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Road bikes can have a hard life and in this video Sam Gupta decides to give his boss' bike some much needed TLC after it had sat neglected for quite some time. Sam strips the bike down, cleans it up, gives it a full inspection and service and then surprises his boss at the end of the video with the finished build. Let us know if you think Sam did a good job!
This video was created in partnership with Zefal and Hunt Bike Wheels.
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9.6 kilos. This is the Cycling Weekly Mega Base and this is where we keep all of the bikes and
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products that we get sent in for testing. However, there are a few personal bikes here as well
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one of which is actually my boss's bike. He owns a Varenzi Kilmerston and it's fair to say that
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this bike has not seen much love and is in dire need of some TLC. So I'm gonna steal it, I'm gonna
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get it into the workshop and I'm going to give it a new lease of life. Well first things first we need to get this bike stripped down and now that the sun is out and
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shining and it is warm I don't see any need for these mug guards so we're going to whip those off
0:47
we're going to get the wheels off, we're going to get everything off that we're going to be replacing and we'll go from there and we'll see what we're left with
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Oh that is grimy. Wowee. Right, that's my guards off and I've got to say there is a lot of built-up
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crud underneath there in the frame. We're going to get the chain off next
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and then it will be time to give this bike a deep clean. Now to help me out with this bike restoration, Zeefow have stepped in with a bunch of their
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products and to help clean the bike, I've got their bike shampoo. So I've just filled
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up their bottle with 700ml of water and I'm going to squeeze in this bag of kind of like
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jelly, but then we're going to use that as the bike shampoo and get this thing looking
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beautiful. Now this is a whole litre of bike shampoo and we've still got two more, so we
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should be pretty sorted for bike cleaning around here for quite a while. Let's go get this bike cleaned
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Oh yeah. Right, the bike is now clean, it's back inside
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I really do wanna pay some attention to the paintwork cause some of it's looking quite dull
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But first I need to get it really dry. So I've got the compressor. So let's get this thing dry
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Now, as I said, when I clean this bike, I could see a lot of like marring under the paintwork and white paint really isn't good for it because it holds so many of the stains
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so I've got some paint restorer here so I'm going to work quite methodically from top to bottom
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just taking my time to see how much of a shine we can bring back
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Now after about 30 or 40 minutes of polishing I think we're finally there. The bike is looking
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better, it's subtle but it is better. One thing I did also notice was that the rear neck was a bit
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loose because the mech hanger bolts they were rattling around so tighten those up so now when
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i come to index the gears that should be running a whole lot smoother the next job though is we need to get some wheels in this bike now the old wheels they were good but I think we can do a bit better and happily I have had a delivery from Hunt who have come in
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to save the day. Hunt are actually one of the very few brands now that still make decent quality
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alloy rim brake wheels. So these ones here are the four season aero wheels. I think they're going to
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be better performing than what was on there previously so we'll get a new cassette on there
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new ties and then we'll get them fitted here we go envelope full of parts and accessories new skewers
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in here which is going to be really good because the old ones certainly weren't quite right in fact
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i think the rear wheel was a turbo trainer skewer so i'm glad to see the back of that
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but here we go here are the wheels oh lovely good stuff yeah these these will be bang on
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so so ties are done we've got some shroud ties on there now though it's time to fit the cassette
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So we'll get this unboxed, we'll get it on. Should be pretty smooth sailing
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And then we'll get these wheels into the bike and continue with the build. There we go, that's looking good
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Let's get this nipped up with the three wheel tool. Oh, beautiful, look at that. Nice
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Right, the wheels are in. I also reattached the brake calipers and re-centered and readjusted the brake pads
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The brake pads themselves actually have quite a lot of life left in them, so there's no need to change those
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And now that they're realigned, the brakes are feeling, oh, really strong
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So next job is to get the chain set sorted. Now, the chain rings are actually quite worn out
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So we've got a couple of replacements, which we're gonna get onto the chain set. We'll get that refitted
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Then we can get the chain on and then index the gears. And then actually we're quite close
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to the home straight at that point. The bolts are off, the chain rings
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they are looking very worn, especially the inner chain ring. Those teeth are looking very shark teeth like, very pointy
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So I'm glad we've got to these now. Happily, I've got some new ones
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So we'll get these unboxed, we'll get them fitted and we should be looking a whole lot better
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In fact, I think this chain set's gonna look much smarter because these new chain rings are completely black
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so should be a nice visual upgrade too. Right, chain set is back together
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So we're gonna get this back into the frame. Nice and easy
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The bottom bracket's actually feeling really smooth, So there's not much we need to do there
