like the look of this.

Modern Campag will suit it fine but I'd keep it classic looking; polished parts, standard chainset, that sort of thing. And I'd be inclined to go for hand built wheels, maybe Mavic Open Pros, rather than the Fulcrums.

Rob

dick_sternum

It's been a busy couple of days, yesterday many boxes were delivered and since I work freelance, I decided that there were more important things than work...



I'd bought the frame with forks, headset, stem and seatpost and had planned to use everything in the build (at least for now) but it turned out that the headset was shot, so it was replaced with a Chris King in shiny bling red.



This matched the red Hope seat clamp and QRs I had in the parts box along with the equally blingy Campag Centaur red & black group set. The supplied stem got ditched for a 110mm 0deg rise Thomson from the parts box too (OK so it's a MTB stem, but still). Chainset is an FSA Energy compact off eBay.



Bars are relatively cheap 46cm Easton EA50s for now so that I can get a feel for size, whilst the shifter positions only got set today since I didn't want to tape the bar and decide I wanted to move them. For instance I could have sworn yesterday that these were the same, but the eagle eyed amongst you will notice that the left is way lower than the right. :oops:



As for wheels, I went for the Fulcrums in the end, simply since they have a good reputation and I didn't want to spend a great deal. I got them for £135 from bike-discount.de, so I'm happy with that. If I ever upgrade them, I'll probably go for something hand built, but they are more than fine for now. Tyres are Conti GP4000S in 25mm.



After an over night issue of not having a campag cassette tool, a trip to my LBS this morning allowed me to crack on with getting the gear indexing sorted, and then it was onto the job I'd been putting off - bar tape. It turned out to be as annoyingly fiddly as I expected it to be, but after a fair amount of foul language I ended with this.



Pedals are a pair of old Ritchey MTB SPDs that again came out of the parts box but they save me from buying yet another pair of bike shoes at the moment. They weigh a ton though... As do the forks, so they will be swapped for some carbon loveliness in due course. The seatpost and stem will be changed at some point too once I've settled on saddle positioning and stem length. Overall spend has been around £850 which isn't too bad at all.

Frame: Orange Dynamo Alu
Forks: Dunno, some black chromo ones that I got with the frame
Bars: Easton EA50 46cm
Stem: Thomson X4 110mm 0deg rise
Headset: Chris King 1"
Bar Tape: Lizard Skins DSP

Front Brake Lever: Camapnolo Centaur
Front Caliper: Campagnolo Centaur
Rear Brake Lever: Campagnolo Centaur
Rear Caliper: Campagnolo Centaur

Shifters: Campagnolo Centaur
Cables: Campagnolo
Front Mech: Campagnolo Centaur
Rear Mech: Campagnolo Centaur

Seat: Charge Spoon Ti
Seat Post: Orange (ironically named) Lite Stalk
Seat Post Clamp: Hope

Cranks: FSA Energy Compact 50/34 175mm
Chain: Campagnolo + KMC Missing Link
Cassette: Campagnolo Centaur 10sp 13-26
Pedals: Ritchey SPD
Bottom Bracket: FSA

Front Wheel: Fulcrum Racing 5
Tire: Continental GP4000S

Back Wheel: Fulcrum Racing 5
Tire: Continental GP4000S

Accessories: Elite bottle cages

Weight: Just sneaks in under 9Kg, which considering the pedals weigh a tone and the seatpost & forks aren't the lightest things in the world either is pretty good by my reckoning.

jonomc4

congrats - I cant see the images as my work PC has the hosting site blocked, so I will look when I get home.

Agree with what you say about bar tape - that was the main job in the whole build I worried about most! I have now changed the taping 5 times since I first installed it - luck for me that Lizard Skin tape is so flexible!

dawebbo

Looks great - love the frame! I can see why you've gone for red bar tape, but for me it clashes a bit with the orange decals.

alihisgreat

Orange tape and orange detailing is surely a must?

Looks good at the moment.. but could look great with a few changes

dick_sternum

What the pics don't show well is that the decals are actually a reddy kind of orange, they actually look almost red compared to the decals of my E3 in the background. So the red components / tape doesn't clash too bad in the flesh. Honest.

Beatmaker

That looks great, well done. I too always wanted a Dynamo as a nod to my MTB roots (and as at the time Caroline Alexander, who I was convinced was my future wife was riding for Louis Garneaux / Orange).

mikeyfive

I'm not sure anyone is still following this thread but I've owned an Orange Dynamo since '93, ridden 20K plus miles and decided to reboot it this summer after wrecking the rear Mavic Open 4cd... Anyway, I kinda rebuilt it top to bottom, more as an exercise in bike building than anything else.
I heard that the original aluminium forks were prone to failure so I changed those to Columbus Minimal, etc, etc, etc.

Anyway, here's the result... I need to tape the bars








Original image 1 : http://static.panoramio.com/photos/original/121593425.jpg

Original image 2 : http://static.panoramio.com/photos/original/121593738.jpg

Original image 3 : http://static.panoramio.com/photos/original/121599244.jpg


As a point of reference, this was my bike last summer prior to its makeover.



Original image : http://static.panoramio.com/photos/original/111403277.jpg