I recently bought a vintage 90s MTB for €15,-. It's a beautifull 26" Batavus Nitro from 1995, in the lushes orange colour of my nation.
But Jaer, don't you have a handfull of bikes already? And didn't your father-in-law just gifted you another nice bike? Well... yes... that's all true... but c'mom! €15!
I thought it would be cool to use this cheap bike as a learning project. I aimed to take the complete bike apart and understand and fix all the different parts.
Because - and I'm a bit ashamed to admit this - I have never taken a complete bike apart. Yes, I've changed some tyres, brakes, handlebars and some other small little bits, but I've never done a complete bike. So it's about time to change that!
I made a YouTube video documenting my entire process.
#1 Disassembling
I started by taking apart the bike. I didn't realise this at the start, but it require quite a few specialised tools I'd never heard of.
- Crank puller (I had to order this one)
- Chain whip (sounds like a medival torture device)
- Chain remover tool (okay, I'd used this one before, but it's still oddly specific!)
#2 Cleaning
The second step of the process was cleaning all individual parts. This was fun and provided me with great satisfaction.
I used a deruster liquid to perk up all the rusty screws and other parts. This was super interesting to see, but in hindsight I could've saved myself the effort. This because I ended up replacing the chain, the cassette and the crank later in the process anyway.
#3 Fixing
Fixing the bike was focused 100% getting the drive train to run smoothly. Here I ran into the most issues. First of all it took me two new chainwheel and four visits to three different bike mechanics to find a somewhat acceptable chainwheel.
It took me even longer to get the bike to shift properly again (this because all the new parts were not designed to go with the bike in specific, so it all was offset just sligtly). It was a long a frustrating proces, but I felt vindicted when the pro mechanics couldn't get any more progress than I did by myself.
The result
At the end of the process, I managed to visit the local mountainbiking trails around my village and have a lot of fun with this bike. The entire process has thought me a lot about bike mechanics and it has me inspired to continue building this bike (I already purchased many upgrades that I'll be installing next!)