brutalcycles:

This is the back story to Sam June’s post that regaled you about my efforts building his Fuji Royale II.  Included are some pictures of the bike before I got my paws all over it.  Nice Sugino crank with Fuji emblazoned on it, nice chromed flat crown on the fork, chromed fork ends, Suntour dropouts, pretty moderate geometry.  All of these things add up to make a bike that’s totally worth breaking apart to rebuild as a fixed gear urban commuter.

When I got the bike, it was pretty dirty and had some cosmetic corrosion.  Since this thing was intended for a old friend who had plans to ride it pretty hard, I wanted to make sure the bike was not only totally sexy and clean, but also that every little detail was attended to.  In order to fulfill this, I began by removing everything you can from the frame (I did, however, leave the bottom bracket and headset alone, as both of them were functioning flawlessly).  As I removed some hardware, I noted that a number of the bolts were pretty stuck, and several pieces had that awful white, powdery type of residue that comes with years of neglect.  Fortunately, the original paint on this bike was well intact, so there were no significant rust spots to speak of.  When I got to the seatpost, that thang was stuck like a mo’fo.  I removed the binder bolt (also pretty stiff) and sprayed some light oil down into the seat tube… the bike came with a fluted seat post which allowed me to get a good bit of oil in there.  I tried to twist the seat and break the post loose, but no dice.  Not even a little bit.  I turned to plan B: the vice (that thing is always plan B).

Steps necessary to achieve victory & valor:

1. Remove the saddle and clamp from the top of the seat post, lock that fucker in the vice real tough (see picture).

2. Gently but firmly torque the frame.  You don’t want to hit the frame (dents) or twist too hard (bends).  The latter of these is particularly true if you’re using the rear triangle to twist, as those tubes tend to be skinnier and accordingly, not as stiff as the others.

A bit of sweat and a few gorilla-esque grunt later things were finally moving like they should.  The post came out and was just disgusting (check the photo… yuck!).   I turned to my workhorse of a drill and fitted it with that sea-creature looking wire stripper.  This spiny fellow and a steel bristled brush successfully removed all the nasty corrosion from the affected areas of the bike.  When that was finished and all the silver was shiny again, I hit the whole frame with some citrus degreaser and a few of those magical blue shop towels.

Now that the baby had be given his bath, reassembly was a cinch.  Install crank & new chainring with accompanying new, shorter stack bolts.  Then comes the freshly cleaned and greased seatpost and handlebars+stem.  Then the brake calipers, then the tires&tubes, then the wheels, then the chain, then the brake hoods, handlebar wrap… Put the bike back together, you get the idea.

When the whole thing was assembled I spent a while truing the wheels and setting the brakes really nicely.  Also, just before all the tweaking was completed, Sam hinted that at some point he might like to ride this bike with a fixed drive train.  This was not in the original plans but I had an extra flip/flop wheel lying around (on that evil Atlantic Coast Cruiser, weirdly enough).  So I switched the suntour wheel that was on there out for the fixed wheel but in doing so had to swap the freewheels as they were significantly different sizes.  This was easy on the fixed hub, but proved to be a bit of a challenge on the Suntour hub.  I had to remove the quick release skewer, lock nuts, bearing cones, and the whole axle itself to allow the freewheel key to properly interface with the freewheel’s installation/removal splines.  When I removed the axle, I put a piece of gaff tape on either side of the hub shell to prevent the bearings from spilling out all over the floor and ending up with their faces on the side of a milk carton (missing… get it?)

That was pretty much the last little hurdle for this thing.  As you can see in Sam’s post, the bike came out pretty sweet looking and mechanically spectacular.  That’s all I’ve got.  More very soon.

See you in Hell,

BRXTus