Mavic Freehub Maintenance.

Starting in October, 2006, I began building (well, I began collecting the parts, at least!) a custom hard tail since I couldn't find anything on the market that had the right balance of components. I chose the light-weight Bizango 853 steel frame (18") and the Fox F100RLC fork as the basis. That the frame happens to only come in bright orange was just icing on the cake :rolleyes:

After the frame arrived, I treated it with boiled linseed oil to prevent internal rust. I used a garden sprayer to squirt it into all the frame holes, and twisted and turned the frame in all ways I could think of. After getting most of the extra oil out, I clamped the frame to my work stand and let it drain all day (rotating occasionally to various angles to get as much oil out as possible). Once dry, the oil leaves a semi-permanent protective rust-proof coating on all interior frame surfaces. Make no mistake about it, this is a royal PITA... especially when you consider that my last steel frame is 20+ years old with no problems!

On 03.Nov.06 all parts have finally arrived! Thanks to some expert help from Myke at Velo City Bicycle Center in Winters, the bike is now complete and ready to roll on 09.Nov.06.

Before the complete build, I started putting some of the sub-assemblies together and realized that I didn't have a picture of all the parts "before" - so here is everything, with just a few items bolted together. I have the UST tires mounted (backwards, it turns out *sigh*, the brakes and disks, cassette, rear derailleur, seat. Basically nothing difficult. Starting to look like my timing was really bad to have missed Halloween with this bike!

And here is the bike complete and ready to get dirty (I even have the tires on the right way around now.) :)

On location and almost ready for the first ride:

For the weight weenies (that would include me), I took some measurements of some components/assemblies before putting it all together.

Was actually quite surprised at how heavy it all turned out - 26 pounds on the button.. The easy/cheap ways to have saved weight (and money!) would have been an alloy frame, and rim brakes. About four pounds and $300 right there). But after my first ride, I'm pretty confident that I made the right decisions for frame material and brake technology.