Building a Bike

COVID cases are on the rise in NYC and all over the country and to be honest, I’m not super comfortable riding the subway.

And since I don’t currently have a commuter, I needed to find a new one. And stat.

Bikes are scarce these days, but if you time it right, and scour the websites, you can find some decent deals out there for a beater. That is, a bike that you can beat on; that you can lock up outside in NYC and not worry about it being stolen; leave out in the rain with dirt and grime just giving it more character.

And that’s what I got.

The fact that the bike doesn’t have gears is strategic on two levels. First, it makes it makes it infinitely easier to maintain with less cables to adjust, less parts to need tweaking and less worry about what will break. And second, using a fixed gear bike – that is, when I stop moving the pedals, the bike stops moving, said a different way, the one gear on the rear wheel spins with the wheel, not independently – is easier to control in traffic.

So for the next 38 seconds, I build this bike with three tools. The Park Tool AWS-1, a 3-Way Bicycle Hex Wrench with 4mm, 5mm and 6mm drivers. And two 15MM – Pedro’s Apprentice Pedal Wrench and a Craftsman 9-42919 15mm Combination Wrench.

As you’ll see, it took me longer to remove all of the wrapping to keep the bike from being banged up during shipping than actually assembling the bike.

Also, I know the angle and lighting aren’t great. But I am limited in where I can work on something like this in a NYC apartment without getting yelled at by my family.