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Recycling And Restoration: Rebuilding An Trek Road Bike Frame
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Apr 1, 2025
After some time, road bikes may look a little worse for wear and the value in them may be hard to see, however, by following some simple techniques, they can restored to their former glory. In this video, Sam Gupta saves a Trek 1.2 road bike and goes through the entire process of restoring the frame and then building it back up to once again to be fully useable.
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0:00
I saved this road bike from the bin and I'm going to restore it to its former glory
0:06
Now, it does need quite a lot of work to get it right, but I have a good feeling that it will actually shape up pretty well
0:13
I don't have too much information on what this bike is, but I believe that this is a Trek 1.2 from the late noughties
0:21
Maybe 2009, maybe 2011. 11 but before any components can be attached to this bike i need to make sure that this frame
0:31
is safe straight and solid and not to mention this headset definitely needs replacing
0:39
so my first port of call was to go and see the legends over at velo atelier and most importantly
0:48
that man being lee prescott and that's because i wanted him to take a look at the frame and make
0:54
sure that the frame was actually safe and to ensure that it hadn't been in a crash so the very first
1:00
thing that we did was that he got his frame alignment tool out and then checked to see if
1:06
everything was straight now you do this both sides to make sure that essentially the uh the seat
1:12
stays haven't been hit um and that the frame itself hasn't been in an impact and then you
1:16
compare it to the other side and make sure that they line up and happily lee said that actually
1:21
this was within a millimeter of perfection and something that he would be happy to see come off
1:27
one of his jigs. He also went to the trouble of checking the dropout alignment as well to make
1:32
sure they were straight and as you can see they too were also dead on. Now that we worked out the
1:38
frame itself was actually in really good shape we then cracked on with changing the bottom bracket
1:42
Now I have no idea how many miles this bottom bracket had done in fact it did actually feel
1:47
pretty smooth but my thinking was if I'm going to be building this thing up I think it would be
1:51
really good to start it from fresh. So we pulled out the old one and as you can see it all needed a
1:57
bit of a cleanup so our first job was to clean those threads and make sure that there was nothing
2:02
in there. We also then decided that we'd face the bottom bracket shell again to make sure that when
2:07
we fitted a new bottom bracket it was going to be mating perfectly to the surface of the frame and
2:13
going in completely flush. When it comes to facing a frame you tend to go at it one side at a time
2:19
and in this instance it gave a really good opportunity to actually remove all of the paint
2:24
that was still sat on the frame from when it came out of the factory. Then once we removed all of
2:29
that paint you could see a perfectly finished metal surface which is eventually what the new
2:35
bottom bracket will set against and of course once you've done one side you then move on to doing the
2:40
next side and oh there was so much paint that came off of this frame that it resulted in a really
2:47
really good finish. Once the shell itself was prepared it was then ready to actually put some
2:54
grease in there ready for the new bottom bracket and Lee being ever the professional made sure that
2:59
everything was fully clean and then injected the grease into the shell and then wiped it around to
3:05
ensure an even coverage and then he screwed in both of the cups before finally getting the tool
3:09
on it to tighten it up correctly and then there we have it we have a fully faced bottom bracket shell
3:16
with a brand new bottom bracket in Lee also actually had the forethought to have a look at the seat tube which is something that I hadn really thought of but I really glad that he did because it was actually very
3:28
gritty inside. So he cleaned off the seat post and then he got his drill with an attachment and then
3:34
cleaned out the inside of the frame before re-greasing the seat post and then sliding it back
3:39
inside the frame. Next up it was the headset and when I tell you that this headset caused us some
3:46
issues that is really really an understatement i mean to quote lee he was saying that this is one
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of the worst headsets that he's had in a very long time those cups i think might have been in there
3:58
since the bike left the factory because the galvanic corrosion holding those cups in place
4:04
was really really strong the bottom cup wasn't as bad as the top because the top cup really took a
4:12
lot of time to knock it out of place. We did have to use a blowtorch in the end just to warm up the
4:18
metal just so that you can kind of create that space but finally finally we did get both cups
4:25
out and then we could crack on with getting that head tube faced. As with the bottom bracket shell
4:33
it was very much a case of removing a lot of the factory paint just to expose that nice clean metal
4:39
surface underneath now the really good thing about doing a head tube is that you not only surface the
