Building a fixie - The Frame

I found the frame I’m going to use at Our Community Bikes. Cavan helped me pick it out. It’s a smaller size than I’m currently riding. My Surly Midnight Special is a 58cm whereas this one is a 56cm. Since I’ve had to reduce the length of my stem on the Surly to a ridiculous amount I’m of the opinion that a 56cm is probably what I ought to be riding anyway. 

Transporting my new fixie frame from OCB to my place on the Surly - Midnight Special. 

I paid $75 for the frame and it was white. I decided I was going to paint it, even though I’ve never done that before either. Cavan advised me to sand down the frame to the metal and then Prime, Paint, and Clear Coat it. So, that’s what I attempted to do. 

This is as far as I got with the sanding. It was pretty hard to sand everything down and these smaller sections proved to difficult, so I just primed it like this. I wish I kept the hanger through the bottom bracket like this. It would have kept me from messing up the paint. 

The frame painted and hanging in on the “painting rack”.

The products I used to paint the frame. 

There are a couple of spots where the coat hanger I was using to suspend the frame rubbed and ruined the paint. I’ll need to sand those spots down and re paint them. Overall, I am happy with the look of the gold paint. I think it looks more interesting than the white. 

The last thing we needed to do before we could start building the bike was to “face” the head tube and the bottom bracket. Unfortunately, OCB didn’t have the correct size facing tool to face my head tube, so I had to pay $90-ish to Mighty Riders (that was for the facing and the $25 Soma seat post collar). The guys there were nice, but a little rough honestly. Haha. Not with the bike, just their customer service.

Seat post from Sport Junkies.

Mighty Riders.

At OCB, I had the opportunity to watch Cavan face the bottom bracket and clean out the the mounting threads on the frame.

Cavan demonstrating the facing tool. I found this extremely interesting.

Cutting fluid was used on the cutting surface.

The next step is to find a used 165mm crankset, hopefully in black. Then we will be looking at setting it up 46T/18-19T chainring and rear sprocket? I really don’t want to be dying going up some of the steep hills in Vancouver. I’m looking at you, 37th Ave Bikeway. And you, Heather St, right after Velo Star Cafe. I’ve had a look in OCB and couldn’t find cranks that length, so next I’ll try Sport Junkies and if I still don’t have any luck I’ll check out Kickstand.