The First Rideable Night of my F-1 Rockfish

I've wrenched on bikes quite a bit. The majority of the wrenching I've done has been for friends and strangers at the Charlottesville Community Bicycle Shop. It always felt great to get neglected bikes and parts working again with some ingenuity and elbow grease. And although it feels great to wrench for other people, there's just nothing like piecing together my own bikes. I've been conceptualizing and building my own bikes since my freshman year of college and one thing does not change: the first ride on a project bike is a blast. There comes that day in every project when I make a realization that I have everything in my possession to take it for a spin, even if it's not complete. That realization means the evening is ruined and all other plans are cancelled. I wrench until the wee hours of the night if I must, just to hop on for that first limited ride. I have to know how she handles.

I remember my first mountain bike ride on Observatory Hill on my first build in 2006, Penelope:

I remember blasting down the streets of Charlottesville at 4am with blinking yellow stoplights just as I finished the final welds on my tallbike:

And I remember taking a spin around the block as soon as my 3 speed road bike had a brake on it:

Those bikes were all juvenile builds of sorts, as my recent builds have matured and become somewhat coherent. More frequently I start from the frame up; sometimes building just the right wheelset or building the bike for a specific purpose. This week, I finally got my Formula-1 BMX Rockfish rideable:

Mechanically, the front brake and 3 speed hub are working, so it's all good to ride! I'm still working on the back brake (braze-on cantis?), searching for the right seven speed shifter for the cockpit, and looking to get the bike painted and decaled. As for the ride... this is the quickest accelerating, tightest turning, smoothest, and most fun bike I've built. I put some B.O.B. Nutz on it to haul my trailer and the build will make a nice beater/commuter/utility bike when done! It's super quick on those skinny 406 tires. It's definitely road worthy.

I wish you the very best on your maiden voyages. Mine have all been super.

Slowly but Surely

I took the time to completely clean and regrease the internals of the Sachs 3x7 hub today...

Sachs 3x7 hub internals.

If your Sachs hub is gummed up and you want it cleaned up like new, talk to me and maybe I can clean it out for you for a few bucks.  The whole bike is taking shape and I should have another $200 of parts coming my way in the next week or so to start to flesh it out. Exage cranks, 53 tooth chainring, Soma High Rider stem, Kalloy seatpost and collar, Panaracer slick tires, headset spacers...

Rockfish F-1 BMX taking shape.

I picked up a brand new Forte 10 speed carbon derailleur for $35. It looks fly and that's a great deal for what seems to be a well built derailleur. It should index correctly with a 7 speed shifter... and if not, there's always friction shifting.

Forte 10 Speed Carbon Rear Derailleur

I go where I'm thread.

Somehow, I think I knew this day would come. I do not believe it was by chance that I purchased a die handle and a 1" 24tpi die off of ebay a few months ago. I used them today to extend threads on my new fork for the Rockfish F-1 BMX.  The fork had 1.5" of threads already cut, but I had to extend them another 1.75" to make it compatible with my head tube. Park Tool's article on thread cutting was really helpful.

Fork prior to cutting more threads. I threaded down into the black painted area.

My awesome die handle.

1" steerer x 24tpi

Thread shavings. Clear these by spinning 1/8 turn backward every 1/2 turn.

First pass, super oiled up. Copious amounts of lube required.

First pass.

Second pass.

Third pass, all clean and all done!

All in all, it probably took me an hour of work and a lot of arm strength. I had to make several passes with the die set at slightly different diameters. During the first pass, the die is set quite open. The die is closed a little with each following pass to cut the threads a little at a time. I used almost all of my chain lube in the process.

The title of this post is a play on a lyric in a Silver Jews song - Pet Politics.

Rockfishin'

Charlottesville Community Bikes moved to a new location on Preston Ave in late 2009. Since then, it's been quite the task to clean out the old space. There were crappy bikes up to our ears in there. Back in August we had help from a group of UVA Project SERVE volunteers to bring one last load of metal recycling to Cycle Systems (formerly Coiner's). As we were tossing crappy Huffy bikes into a giant pile of steel, a diamond in the rough caught my eye:




This Rockfish frame happens to be a special local bike creation from two Charlottesville,VA locals, Nick & Boris. I got the scoop on them from Scott Paisley over at Blue Wheel Bicycles:

The Rockfish bikes were a project that my original frame building partner, Nick, and Boris created. There was a push to create a new racing format to encourage BMX riders to transition into bicycles as adults. The idea was parking lot criteriums with adults on super quick handling small wheel bikes. I built one prototype on 24" wheels that Boris has been riding around town for years. I may have built one of the 20" wheels as well, but I don't remember, and don't think I did any more than advise on the steering geometry. Those frames were built by Cycle Craft in Tennessee. Nick still has a bunch of the frames unpainted somewhere.

In other words, these were BMX bikes built for Formula-1 racing. I scoured the internet a bit to find Nick's site. There are some good pictures and info on there, despite the Rockfish project being defunct.

I snagged this frame right as it was about to be tossed into a heap of scrap steel to be lost forever. I brought it home and have plans to rebuild it. Unfortunately, after closer inspection, I realized that there's a 1" crack on the back of the seat tube just above the bottom bracket:


So I need to get this tig-welded. I gave Charles a call to see if he would braze the crack for me. He convinced me that tig is the way to go for this crack. He claimed that he is getting a tig setup within the next couple of months, and I hope to pay him to do the work . He told me that if I prepped it by stripping the paint and drilling out the ends that it should be a fast repair. I ended up breaking 4 skinny drill bits trying to drill the ends of the crack out to prevent it from spreading. I also started stripping the frame with a wire brush attachment. In the past I've used chemical strippers, but they are such a noxious pain. As for the color... I've looked for metallic pink automotive paint, but to no avail.


Over the past few years, several of my local friends have also gotten their hands on these frames... but I have yet to see one of theirs working. The frames we find are usually significantly damaged or missing the fork. Mine is both. I have some leads on 20" wheel forks with long steerers and cantilever studs on ebay.

At first I was thinking about restoring this bike to it's original specs. However, I think this frame with 20" wheels would make an amazing polo bike. Charlottesville Bike Polo has really gotten organized in the past few years, thanks to Barry. They meet up at McIntire Skate Park on Tuesdays & Thursday evenings. I showed up thrice recently (after not having been since things got rolling) and damn, pretty good turn out and everyone is gettin tough.

I've also started recreating some decals for the bike. Back in the day (~2006) I found a Rockfish sticker at the old commbikes shop, and I recently got my coworker Andrew Stronge to walk me through scanning, retracing, and vectorizing it in Adobe Illustrator. If you need the vector file, drop me a line

Now just to find someone to reproduce the decals. Velographic looks promising.