I recently got back my freshly painted frame and I must say, this is a really good paint job. The frame is looking like new now.

To start with, my bike looked like this:

Before

This picture was taken in 2009 when the bike was only a year old and the black anodized frame was still looking great. However, not much was left of this three years later.

Now for the bike rebuilding pictures:

Just the frame	Main bearing installation.
More bearings. Installing more bearings.	Frame complete. Full suspension frame complete.

The main part in reasembling the bike was the installation of the bearings. I did this in the past as well using some improvised home-made tooling but this time I bought a specialized tool with some custom parts for bearings of different sizes. Because of this, the reinstallation of the bearings was quite easy. Only the main bearing (the biggest one) took some effort to get in but at least I did not have to use a hammer like the last time I installed bearings.

Reinstalling the headset.

Looking more and more like a bike.

Also the reinstallation of the headset was a breeze, using a specific tool of course, and this was a first time for me. Since my fork is almost worn out (according the the bike mechanic who did the maintenance on it two weeks ago), this encourages me to replace the fork myself in the future. The main thing that was causing problems, surprisingly, was the bottom bracket. Somehow, it looked like it didn’t fit anymore, but the solution there was simply cleaning the threads of the bottom bracket and the frame.

Only the wheels are missing.

Bike completed!

After all of this there were some tuning activities to do such as: adjusting the headset for play, adjusting the disk brake calipers, and adjusting the front derailleur. Even though I measured where it was before I disassembled the bike, it was still quite some work to get it completely mounted in the correct way.

In total the rebuild cost me two evenings, 4 hours to get to the stage of the bike fully assembled and then another 3 hours for tuning it.

Of course, this work had to be tested and I must say I am really satisfied. Everything is working and there are no squeaks, cracks, or tics to be heard at all and it doesn’t only look like new but it rides like new as well (or is that just my imagination?).

Here is the picture of my precious afterwards:

Bike completed and tested.

I really like the color of the bike and the paintjob is really done well. Now, to really complete the rebuild, I still have to change the picture on my bank pass and my skype profile picture. Or shouldn’t I?