Bike Building Adventures: Turning Spare Parts into Adventure Machines

I had a huge collection of old bike parts which I planned to sell on eBay but never got round to. After fixing up one bike which I sold on Facebook Marketplace, I thought, maybe I’ll try to build all the parts into full bikes instead. Then I can either ride them or sell them. So with this in mind I spent a portion of my spare time waiting for a new job to start building.

I assembled old racing bikes that were my dad’s, converted my old Kona from a touring bike back into a mountain bike and created a Frankenstein gravel bike out of an old mountain bike frame which turned out to be fun to ride. I bought a few extra bits off eBay, like brake pads and cables, but mostly had all the required components.

The unforeseen joy experienced in working on the bikes was a welcome surprise. A positive side effect was that I tidied my workshop and acquired a few new skills, such as building my own headset press, researching old tech like Campagnolo brake levers, and setting up centre-pull brakes.

To conclude, I highly recommend this process. There is little more depressing than a pile of bike parts that aren’t being used because every bike part is a vision of a bike that could be ridden.

• spare parts
• bike building