The dummy bike has landed!
Finally, the dummy bike is here. I jumped right into disassembly, and everything went smoothly… until I hit the bottom bracket. Turns out, I’ll need some special tools for that job.
So: I ordered a bottom bracket removal tool, a crank puller, and—just in case the old bottom bracket refuses to budge—a dirt-cheap Shimano BB-UN300 crankshaft as backup.
The headset bearings were press-fit, so I knocked them out. Hopefully, I didn’t ruin them, but the good news is: I can now measure them easily and maybe even reuse them on the new build.
The reason I went for a whole Decathlon bike in the first place was that it seemed cheaper than buying all the parts separately. That’s been my gut feeling since day one, but I never crunched the numbers. Next week, I’ll put together a full parts list and do an actual price comparison. Solid data incoming!
In the afternoon, I shifted focus to designing the lugs. Version one is done! Think of it as a rough sketch—a quick raw mockup. The final lugs will look completely different, but for now these prototypes are perfect for frame testing at this stage.