Bicycle Mechanics - (xPost) MkIII / Speedhub build & How To articles...

Back in March (shoot, a whole 6 months ago) I posted a whole bunch of photos of my new, bare naked Hollowpoint MkIII frame that I had prepped to build from the frame up.

Weeks turned into months and I took all kinds of delays scraping together the right mix of parts, but I finally finished the deed: Rohloff Speedhub, White Brothers DT 1.2 fork, Hopey steering damper, stripped & polished rear triangel and a bunch of other treats.

I've got a zillion photos plus a bunch of "How To" articles posted over at MTBR:

Link to MkIII / Speedhub Build Pics (Main Post) (http://forums.mtbr.com/showthread.php?t=130055)

http://www.booboodog.net/images/shmk3(22).jpg

Plus all this and then some:

Hopey Steering Damper Installation (http://forums.mtbr.com/showthread.php?p=1189926)

Drilling Out Cable Stops (Full Length Cable Run) (http://forums.mtbr.com/showthread.php?p=1189971)

Stripping & Polishing an Aluminum Frame (http://forums.mtbr.com/showthread.php?p=1189989)

Homemade Headset Removal & Installation Tools (http://forums.mtbr.com/showthread.php?p=1190007)

Star Fangled Nut Removal (Drilling out the Star Nut) (http://forums.mtbr.com/showthread.php?p=1189999)

Cane Creek AD-12 Air Chamber Volume Adjustment (http://forums.mtbr.com/showthread.php?p=1189936)

Bottom Bracket Drain Hole Drilling & Installation (http://forums.mtbr.com/showthread.php?p=1189954)

Dremel Cut & Prep of Cable & Housing (http://forums.mtbr.com/showthread.php?p=1189977)

http://www.booboodog.net/images/headset-press.gif

It took me a day but read thru every post in that series... very ,very cool and informative... i admire your passion and photos...

but for the life of me ,one question i have... why on earth did you make a hole in a perfectly good frame (bottom bracket series) ? Doesnt that let water in ?

Water collects at the bottom of the frame without a hole there, most likely entering through the seat post / seat tube interface (yet another reason to keep that interface lubricated, and reapply it on a regular basis).

The thought of even a small amount of water influencing an interaction between the threads of an aluminum frame and a steel bottom bracket doesn't appeal to me, and the sludge that drips out of my undrilled frames is always appropriately rust colored, so I know it's up to no good.

Whatever the case, whether or not to drill a bottom bracket continues to be a topic debated on many bike forums and is not a universally accepted practice, so dredge up the old posts, read the pros and cons, and form an opinion for yourself. I personally don't ford many rivers or ride in excessively wet climates, but I can assure you that when cracking the BB open, my undrilled frames always drain water and the drilled ones don't.