4:44
actual tops of the tubes but you also do the inside of it as well so it just ensures that when you put
4:50
some new cups in you've got a brand new surface on every single level after that the frame was done
4:57
and it was over to me to complete the rest of the build so we'd had a new bottom bracket shell in
5:02
we'd checked that the frame hadn't been in a crash and was all still fully aligned and we had a
5:07
perfectly prepared head tube so my first port of call when we got back to our own workshop was
5:12
actually to give the frame a bit of a clean because it hadn't been cleaned since I retrieved it from
5:17
the bin now that the frame had a whole lot less dirt on it the first job that I needed to do was
5:22
fit that new headset now take this as a word of warning this is by no means a how-to on how to
5:28
fit a headset because I really did break quite a lot of rules but of course the first thing that I
5:34
did was grease up the cups and also put some grease on the inside of the head tube. As you can
5:40
see the tool that I'm using isn't actually a headset press this is actually a pretty rudimental
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park tool bottom bracket press. Ideally with a headset press you'd have some alignment tools
5:52
which means that the headset cups go into the frame completely straight. So obviously when I
5:57
did this job I was having to pay incredibly close attention to ensure that those cups are going into
6:03
the frame straight and weren't at an angle happily after quite a few attempts i did manage to get
6:10
them in and they did go in straight which was great um but of course this was by no means the
6:15
correct way to do the job and you should definitely always be using the right tools for the job
6:21
once i'd done that bottom cup i then moved on to doing the top cup in that very same dodgy process
6:28
and of course I guess the only good thing that I did do was making sure that all of the logos were
6:34
lined up on the head tube itself but I mean arguably that's a very small detail. After that
6:39
I wanted to prepare the fork so I grabbed some isopropyl alcohol and then cleaned it all off from all of the old grease and debris I then added a little bit of grease to the bottom of the crown and then also the bearings that were
6:51
going to be sitting within those headset cups. Once all the bearings were in place it then did
6:57
give me the opportunity to see how it was going to fit with the stem and also see how much excess
7:02
steerer tube I had. From there I then just marked out how much I could lose and then started to cut
7:08
off the excess steerer tube. Basically the main reason why I did this is because quite frankly
7:15
I just didn't need the excess so there was no real need to keep it and plus personally I just
7:21
think that it looks a little bit better rather than having a bit of a chimney on top of your stem
7:26
Of course once that bit of steerer was removed I had the job of just cleaning up the cut and
7:31
removing all of the burrs. It was quite an easy job to do but there's one extra part that I then
7:38
had to do was also fit a brand new star nut to the steerer tube itself and then I could do a little
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test fit with the stem and it all lined up perfectly. From there it was very much a case of
7:49
just getting everything bolted onto the frame so that included popping in the bars and yes I have
7:54
decided to go with some straight bars just to make it more of a hybrid run around town kind of bike
8:00
That was then followed by the brake levers, the gear shifter because I'm going to be running a
8:04
1x11 setup on here and then I also bolted on the saddle and the rear derailleur. Next up was fitting
8:12
both of the brake calipers and then I also followed that with the chain set as well so again just
8:16
needed to lube that up a little bit with a bit of grease and spread that over the spindle before
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then yeah sliding it into place through that brand new bottom bracket, talking up the bolts
8:26
and then making sure to remember to put that little plastic clip down on the non-drive side crank
8:32
again to match with the hybrid nature of this bike which I don't know if it will stay like this
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forever but for the time being I thought actually putting some flat pedals on here does make quite
8:42
a lot of sense just so you can hop on and off quite easily I then popped in some wheels now
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these wheels actually came from my winter bike which to be honest has kind of ended up on the
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wall because these wheels just haven't really been being used so I thought let's utilize these
8:56
because quite frankly they weren't doing anything else it was at this point that I decided let's
9:01
start cabling up so I did the front brake first followed by the rear shifter now eagle eye viewers
9:06
amongst you might have noticed that I've made a bit of a mistake so drop it in the comments if you
9:11
can see what I've done at this point it was then very much a case of just threading the cable
9:16
through the frame popping it through the rear derailleur and I'd already set the limit screws
