We'll start with an excuse. I'm still recovering from surgery, so the bunnyhop and pull stuff will have to wait a month. In the meantime, what can we do? Well, we could play video games, or read, or we could build a bike using some home-made tools. This month we're going to cover some bike assembly tips and tricks. Don't know how to install a headset? A star nut? Cranks? This is the article for you.
Let's meet the players first. The bike in question: a custom two-toned Supercross Nomorea I'm putting together for the Old School event at Rockford.
The assembler: BMX Old Schooler and "Negative Camber" mini-trucker Lo Joe Wood, seen here in the crazily disorganized Boswell Garage.
Let's get moving. The first thing we want to do is get the headset in. In this case, we're putting a Chris King Titanium headset in, hee hee. When you have a delightful little headset like a King, you don't want to pound it in with a hammer. You could buy the Park headset press for $150, or you could build your own for five bucks:
What's this? A very simple device. We take a long, threaded bolt, the appropriate nut, and some washers, and POW! we have a headset installer. Let's go ahead and use it.
It's simplicity itself: we take our tool apart, put one headset cup into the head tube, put the tool's bolt through the head tube (making sure to put the washers on both sides, put the nut on, and tighten.
You can see in the photos that the washers aren't perfectly even. To fix this, just loosen the nut and realign. I'm using an adjustable wrench to hold one end steady while I use a ratchet to tighten it down.
The second cup installs the same way as the first.
Now for the forks. Many forks today have a star nut welded into them. If your forks do not, you will have to install a star nut. Park Tools makes a beautiful star nut installer, or you can use a hammer and some caution.
Start by placing the bolt that you will use to tighten the headset into the star nut, and then hand-align the star nut with the forks.
Tap lightly with a hammer. Don't rush this step unless you have a bunch of extra star nuts in a bag. Star nuts are very delicate and they are known to break. Chances are that your star nut will not go in perfectly. That's okay. Tap the side of the bolt, with a downward motion, to even it out. Not too hard, mind you!
Once both levels of the star nut are in, we can hammer a bit harder. Knock it down about an inch.
Now for the bearing race. Lo Joe uses a special technique that even I didn't know to put these on without any fuss - and without the screwdriver I've always used, which always damages the race. It works like so. Slide the bearing race down and push it by hand into the fork's retaining ring until it stops. Then, put an adjustable wrench on the fork like so...
Tap the wrench with a hammer all the way around until the race is seated. This will take a while but the result is worth it. You can now assemble your fork and headset.
Well, we could cut the fork - something I'm reluctant to do on this rare Supercross "Bottema-style" retro fork. Or we could add a spacer underneath, which would raise the bars. Or... we can put a spacer on top!
Looks a trifle sketchy, doesn't it? It isn't. You see, all the top cap does in an Aheadset system is load the bearings prior to stem tightening. The stem, once it is tightened, no longer needs the top cap to stay tight. Good thing, because if you relied on the strength of the star nut and topcap to hold your bars on, you'd never make it past the first jump. Running a washer on top looks odd but it works like a charm.
Time to do the cranks. We'll use standard Profile race cranks:
Lo Joe will choose the correct spacer to use by placing the assembly together above the bottom bracket and seeing how it looks:
Then we'll grease the spindle and toss it in...
Add bars, seatpost, and seatclamp, and we're mostly there! Keep your eyes peeled, because in a few weeks we'll show the rest of the assembly. 'Till then... um... don't ride the bike without wheels!