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So we'll pop this crank on back on. With this going on
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it means that now we can go ahead with the chain. Surprisingly, maybe unsurprisingly
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but the cables themselves are looking really, really good. The condition of them is fantastic
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There's no corrosion. They look pretty new actually So what I gonna do is I gonna leave those because I think they got plenty of life left in them so it does mean that I can get straight on with indexing which will be really good so yeah not many jobs left now
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Right that chain's gone on it's looking pretty good but now we need to index it so
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need to grab a screwdriver. The gears now are running beautifully smoothly, which is fantastic
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news. The next thing though I really want to address is this saddle. I know that this saddle
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is not right for my boss and he needs something with a bit more of a cutout, a bit more support and
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you know some wider wings so i've got this one here which i'm going to get fitted
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which yeah should again just make this bike a little bit better to ride
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so we've got a couple of bottle cages from z-fowl super lightweight and we've also got some z-fowl
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bottles which we can treat my boss to which will be good
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Right, bottle cages are on, bottles are in, we're going to take the bike out of the stand now
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because we need to do kind of some final touches. I want to get the saddle bag on and fill that up
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with some goodies. I also need to sort out these handle bars and then put on some new bar tape as
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well so there's still a few little bits to go but I will say it's looking pretty good so far
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I've never seen bar tape come off in so many chunks. This is ridiculous
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Now, while this bike doesn't have any disc brakes, Z-Fowl's disc brake cleaner is actually gonna be perfect
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for getting rid of some of this salty, gluey residue that lives underneath this bar tape
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So we're gonna give these bars a really good cleanup before we get the fresh stuff put on
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But I must say that bar tape was no good. All right the bars are now looking much cleaner I'm gonna get some new tape on I'm not the best
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at wrapping bar tape so I'm gonna take it slowly I'll take my time and hopefully we can do a decent
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job on this one yeah wish me luck Well there we go The bar tape on the bike is looking good we got the saddle bag with some
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bits in i've got some lube for rob as well some z-fowl lube that he can use over summer but i want
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to make sure he's looked after in winter as well and z-fowl do actually make lights so i'm going
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to give him a front light 800 lumens rechargeable waterproof and also a rear light as well which is
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going to attach to the seat post nice and easily so this bike is going to be totally sorted
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so it's been a few days now since i worked on your bike rob um everyone this is rob this is
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the person whose bike i have been working on but tell us about the condition of the bike
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when you left it here? Not good. I mean, it's a 14-year-old bike that hasn't really been loved
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I used it for commuting for a long time, didn't look after it. I'm terrible at bike maintenance
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anyway. I've broken bits on it. I fixed them badly. The drive chain in particular, if I remember
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was in really bad state. Greasy, muddy. I hadn't cleaned it, which a lot of people would be very
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angry about. And also during lockdown, I used it for a turbo trainer bike, basically a smart
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trainer bike and um you know so I sweated all over it and again I wasn't very good at cleaning
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it so yeah I feel a bit bad about it really so I'm looking forward to seeing what you've done
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okay I'm not expecting miracles but I'm also expecting miracles so it's looking a bit better I'd say yeah yes it is it is the same bike but it does look
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actually looks really good really good so starting from top to bottom new bar tape to be honest i'm
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really happy because all the logos line up that's arguably one of the best wrap jobs i've ever done
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um we've got the zfowl f800 front light up there so that's 800 lumens to keep you illuminated on
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the roads a new pro logo saddle i t cut the entire frame um so it's definitely looking a little bit
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shinier. We've got a couple of Z-Fal bottles in their Z-Fal bottle cages. New chain rings, small
12:53
and large, so you shouldn't be slipping any gears. I will say your old ones were very worn out
12:59
A new chain, of course. New cassette, same ratio, which actually quite hard to find, but I managed
13:06
it. New Hunt wheels. These are the four season aero wheels. Of course, Rimbrake Hunt, one of
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the very few brands that still make decent alloy rim brake wheels new tires these are from schwab
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these are their 365 tires so should work well kind of 365 days of the year and of course at the rear
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we've got a new rear light this is the r150 z-fowl rear light and in the saddlebag there's a few
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little goodies goodies so we've got some z-fowl tire levers in there and we've also got a co2
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inflator um so should you get a puncture you'll be able to fix it marvellous it still looks quite
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it's quite pretty yeah you've taken off the mud guards i have taken off the mud guards i mean it
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is summer now so i just don't think you need them exactly and actually it looks it's the first time
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it's the first time it has been naked yeah so uh yeah looks great good stuff well there we have it
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i want to say a big thank you to zfow and hunt for making this video possible but let me know down
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below. What would you have done differently
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