Fuji - Bike Build
I bought this bike in Florida where is cost me about 40 euro. It was a classic Fuji vintage racer with stem shifters and a quad butted steel frame in good condition, so I decided to bring it home.
I had previously been planning a bike packing trip from Rosslare to Cannes, roughly 2000km of cycling, and instead of buying a new bike I decided to use the Fuji. To make it compatible for the trip, which involved lots of high speed cycling and various terrains, I decided to change many of the components. I am currently working on a video which will show the complete build process in detail.
Below I have shown some pictures of the process.
The bike was stripped down to just the steel frame. The frame and a number of parts which would be used again were cleaned.
I began to re-assemble the bike, replacing a number of components.
The front and rear wheels were both replaced with shimano wheels, the back wheel had a free-hub and was compatible with the 9-speed cassette that I wanted to run on this bike. Since this was a vintage type frame with a previsously 6 speed rear cassette, the hub spacing was roughly 126mm. To accomodate for the new wheel and the new 9-speed cassette the hub spacing had to be increased by about 3mm on each side. This is shown below, which was done using a tool which I made. This tool allowed me to widen the frame incrementally and to accomodate the new wheel and cassette.
Shown below is the finished bike, with all the bikepacking gear also attached onto it. Converting the stem shifters which were on the downtube of the bike to brifters allowed for a much easier and crisper transition between gears, making it better suited to a long distance cycle.
