Building a Bike

Jeeves said:

Was thinking of buying a Bianchi ML3 frame, without fork. And building my own bike from there. It's a 58 frame and I was just wondering when buying a fork what do I have to take in to consideration? What length should it be or are they stadard length.

anyway any advice on the matter would be appricated. And an further advice on building your own bike is welcome.

The fork steerer obviously has to be as long or longer than the headtube plus stem stack height plus HS stack height, plus any spacers you want between stem and hS. If you buy a new fork the steerer is long enough, except for the exception of freakishly long headtubes.

Jeeves said:

Was thinking of buying a Bianchi ML3 frame, without fork. And building my own bike from there. It's a 58 frame and I was just wondering when buying a fork what do I have to take in to consideration? What length should it be or are they stadard length.

anyway any advice on the matter would be appricated. And an further advice on building your own bike is welcome.

Stock forks for threadless headsets generally have about a 300mm uncut steerer length-more than enough for a 58cm frame. The actual length that the steerer needs to be cut at depends on the frame, headset, and the height that you want the stem installed at. Do NOT cut your fork if you do not know EXACTLY what you are doing. Fork cutting and headset installation are probably tasks that are best left to experienced mechanics. If you botch it, you could ruin an expensive carbon fork and damage the frame. Have a shop install the fork and headset and prep the frame for you and then you can have the fun of installing the rest. If you want to make it even easier for yourself, have the shop install the BB also.

Good luck.

I'll second the idea of getting a good bike shop to do the bottom bracket and fork installation. It's extremely easy to cross the threads on the bottom bracket, and that's serious trouble if you do. Also, get the shop to press in the headset bearings, too. They can be a bit tricky if you haven't done that before, and it's possible to ruin the frame when pressing in the headset if you really do it wrong.

Other than those three things, building up a bike isn't that hard to do. Bolt on components, and run cables. The real fun comes in picking the components. I built my last bike up from a bare frame about three years ago, and the Campy Chorus group I put on has been trouble free and a delight to use. Add Cinelli bars, Rolf wheels, and one of several saddles that were to eventually land on that bike, and it was ready for the road.

There's a certain personal pride that comes with riding a bike that you built up with the parts you picked out. To a degree, it's uniquely you, not a bike that you just picked off a showroom floor.