What's new

The Chinese Stealth Weight Weenie Bike - a build thread.

Sweet. Will message you later.

Hub; turn the axle with your fingers. Is it totally smooth, or is there any resistance / notching?

If there is notching, or indexing, or whatever, you need to find out which bearing(s) is to blame. Take the hub apart, taking the freebody assembly out, and the axle, and manually turn the bearings (make a note of what size the bearing are too (6803/6903, etc). Find the one(s) that are rough or resisting, and post back here.

I am going to say that most likely, with these cheap hubs, they have machined the freebody bearings too tight; these take the most amount of mad-multi-directional ragging about, so the cheaper places machine things tight to save money (we have gone into this before).

Once you figure out which one it is, we 'today we are think-abouting' about it, and figure out the cause and solution(s).
 
Sweet. Will message you later.

Hub; turn the axle with your fingers. Is it totally smooth, or is there any resistance / notching?

If there is notching, or indexing, or whatever, you need to find out which bearing(s) is to blame. Take the hub apart, taking the freebody assembly out, and the axle, and manually turn the bearings (make a note of what size the bearing are too (6803/6903, etc). Find the one(s) that are rough or resisting, and post back here.

I am going to say that most likely, with these cheap hubs, they have machined the freebody bearings too tight; these take the most amount of mad-multi-directional ragging about, so the cheaper places machine things tight to save money (we have gone into this before).

Once you figure out which one it is, we 'today we are think-abouting' about it, and figure out the cause and solution(s).
Took the hub apart as much as I could - the axle is pretty damn secure in there. Are you supposed to hammer it out?
Bearings on the freehub body spin smooth enough as far as I can tell- no markings as to the brand/origin of the bearings, however.
The bearings in the hub body itself run alright too, although a quick flick of my wrist can make the rim rotate, making me a bit suspicious of them.
QJMi6q9l.jpg
pYrLByJl.jpg
KcbTBNel.jpg
FiRsG7Yl.jpg
FSf7jJdl.jpg
4ZV9M3Ql.jpg
Kb1rd0cl.jpg
 
OK, before you start putting it back together, measure the bearings.

Measure the inner and outer diametre. This will tell you what they are. I am going to say they are 6803 (26mm outer, 17mm inner).

As for the tightness; yeah, they can be. Depends if this is part of the design, which it often is. If you mean the axle is tight in the hub shell, then it may have bearing shoulders on it, which means that it cant be hammered out without the bearings coming out too. So leave that for the time being. Was it tight to get the freebody off?

Your axle has raised seats on it for the inner bearing races on the freedbody, which may have been machined tight (ie, not perfectly), or may be an interference fit by design.

While this is no real indication, and could be anything, the colour of the seals on the bearings (orange) is often used on bearings with a heavier contact type seal, which is draggy by nature.
 
Allllllllllllll riiiiiight. Getting somewhere
yOCLIFd.jpg


As a (not) funny point, I earlier mentioned that I'd be drilling out the fork. This was a joke, but actually became true - the fork had been built with a thicker carbon plug in the centre of the brake hole. This was the cause of the bolts not reaching the brake. After a few checks online, it seems that forks by Zhongwei all seem to suffer this annoying issue, and the common solution is to drill out a section of the plug from the rear, about 5-10mm. This is not a structural concern as looking inside it was obvious that the hole was drilled in such a manner anyway, just not to the depth required for Shimano brakes. Campag/Sram brakes apparently have longer bolts, thus avoiding the issue.

Instead of drilling, I used a cylindrical diamond file bit which was exactly 8mm in diameter. Slowly and very carefully, I removed the offending material, making sure to pause often so as not to heat up the carbon. Result - brake now screws in perfectly, engaging much more than the thread and a half available before.

So that was fun.

Have to cut the cables and do that crap soon. Not a fan of that particular part of building bikes, just because getting the perfect cut is sometimes a hassle, coupled with my propensity to always cut cables a fraction too short or too long.

