Perspective: For the Love of God, Keep Everything in It
This post comes transplanted from my personal blog, originally written 11 December 2006.
I wish I had documented this process with a digital camera when it had happened. Unfortunately, I did not; these images stolen from the Internet will have to suffice. Please note that the links and images provided do not always match the product I purchased. They were as close an approximation as I could find.
When I was a freshman in college, I bought a carbon fiber bicycle fork from someone I found through craigslist.
I paid $40 for it, a fraction of the MSRP, with the intention of transplanting it onto a vintage bicycle I had yet to acquire. Upon acquiring that bicycle, however, I discovered that the steerer tube had been cut too short, and it would not avail in its intended function. I tried to resell it on craigslist (and perhaps even turn a profit), in vain.
And so it sat in storage for a very long time (two years), before a friend and former coworker donated his road bike (which was too small for him anyway) to a friend of mine. It was completely built and already had a fork on it, but I was excited anyway to discover that the bike's headtube was short enough to accommodate my own fork's steerer tube.
I could finally put this fork to good use! Of course, it would mean that the fork already on the bike would end up sitting in storage instead, but since I didn't pay $40 for that fork, I didn't care.
Incidentally, the fork is one of a group of components that all fit together to compose the front end of the bike. I was working with a new fork and an old bike, and mechanical standards had changed over time. I would need a new headset, spacers, and a stem to get it all to fit together.
Between Jake and me, we were sure we'd have some spare parts lying around that we could use. Two weeks of rummaging and no dice. Oh well; some costs can't be avoided, and at the very least, it's a one-time purchase.
Off to the bike shop (which Jake now manages). We removed the old headset and fork and pressed the new headset into the frame, which is easy with the right tools and miserable without them. Furthermore, it is an enormous pain in the ass to undo.
Here, we slapped on the new spacers and stem, adjusted bearing tension, reattached the old handlebars, and discovered that the wheel would not fit into the fork. It was a 27" wheel (630mm in diameter) on a fork made for 700c wheels (622mm in diameter). The fork, designed for racing, was made with such tight tolerances that four extra millimeters consumed all of the clearance there and squeezed the tire tight against the "ceiling".
No stopping now. As the saying goes, we were "Stepp'd in so far that, should [we] wade no more / Returning were as tedious as go o'er." I picked up a lovely 700c front wheel that morning (yes, the bike now has mismatched wheels), Shimano 105 hub matched to a Mavic MA3 rim. ~$100 retail. This wheel also needed a rim tape, a tube, and a tire.
Rim tape.
Tube.
And at this point, we also discovered that the nut that holds the front brake onto the fork could not reach the bolt. The store did not have one of these nuts in stock, and so I had to buy one from another store, sans Bro Discount.
SUMMARY OF PURCHASES:
$40 Fork
$50 Headset
$5 Spacers
$10 Stem
$50 Wheel
$10 Tire
$2 Rim strip & tube
$8 Brake bolt
$10 Headset installation
$185 TOTAL, $145 without fork
Many thanks to Jacob Lopacinski, without whom this project would never have left the ground. He hooked it up with the unmatched Bro Discount. Without it, the wheel, stem, tire, rim strip, tube, and headset installation would have cost ~$200, bringing the total cost of the project over $300.
At long last, the bike was good to go, but at considerable cost. I came out of it with an extra (old) fork, headset, stem, and wheel. I plan to give the wheel to a friend whose old wheel was stolen. I'll probably end up donating the old parts to the Bicycle Kitchen of Los Angeles.
How did this get out of hand so fast? Was it worth it to spend that kind of money to see that fork in action? At best, I'm happy that it's on a bike, but good God, would it really matter if it weren't? What's done is done, and while I'd never do it again, I'm glad the fork is out of my garage.
Lessons (hopefully) learned: know when to cut your losses; don't develop emotional attachments to useless bike parts.
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