mstateglfr 

A lot of my cycling time each year is spent working with local at risk youth as part of a non-profit mentorship program thru RAGBRAI and the local YMCA called Dream Team.
We train indoors 2x/week in March, then ride outside 3x/week from April thru RAGBRAI at the end of July. Bicycles(trek fx1 hybrid), helmets and gloves are generously donated by a local bike shop and new riders can earn the bike(theirs to keep) if they complete the season. Almost all kids have over 1000mi ridden before RAGBRAI which most end up with over 1500mi by the time they dip their tires in the Mississippi.
I mention all this for background and a shameless plug- Dream Team website

one of the new kids this year was an 8th grader(now freshman) who really took to cycling and has an appreciation for all things older. The kid listened to Ben E King for goodness sake!
He asked if I could teach him to build a road bike after the season, so the following is a documented overview of the build.

mstateglfr 

The search went out for a frame and donor bike.
I found a donor bike on Craigslist with great components and in his size too, but he wanted an older steel frame.
so I picked up this Jamis Quest as a donor and searched for a frame.

@fleslider came thru with a quality '89 Ironman frameset with some cosmetic issues and we got to work stripping it down to bare metal.
Some chemical stripper and a bunch of Emory cloth later, we had a bare frame ready to paint.

before

after chem strip...

darn stuck and stripped dropout screw!

and its ready to paint!

mstateglfr 

We went around and around on paint because he just wanted to rattle can it since he is a teen. I suggested powdercoating since it could be done for $80 at a place I know and wouldnt be a rattle can!
we settled on spray.bike paint as its better than rattle can and cheaper than powdercoat. I had used it before on a frame of mine last year so I was confident it would go well too.

after a week of him going back and forth on colors, he settled on a couple of fluorescent colors as he wanted an 80/90s electro-fade style look.
PSA- the fluorescent spray.bike colors apply differently than the regular colors. The website says that, but even still it was a surprise! It took a few tries to get what he wanted, but correcting is relatively easy so it wasn't too much work.

fork drying


half of the frame done

and now the other half is painted and faded.

finished product

mstateglfr 

But wait- it isnt finished!
he wanted to go full 90s and add splatter paint so he bought some red spray paint, put it on a brush, and went to work.

it was really neat to see his vision come to life.

after a few days of drying, multiple layers of clearcoat were applied and the frame hung to dry for a week.

mstateglfr 

We stripped everything off the Jamis donor bike and used the wheels, seatpost, crankset, bottom bracket, shifters, brake calipers, and tires.
the frame came with a headset so we were good there.
he didnt like the shape of the ergo bars(cant blame him) and the stem wasnt long enough, so I took those away and swapped and they were swapped for better fitting bars, stem, and a threadless converter stem.

I listed the frame, fork, and headset on this site and @MegMC bought them for her own project.


nice little community around here, right?!

mstateglfr 

Build time!
I had him do as much as possible thru this project and during the build, it was a lot of clamping work. I would set a component in a spot, explain why, and he would clamp it.
tough process cuz a build really is a 1 man job, but he stayed busy and I got to make him listen to why everything was set the way it was set.
he had done a great job of cleaning all the components so it was a relatively clean build too!



he was surprised at how fast the build went. Its a really nice 3x10 shimano drivetrain that is 105/Ultegra level mix. I made sure to mention to him more than a few times that not all the mentors have this level of components so recognize and appreciate what he has.

the stem setup is not traditional, but it fits him well. I pushed for a 0 degree Nitto Dynamic quill stem to get the bars up there high enough, but that would have meant 26.0mm bars that weren't black and that set-up would have been too much $ as the budget was set at $375. So we settled on a cockpit that fits perfect at the expense of aesthetics.

we left it like this for a month as bar tape had to be ordered and the holidays plus school took up time.

Aubergine 

mstateglfr 

While it was 90% built, i hadnt tightened everything down and he rode it to school. That afternoon, he texted me this pic...


No NDS crank arm! Oh there it is on the ground.
ha ha, he was apparently too excited to wait and I didn't think to tell him it wasn't ready to ride because it seemed obvious to me.
The crank cap had stripped due to it being ridden, so a stop at a local shop got us a new one.

tonight we applied the bar tape(it matches the green, even though the pics dont show), tightened everything down, and trimmed then capped the cables.

we hit the $375 budget, but had to steal the saddle and bottle cage off his earned Trek fx1 to meet budget.

unfortunately the finished pics are grainy as it was dusk when we finished.

Reynolds 531 

only 9 days into 2019, and this may make it to 2020 as the best story of the year

canklecat

Excellent project! And two of my favorite things in one: an Ironman and splatter paint like my Univega. Well done.

fleslider 

I was just wondering how that was going! looks like it turned out well . Good job guys!

An Ironman lives on in another life!

texaspandj

Wow nice story and very cool Ironman. Congratulations to both of you.

OTS 

Great story !

Thanks for sharing.............and I love happy endings.

mstateglfr 

it definitely does live on. Thanks again for selling the frame. At the start of the build when I showed him pictures, he looked up the model read a bunch of about its history and I chuckled because he referred to the Ironman infosight more than a couple times without knowing the connection. I'm pretty sure the paint schemes for each year laid out was what got him so into the frame specifically. Then when I told him the tubing was nice it was icing on the cake.

mstateglfr 

wow, thanks for the nice comment.
really appreciate yours and everyone else's responses. I wasn't sure if I should post up this build because I never know what interests others. Well, for that reason and also because it's a bit wordy.
need to know there is some interest.

so this kid rides his bike to school every morning because it's either that or walk a couple miles. He was all sorts of excited yesterday to be able to ride the newly built bike this morning instead of is aluminum hybrid. It's currently 19 degrees.

Hailstorm_7

Wonderful story. Does he have a good lock available for that beauty?

2cam16

So cool! Hope he has that nice and secure at school!

RobbieTunes

Some cult members are born, then made.
Hats off to him for his character, curiosity, perseverance at that age, and discipline.
Hats off to you and your organization for being there.
If I could, I'd ride RAGBRAI just to meet you both.

Killer vision. Killer bike. Killer background.

Ironman.
It's not just the bike.
It's the people.

RobbieTunes

It's no mystery why the last 3 cult members have been youth.
@top506 (daughter)
@TXsailor (granddaughter)
@mstateglfr (mentoring)

USAZorro

Great project and result.

I attempted "splatter" over a paint job I did a couple years ago, but the result was disappointing. Yours came out a lot better. Might you be able to share a brief description of your technique?

RobbieTunes

Be in 8th grade.

mstateglfr 

Ha ha- what RT said. I would love to give great insight, but he did it on his own after we painted the frame. I know he took some Krylon spraypaint, sprayed it out into a pool of paint, then dipped a paintbrush in and flicked it around on the frame. Not sure how far away or how thick/thin the paint was on the brush.

Admittedly when he said he was going to do it I thought there would be a chance we may need to sand the frame back down and start over, but the results are great and very much him. Its certainly a unique color scheme and the results are truly 'hand done', but he did an overall good job of spreading out the splatter in distance and direction.

I thought about trying this with one of my kid's bikes that we are going to tear down and repaint soon, but she asked for a specific color, so it may end up I try this splatter with a frame of mine sometime in the next year or so!

MegMC

The Iron Man looks great, and still has that 80s spirit!

I've been meaning to update my progress on the Jamis, but it's slowed down. Did get the frame powder coated a titanium color and have pretty much all major build elements except wheels. Still need to rattle can the carbon fork black (sorry for the clutter, it's stashed in our office):

DMC707

markwesti

Great posts mstateglfr wonderful you are working working with the kids like that .