Oh yeah, I've always had the front brake in my left hand, but maybe I should do it the other way round this time.
 
If you are right handed, I'd go with front on the left so you can get good action selfies (very important) with your right hand while still being able to stop with your left:innocent:
I assume that is why you've been doing it that way up to now also???

Bike is looking slick.
 
You have obviously never ridden a motorcycle! Ha ha ha

If you are right handed, I'd go with front on the left so you can get good action selfies (very important) with your right hand while still being able to stop with your left:innocent:
I assume that is why you've been doing it that way up to now also???

Bike is looking slick.
 
You have obviously never ridden a motorcycle! Ha ha ha

Very true. I guess on a bike all you can do is press the pedal brake in that case. I guess your message is for him to learn how to take selfies with his left hand so he can also do it safely on a motor bike. Yes. Very wise. I like it. hehe.

I do have two bikes with different layouts. Easy to switch. It doesn't really bother me which brake is which. I have more trouble remembering how to change gears using the brake levers.
 
I'll stick with left = front then. Makes sense for signalling anyway.
 
Nice

Get the shifters angled up a bit though, like so...

S3tNKow.png

You may want to rotate the bars slightly forward and down too, if you feel like it.
 
Nice

Get the shifters angled up a bit though, like so...

You may want to rotate the bars slightly forward and down too, if you feel like it.

Aye I've left the bar tape off for that very reason - I want to play around with angles and whatnot until I find something I like. I just thought I'd start with horizontal and work from there.

Still pissed off at the chain cutting malarkey. It's still ridable, but the RD is doing the splits as soon as I get over the 21t sprocket.
 
There were clear instructions written how to do this, hidden deep inside the hugely overly long build thread I made for Andys Evo. How you could have missed this single line of text among all that is beyond me. I am VERY disappointed, and saddened by this behaviour.
 
Ergh.
Bought a pack of chain pins, got home, popped out one of the pins on the chain, then the tool drive pin snapped halfway through driving in the replacement pin.
As I was looking up whether the tool had replacement pins, I discovered that ho ho ho - the chain cutter is not suitable for 10/11 speed chains. Therefore, I've probably shagged the chain. New chain ordered. New cutter ordered too.

So near, yet so far.

@TCC - sorted out the shifter angles a bit. I rotated the bars down a bit but I wasn't keen on the slight dip before the hoods. I've got beadle hands too, so anything which curves the drops away from the brake handle is a bad thing. Not that having small hands is a bad thing. As the saying goes - "Small hands, sexual predator."
 
Have it, you slaaaags. Complete weight as pictured is 6.9kg. 100 grammes on the good side of the UCI limit, not that this supposed death trap would pass certification anyway.

Got to take it on a depressingly short test ride while waiting for the inlaws to show up.
Rides very well indeed! Don't know if it's a consequence of the compact crankset, but I could get up to the big gears with relative ease. Is 52 to 50 such a huge drop in gear inches?

My wheels spin smooth, don't explode, and keep me upright. Still true after the test ride, too. Job done in that regard.

I need to dial in the saddle height/position a bit as it seems a tiny bit off at the mo. I think that's perhaps a consequence of going from 170 to 175mm cranks combined with having an ultra-low stack height on the pedals.
Photo taken at a confusing angle just to give Owen a nervous breakdown when trying to figure out the orientation of the shifters.
pEYPScl.jpg
 
Wicked. That looks ace.

Yeah you will spend most of your time in the big ring. Well, you should actually be spending ALL of your time in the big ring, including storming up Sadamine like a hero.

Take your spoke key out on the first few missions just in case you need to tweak, then you are good to go

Nice one.

But disappointed to hear about the presence of in-laws though. I guess that means I can't brainwash you into joining my 'worse than ISIS' gang of disenfranchised young men who I hypnotise with promises of a solution to their loneliness and feelings of belonging. Oh well.
 
Back
Top Bottom