A new bike for Jon: the build.
by Jon on January 2nd, 2008
I’ve been a die hard roadie since I was 14 years old, but ever since I first rode the mountain bike earlier in 07 I was hooked. Unfortunately, though, I would be forced to ‘borrow’ the bikes of both my cousin and Rob for weeks on end to have the chance to ride the dirt—until recently, that is. An ongoing insurance dispute from a nasty collision with a car door in December of 05 finally ended recently, and it’s left me with a few dollars to play with to build up a solid bike for the trails.
A couple weekends ago, Rob and I spent a long morning throwing a combination of new and old parts onto a Turner Nitrous frame that’s been apparently sitting in a box waiting to be made complete.
Waiting to be loaded…
…with all of these fancy, new fangled components.
The build was pretty much a breeze not only because all I had to do was watch and take pictures, but because Rob had an arsenal of beautifully crafted and highly useful Park Tools (see the next few pictures) that made the work as easy as it could have been. You’d never believe that you’d need such monstrous tools to maneuver such small parts, but bikes seem simpler than they are in more ways than one.
The chest of tools.
This facilitated the installation of the headset components.
A massive apparatus for the install of a tiny (but very important) part—the headset—to the fork.
We (read: Rob) worked for a solid few hours, and eventually a pile of boxes and small parts became a well oiled and impressive machine. Nokon housing beads were strung (this part took a while), FRM cranks were loaded and Easton bars, Thompson stem and various SRAM components were tuned and set up.
The master at work prepping for the bottom bracket / crank set up.
Who would have thought that cable housing could be so complicated? Installing Nokon housing is certainly an exercise in patience but well worth it.
Stringin’ beads.
After some tweaking of the drive train, calibrating the brakes and filling what I must say are some sweet Kenda’s with some of Stan’s sealant, the bike was ready to roll. I’m sort of a climbing addict (i.e., I’m still a sissy when it comes to going down the crazy shit and such so I go slow and up when I can) so I took the bike out on some rides up and into the Las Virgenes open space west of my house. I had gotten used to Rob’s carbon-fiber hardtail (the one that’s about 2 pounds lighter than my road bike, no less) which was very conducive to going uphill fast and downhill slowly, so naturally I was blown away when I first took this full suspension rig out for the first time. I finally started getting excited for the descents, and I think I hit the infamous Gas Pipe descent at least twice over the past week. Simply put, the thing flew over everything; not to be cheesy, but I was flowing like a stream down the mountain instead of pounding down it like a rolling boulder—if I’ve ever had a zen moment, it’s been when I’ve seen a disgusting and treacherous bed of rocks and pointy edges and ruts in front of me but have been able to roll over it like it’s just another stretch of paved road: the bike really was that smooth and responsive.
More on the rides in an upcoming post; I’m waiting to get my digital camera with the shots from the rides (and actually pictures of the bike itself) back.
I will say that I’ve never been more excited to get off the asphalt and onto the soil; I think I’m going to have a hard time ignoring this bike in the future and I know I’m going to have as much fun as I’ve ever had racing on this thing with the Evomo squad this coming season.
January 3rd, 2008 at 9:38 am
Jon, Welcome to the team! 2008 should be loads of fun and I am looking forward to getting out on the bike more, myself.
January 3rd, 2008 at 6:01 pm
I received my Nitrous frame in a similar way you did. It sucks but once it’s all done the Nitrous helps you forget everything that happened cause every ride on the Nitrous is epic