| Here is my second ever bicycle customisation project. The bike started life as an Avanti Mirage that I bought at a police auction for the princely sum of NZ$55 (about 30 Euros). I remember the first ride (the ride home from the auction in fact) as three of the spokes on the rear wheel were missing. It was a slow and wobbly trip. | |
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After fitting new spokes I then found the rear gear selector was faulty; the bike would change up gears all by itself. The bike was factory fitted with Suntour gears, and as I discovered these are incompatible with Shimano or anything else commonly available today. To fit a Shimano replacement would mean changing the freewheel and the derailleur as well as finding a new selector. The new selector would look out of place with the existing Suntour front selector, so the front one would have to go too. You can see where this is going; I have heard the problem called 'Suntour cancer'. :-) |
| I actually liked the Suntour gear selectors quite a lot; they're under the handlebars and easy to reach. The operation is to slide the lever one way to go down gears, and the other direction to go up. On the rear it's indexed, but my one didn't have much 'click' left explaining the random up-shifting. With the bike on my workshop stand, I took the gear selector apart to fix it, but during disassembly I suddenly saw at least one tiny tiny ball bearing fall out of the mechanism towards the floor before bouncing off a piece of metal on the bike with a quiet 'pling', never to be seen again. I spent three hours (I kid you not) sweeping the garage floor with a hand brush looking through grit. I even tried a magnet. In despair, and after unsuccessfully trying all the bike shops in town for a replacement, I tried a bearing company. fortunately their smallest bearing (at some 2mm, quite small) turned out to be a perfect fit. With new bearings, and a spotless garage floor, the unit went back together perfectly, and was this time fully operational. |  |
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Over the first two months of ownership I fixed many things; new spokes in the rear, new tires, brake pads, seat post and seat. Re-greasing of all bearings, even though they all appeared completely shot. The bike became my daily commuter and never let me down once. I enjoyed riding the bike so I decided to 'fix it up'. |
| I started by stripping the frame of all paint and sanding off any rust which turned out to be just minor surface rust. Much time was spent deciding upon the colour scheme for the bike. I decided upon Delft Blue; something to do with having spent time in The Netherlands I guess. I sprayed the frame with numerous cans of enamel white before putting on Delft Blue decals that I made using water slide decal paper. A few coats of clearcoat and the frame was finished. I'm pretty happy with it for a can-based paint job, but I'm not sure how durable it will be; the decals are quite delicate. |  |
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I decided not to put anything old and tatty back on the bike so either new parts were fitted or the old parts were refurbished. The old headset, bottom bracket, both hubs, pedals all had to go and new ones were fitted in their place. A good front wheel was found on TradeMe, and I built a rear wheel to match. Now I'm just waiting for some fine weather to take it for a ride! |
Specs are:
Kijk, en fiets! Leuk hoor! :-) |  |