Giant in the workshop

It was mentioned in  previous blog post - about me losing many bikes - that my housemate James had a pretty poor 2012 in cycling terms. Perhaps I'll get him to write a 'guest post' one day about it but for now I'll just cover the basics. He was in an accident with his new Giant OCR 1 and in the process the forks got snapped.

Being the good friend that I am this week I bought him a present. I bought him some new carbon forks so he can get his Giant back on the road.

DIY of any kind is not my strong point. I can barely change an inner tube, let alone do major maintenance on a bike. I followed common sense with this one and I think it turned out okay!

Here are some photos of the process:

This is what it looked like originally. Forks snapped off with the Alu steerer remaining

On the bike stand. Saddle had been taken off too at some point.

Close up of the brakes attached to the broken forks

New forks. Carbon fibre with aluminium steerer. Purchased from the bikeradar sales forum.

Not quite the same colour but being black they don't look horrific.

In the accident his front wheel was bent so put on a front wheel from one of the other bikes in the garage. The yellow tyre can be swapped over.

Close up of the front brake, attached now to the new forks

Saddle back on the bike. Sitting funny though.

What the bike looks like now on the stand.

Took it out for a quick spin after this. 

Obvious points are that the saddle needs re-adjusting, I think I've put it on wrong so I will get James to look at it at some point. As well as that, it will look a lot better with a black tyre on the front wheel - or even getting the original wheel re-trued as the spoke count is so different on the back wheel currently.

The last thing I noticed whilst riding is that the front brake needs a little adjusting, getting a little bit too much feedback when you have a squeeze but should be an easy enough fix when one of us gets the time.

It is a very nice machine though, the 105 groupset (with some Ultegra) is very smooth through the gears compared to my 2011 Sora groupset. Quite jealous of it even though I think aesthetically my Bianchi is better. James saw it briefly before he went out to a shift at work so hopefully when he gets back in a couple of hours he'll like it and be grateful. Then hopefully it won't be too long until we get to go on some epic rides together!