Friday, November 21, 2008

CRANKSET MOD

A couple of weeks ago I decided that it was time to build a new bike.  So I sold my blue Huffy SS (see Single Speed Conversion post below) for $200 and ordered some components with the money.  While those were shipping I painted the Azuki frame (see previous post) that was sitting in my yard and hunted up a flip/flop wheelset.  The idea is to build a completely black fixed/SS bike with subtle red accents.  When i got my components in the mail a couple of days ago and started to convert the FSA crankset from 3 ring to SS, I realized that the factory had failed to grease the chain ring bolts and thus they were essentially welded into the nuts.  After some fruitless wrenching that only led to stripping the weak alloy hardware, I grabbed my trusty Ryobi and drilled out the bolts.  If done carefully, this works great.  I used a 3/8" steel bit, which was just slightly bigger than the inside diameter of the nut.  Once the 32 and 22 tooth rings were removed, I reattached the 44 tooth ring to the spider with some sweet red anodized bolts.  Here's some before and after...

FSA Dyna Drive Crankset (Original):




Modified:

1 comment:

Morning Glory said...

Is it safe? It looks good. There is nothing like red and black!