Friday, August 29, 2008

Technium CityLite dumpster rescue

I would like to point out that these posts aren't happening in direct chronology with the images. I started that project, then started this project, but I wanted to break the narrative up into logical chunks and make it accessible in case someone else has one of these bikes. There's very little information about this particular model on the web, although I found pictures of someone else's (road) Technium fixed-gear conversion on Flickr.

I'm not sure I would have turned such a complete and (from the pictures) barely ridden geared road bike into a fixed gear, but that's just me. Regardless, there's no arguing that he did a fantastic job with the frame, and almost certainly spent a lot more time with it than I did. I also can't deny that it was helpful to have someone else's project as a reference.

Which is why I'm posting this. Uh.

Oh, if you have a 54-52 cm Technium road bike, and you want to sell/give it to me, that'd be great. Preferably a nice clean one like the aforementioned Flickr dude's. Thanks.

Anyway. At this point I had a stripped and fairly rust free frame and fork. I masked the aluminum sections, including the aluminum rings that butt the tubes together. Prep was limited to washing the steel sections with degreaser, and using a self-etching primer.


I did spray some of the previously rusted areas with a one-step rust conversion and then sanded off the residue before priming. This is a good idea if you're lazy and don't want to grind out every single pit of rust, or simply don't want to remove half the dropout in the process, for example. Hopefully your frame hasn't been neglected like this one.


The head tube logo is cast aluminum and has two pegs that simply press into the holes in the head tube. You can (carefully) pry it off with a flat-head screwdriver.


Primed and ready to paint.

For some reason I didn't take any pictures of the bare frame after the final paint coat, possibly because of inhaling too many paint fumes. Or something. Here's how it turned out, though:

I just put a random road seat on it to be able to get a feel for how it rides. Still need to go to a single chainring up front, and install a rear brake since I tend to ride on loose surfaces quite a bit.

Oh yeah, and that fork and headset is from a Trek 850 I had lying around. I'll explain that later. Now if you'll excuse me, it's staggeringly gorgeous outside, and I'm going riding.