Anyway, grandson Asher Liam Long was for July 24th @ 7:07AM, both he and mother are doing fine. Despite my lack of sleep I was so keyed up when I got home last night at 10:00pm I started finishing the bike!
I obviously went with a basic "black and white" paint scheme and it turned out just like I had imaged it would. Not bad I think for a "department store spray can of paint" job.
Here is a pictorial recap of the project:
The start of my "Budget Heckler". At this point I am exactly $110 into the project ($80 Frame and all the crap off of my old Raleigh M60 hardtail hung on it). As you can see, the paint was in pretty sad shape.I didn't strip this all the way down to bare aluminium, just sanded off decals (what was left of them). If I wasn't trying to be so cheap on this project (see Grandson comments above!) I would have taken it to be sandblasted clean. I used a combination of wet and dry sanding and even a wire brush for the decals. In the process of breading the frame down and removing the swing arm, I broke one of the pivot bolt bearings. I was able to find a single bearing (didn't need or want an SC Propack for this project. I called the local industrial bearing supply place and they had just what I needed. For the first generation Hecklers, it is a "General Bearing Corp" P/N Z99R6. Less than $10.
Anyway, after sanding and final rinsing (did you notice I was too lazy to even pull the BB), I laid down several coats of "el cheapo" white primer lightly sanding between coats and then a nice final wet sanding.
After I made sure it was totally dried I moved into my garage to reduce the possibility of flying "critters" and other stuff swirling around outside getting into the final color coat. I chose to stay all gloss white for the color with just a touch of gloss black on the rear triangle axle area.
I applied the Krylon Gloss White paint in several light coats followed by about 6 or 7 light coats of Krylon Gloss Clear overcoat. It was hitting 102 degrees in Utah at the time, so after spraying the color and letting it sit for a few minutes, I moved it back outside to cook in Natures own "oven"
After everything had time to dry fairly well (2 days) I started putting it all back together (very carefully as the paint will need at least a month to fully "cure", I used lots of rags to protect painted areas as I worked) and began to see the results of my labor!
In keeping with my "spend as little as possible" motif (again, see comments about new Grandson) while I was working on the paint, I kept shopping our Local Online newspaper's classifieds and snagged two good deals I felt were worthy of my Budget Heckler. I found two good ones I think!
Someone had a brand new set of Bontrager Race Tubless rims/ disc hubs with equally new Bonty Jones XR tubless tires mounted to them. He wanted $40 for the set! Thought I would get into a car wreck getting to his place before someone else did!
The second good deal was when I called a guy who does a lot of selling on the classifieds for bikes he has bought and refurbished. I called and asked if he had a coil over rear shock that would fit the bike and he had just gotten a pristine condition RockShox Pro Deluxe. I offered to trade him my old Raleigh hardtail bare frame I had just raped for this bike. He said fair deal so I picked up the shock and put it on this bike. Plus, it had a black spring that would match my black and white "outfit". Now I forgot to tell you that the reason the frame was so cheap was because the Fox Float was trashed (not air seals, but really nasty sounding metal scraping inside). Besides, I was worried that with my 205+ lbs I would be too rough for an air spring anyway.For this:
I was able to trade for this:
Here is the results of my hard labor and bargain hunting:
And here is the final tally sheet:1. Frame $80
2. Wheelset $40
3. Cassette $25
4. Paint $18
5. Pivot bearing $8
6. RockShox Pro Deluxe $trade
Grand Total $171.00
Not a bad deal huh? Please leave comments on the Forum to let me know what you think.
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