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so the derailleur was itself in shape it was now just a case of getting the cable tension correct
9:27
one of the few things that I did spend money on was a brand new 11 speed chain of course you don't
9:33
really want to be using secondhand old chains but that also meant that I had to measure the chain
9:38
as well now I tend to go for the method of getting the chain on both of the biggest sprockets and
9:44
then adding three links I've always found that that's worked for me and in this case it worked
9:49
once again I then pop the quick link in and then I just needed to snap it into place which is pretty
9:54
easy to do. Next up I just wanted to go through and make sure that everything was kind of aligned
9:59
so I worked on the compression of the stem to make sure that there was no play in the headset and then I worked on the angle of the brake levers Now you will notice that the rear brake has not been cabled up and as any good home mechanic will know you often end up not having
10:15
all of the parts right when you need them so I needed to go and get myself a new rear brake cable
10:20
so I could complete the job on the following day which is why now you can see that the lighting's
10:24
changed and yes I have come back on another day to finish the job once I had all of the parts that
10:30
needed so I got myself a brand new rear inner cable and some outers and then once they were
10:35
all cut to size I then threaded that through the frame and got them all lined up. Now that those
10:42
brakes were cabled up I could go about the job of making sure that the pads were aligned and were
10:46
feeling nice and grippy. Finally I could get towards some of the finishing touches like
10:51
fitting the grips so again use the little bit of isopropyl alcohol just to make them slide on nice
10:56
and easily because again of course that fluid will essentially evaporate off and then they'll
11:01
be on there nice and solid but again viewers can you spot the mistake that I made? So eagle eye
11:09
viewers amongst you will have noticed that I put the shifter on the wrong side of the brake lever
11:15
so what I did is I quickly slid off the grip and then moved the shifter to the other side of the
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brake lever and then everything basically fell into place. So there we have it that is pretty
11:25
much my bin bike to now salvaged hybrid bike i'm really excited to start riding this thing and
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seeing how it performs out on the road i did give it a little spin around the car park and it does
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feel really nippy the stem might be ever so slightly too long for me i think maybe i could
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do with one which is about 10 or 20 mil shorter what this project really allowed me to do was to
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save a lot of the components that i'd kind of have built up and were kicking about there are only a
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few things that I had to buy from you. Those being the headset, the bottom bracket, the chain
11:59
those brake levers and the handlebars. Everything else I either already owned or I was able to get
12:05
for an amazing price from Facebook Marketplace. I think in total I don't think I spent more than
12:10
£100 on this build so I'm really happy with the amount of money that essentially I've been able
12:16
to spend to save this bike. One thing that did really surprise me was just how light the bike
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was despite not using any real high-end components apart from maybe that ultegra rear mech everything
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was pretty basic and the weight of the bike came in at just 7.8 kilos now that has got me thinking
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that actually i could probably save quite a lot of weight off of this build so i'm gonna have a
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little hunt around for some maybe some carbon tubular wheels and perhaps maybe some carbon
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finishing kit if I can find anything for a really good price. To be honest I'm really happy that I've
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been able to create this bike and save this bike and I think it just shows how easy and pretty
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accessible it is to do. Sure you might need a mechanic to help you out with some of the more
13:02
complex jobs like fitting a bottom bracket or a headset but I think a lot of the other things
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especially on these older frames cabling things up it's really easy to learn how to do and there's
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many resources online that allow you to learn how to do these things with some fairly basic tools
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so let me know what you think of this build down in the comments below if you enjoyed the video
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then please do drop it a like subscribe to the channel for more content and i will see you again
13:27
very soon
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#Road Bikes
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