Parts is parts...

We went up to Great Divide Cyclery in Helena yesterday to start building out the Lynskey.  I am going to use the hubs from my old singlespeed and have a new wheelset built for the 29'r Lynskey.  The wheelset will be made up of the Stan's Crest rims with black spokes and a little nipple bling.  I opted for red nipples on the wheelset, as well as a red headset from Chris King.  There are still several unknowns at this point - namely fork and BB/crankset.  Considering out current weather, there is no rush:

We got about 3-4 inches of snow over the last 24 hours and it looks like the arctic freeze is heading our way.  They are forecasting low temps of  minus 20F in the next few days.  We are supposed to warm up to a high of 19F today so hopefully it is warm enough to get out and play a little.

In the interim, there is plenty of bike maintenance to be done.  I started to tear apart my Blur yesterday (in order to fix the broken upper link assembly).  The parts are here and now it is just a matter of completed dismantling everything in order to remove all the bearings and links.  Below is a picture of the old and the new assembly link:

In order to get to all the bearings, it has been a little bit of a puzzle.  First, everything has to come off....I was hoping to be able to remove the lower link assembly and bearings without having to remove the crankset and bottom bracket but no dice...It is just cold enough that once I got to this point, I raised the white flag because it meant having to go into the garage to get the wrench to remove the cups/bottom bracket/crankset.  It was just enough of a deterrent to stop me for the evening.
The big thing I had to figure out was how to remove the bearings.  The bearings are held in place with loctite and are difficult to remove.  I had to rig a little system up where I threaded a bolt through a couple of washers, then used a butterfly nut to tighten onto the bolt until enough pressure was built up to break the bearing loose.  I removed a couple of bearings and then got stopped by the next two which are smaller and required smaller washers...What first appeared to be an afternoon rendezvous with the bike has turned into a multi-day affair - mostly due to my learning curve.

As I work on the geared bike, I can hear my singlespeed snickering in the background reminding me of how many fewer moving parts there are on it, and that this is what I get for riding a geared, full squish.