The Rebuild! A Giant Mountain Bike frame was given to us long ago. We undertook to turn this lonely frame into a ridable bike.
We pulled the frame from the basement, placed it on the stand and inspected it.
It needed some work on the brakes and gearing systems.
The back brakes were trashed, no seat or seatpost.
Look at those brake padz!
Since there were no wheels on the frame, the first thing that had to be done was to find a few wheels. We looked in the famous Freespace storage basement. Most of the wheels there are in pretty bad shape and need some work.
The first wheel I settled on needed an overhaul of the bearing system.
Thoroughly cleaning the race.

We repacked the bearings and the front wheel was good to go.

Not pictured: Wheel being trued.

I needed a rear wheel with seven gear-rings on it, as the gear shifter was a seven speed. There were no good rims with a seven speed freewheel, so we swapped out the freewheel from one of those terrible full suspension full suspension wal-mart bikes with a 26 inch rim from some other random wheel.

We scrubbed out all the crud from the sprokets.
Next we attempted to find a seatpost that fit the frame and a saddle to go with it.
Success!
The next step was to work over the brakes. We noticed that one of the posts for the front brakes was broken off, and impossible to remove or repair. This meant that the front fork had to be replaced.
We found an appropriately sized fork on an old mongoose frame. As luck would have it, it was also equipped with a working pair of cantilever brakes.
The fork went on nicely.
We strung the cables onto the front brakes, for tight stopping power. Here the finishing touches are being added. Not pictured: tightening and tuning the rear brake padz.
Click Here for Day 2 of rebuilding this bike!  

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This site is maintained by Chris Noto
Updated: April 25, 2008