Thursday 04.10.2008

The absolute last touch to make the bike mountain- ready was to add a head tube badge. I selected a sparkly rhinestone princess crown, and there it is:

On closer inspection of the final product, Kyle cringed at all the bright sparkles in his garage...







Remember this was the original look:






Definitely the girliest MTB I've ever seen. Pinky is officially crowned & ready to ride!

Monday 04.07.2008

Finished bike!


Goes on it's first ride...

Monday 04.07.2008

Final build day!

Kyle bought the last two parts, a new back wheel and seat post, and we were ready to finish the bike.

The toothy metal cassette (9 gears!) was removed from the old wheel using a tool called a "chain whip" (shown below), and then the new wheel with smart-looking flattened spokes went on.


Then in order to put swap on a better derailleur, the chain had to be broken with a miniature tool called a "chain-breaker".



Last but not least, I wrapped on the velcro chainstay guard, which as it's name implies, protects the frame from the chain.


And the stinky pinky was ready to exit the garage!

Sunday 04.06.2008

After all the cables were put in place (held by more zip ties), it was time to tag the frame with stickers. The letter stickers were delicate & tricky to place, but they stood out very well against the pink frame!

The bike got it's original name: KONA Stinky Dee-Lux, and of course it's new name...

Sunday 04.06.2008

Ready to build...





It was time to steal all the parts off Kyle's downhill bike. The plastic zip ties were cut using a mini clippers, also called "dikes".






Toyota "Penetrating Lube" helped un-stick things.






Before actually using the stolen downhill goods, we had to make a few minor adjustments...

Shortening the fork (for a short rider!) using a pile of dremmel bits (because they wear out very quickly!)

Italian fork!







Smaller 250lb spring (for a lighter little person!)






Then I got the pedals on using a "pedal wrench":


And the Norco was left with only a chain:

Monday 03.31.2008

Over the past few weeks, my new bike had acquired lots of different names. I decided to put them all together: the stinky pinky baby llama.

The stinky pinky came back from its powder coating, completely covered in a thick glossy layer of hot pink paint... a color I'd previously thought was only fit for toenail polish. It was a surprisingly bright and surprisingly awesome looking.

The plan was to take all the parts off Kyle's downhill bike to build up the pinky. There's the Norco (it's brown) on the right side of this picture, before all it's parts were robbed...


The part in my left hand is called a swing arm. It had two little plastic bushings that melted away during powder coating, so they had to be re-created out of a metal rod!


Here's the pink frame, all ready to be built:

Thursday 3.27.2008

Early in the morning, Kyle dropped off the bike frame for its pink powder coating.

Wed 3.19 - Wed 3.26

While I slaved away making 52 perfect powerpoint slides, Kyle stripped, brushed, and even inhaled silver paint for a week. He thought it was "the most horrible thing in the world."

The last pre-painting step was to remove the bearings using a tool that's appropriately named a bearing-puller. After all of that man power, the stripped frame looked beautiful and ready to become pink.

"Bearing-less" frame:

Tuesday 03.18.2008

If you saw a product called "Aircraft Remover" (blue container above), what would you have thought it did? It's actually an industrial strength paint remover. Kyle & I didn't have any aircrafts to remove from his garage, but we did have a lot of paint to strip off the bike frame.

There were two pieces of the frame that needed stripping. I have no idea what they're actually called. The first round of stripping involved holding the metal frame with wire coat hangers & spraying paint stripper all over them:




We hung the frame parts off the garage roof and waited for something to happen...


After half an hour, some of the paint started to blister & peel away from the frame:


The bubbly silver paint got brushed off using the wiry metal brushes, and quite a lot came off! (picture to the right) Since we were all out of "Aircraft Remover", paint stripping was over for the day. Most of the stickers and a pretty thick coat of paint remained on the frame, which I left in Kyle's hands to finish.


Here are the non-bubbly parts we had at the end of the night:

Tues 03.11 - Wed 03.12

The bike came apart into two pieces of painted metal (to be stripped), one piece of shiny mirror-like metal (to be brushed), and two pieces of black metal (to be left as they were).

To make room for the new hydraulic brake lines, Kyle cut down the two bumps on top of the frame (picture above, part in my right hand) using a very fast drill called a dremmel.

Then it was time for stripping to begin... My first job was to brush off the shiny silver chrome finish. Kyle gave me what looked like a large toothbrush, with a wooden handle & sharp wiry bristles. It brushed the chrome right off, giving it a brushed silver finish, and I had one piece of the bike ready for powder coating (shown below).



The other two pieces were a bigger challenge. Even the largest & wiry-est version of the metal "toothbrush" couldn't get the paint off.

Wayne pulled up in his old (but brand-new-to-Wayne) Scout and suggested we use a paint stripper, called "Aircraft Remover", for the remaining parts...

Saturday 03.08.2008

My Valentine's Day bike lived in a closet in Sunland, California, a little valley town located forty-five miles from Hermosa Beach. It sat in that closet, stuck in a cardboard box, until Kyle found it on Craigslist one day.

Kyle & I woke up very early one Saturday morning and made the drive out to Sunland. We entered the large gated property to find: a litter of puppies, a swarming beehive, rows upon rows of cages containing expensive looking birds, a 2 month-old baby llama eating garbage in the kitchen, (two turtle doves, and a partridge in a pear tree). The baby llama wandered up to us, wondering if we were food, and chomped on our t-shirts. Chomp chomp!

I didn't get to take a picture of the baby llama, but here (on the left) is my roomate Paige's encounter with a fully-grown llama at Manchu Pichu (careful they spit !)

After meeting the mini zoo, we were lead to the hallway closet, where we found what we'd come for... a little Kona Stinky Dee-Lux mountain bike frame. Kyle said it would be a great bike for me, so I trusted that judgement.

I thought it looked like a piece of gray metal with ugly stickers & a nice looking fat black spring for rear suspension. I had ridden enough of Kyle's nice bikes to know that rear suspension would be fun.

On the car ride home, I decided that I wanted my new bike to be pink. I learned that we would have to strip the paint and then either paint it ourselves or get something called a powder coat.

Here's the bike:


And here's the original head tube badge:


I decided two things:
1) This was the most thoughtful gift I'd ever received!
2) Building a mountain bike would be much more fun than watching the Teutuls build choppers!