The assembly of our bikes was a real adventure!

Once the bicycle frames finished, we had to paint it. After having called several car painting workshops, we just got some very high price. Finally, we chose the Epoxy painting (painting in powder). This one is stronger than usual paintings. Furthermore, we got a very good price of 70 € per bike instead of the 200 € quoted by the others workshops.

Thus, we brought the bike frames to Malmedy Sablage workshop in committing the mistake to not protect the inner surface of the tubes. As a result, the inner tube for the saddle tube and the crankset were full of painting. At this moment, the hard time was starting: we had to clean as well as to file some parts of the tubes or the parts would not fit in the tubes. We thank a lot Jean-Philippe and Ulrich for their help.

Julien and Jean-Philippe in action to remove the excess material .

After these bad adventures, we started to assemble the bike parts with the Ravito team.

First, we placed the crankset and the XT components. We chose a Shimano XT set ( gears, hub, brakes) . It is the Shimano range just under the best range : XTR . You are maybe asking yourself: Why did not they choose the best range for a long trip like that?

For the reason that we can find the XT range everywhere in the world. Another advantage is that lowest range can fit temporarily on the XT. Furthermore, The XT is a very good quality range which will fit perfectly with our needs .

Then, we placed the stem, the handlebars, the gears and the brakes but… Of course, there was again a problem, the front fork was too long.

Laurent and Julien, placing the V-brakes.

Let’s go for the wheels. Le Ravito built some custom made wheels. We needed something strong : some wheels of 26 inches able to carry an important load on. Thus, we chose the « RHYNO LITE XL Wheel rims with 36 spokes « DT Swiss Champion » ( a travelling bike has usually 32 spokes, but more spokes there are , stronger are your wheels) . In regards to the tire, we will cycle with the « Marathon + ». These tires are strengthened in the goal to avoid the flats. Of course, if we cycle on a screw, we will have to repair it.

Jean Philippe is adjusting the spokes and the wheels. A real work of expert !

It starts to look more and more to a bike.

When all the parts were assembled, we had to place the luggage racks. But, we noticed that the holes for the screw were missing on the bikes. We had to go back to Cycle Deroy to fix the problem. What a bad news when he announced us that he had to weld again on the bike frame

Finally, it was not so tragic, we painted again the damaged spaces with a paint spray, and it looks like before !

The adventure was not finished yet ; we had to place the racks. Due to an excess of painting inside the fasteners, we broke several screws before succeeding to screw the racks strongly

The final result with the 100% waterproof bike bags Ortlieb.

On a cycling trek with our solid bikes