Merida Build up & Virgin Ride

Now the bike is painted by Carbon Herstel (Recovery) it is time to start pimping the rest of the bike. As my current Bontragerwheels are white/red, which were perfect on my Trek 2.5 bike.

I wanted something different but not spending many euros on new wheels. So I checked if it was possible to remove the stickers. So I started with the front wheel and managed to remove first part of the sticker and next all of the stickers. The result looked pretty promising….

So after the front wheel was done I compared the result with the rear wheel. It was the result I was looking for so also the rear wheel had to be done now. 

I think they are now very clean and would fit perfectly the newly painted Merida styled by Carbon Herstel (Recovery). Time to order some new tires and other parts, as they would not match the new paint job. My grey camouflage bar tape, white external cable housing and the red Schwalbe tires new to be replaced:

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So I did my Google searches and found some pretty new matching stuff at Mantel.com. The reason I went to Mantel is that they have good prices and very fast delivery. So the following items for the new build up where ordered:

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Of course I already picked up my two new bottle cages at the Italian Cycle Experience shop earlier this month to give the bike the finishing touch it needs. 

With the new tires and parts the building can start. With 2 boxes, one filled with the parts from the Merida I took off and the other filled with the new stuff, montage standard, tool set, cleaning products from TUNAP Sports and montage & ball bearing paste from Airolube my living room looked like a toolshed for a couple of weeks. See the picture below:

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The Airolube products are very practical as they come with several tops to use it. It also is much easier than normal products as you can kind of spray it instead of using your fingers to apply it, which makes the proces cleaner. The ball bearing paste is red and the montage paste is white so there is no way you can make the mistake of using the wrong paste 😉

The TUNAP Sports products are very effective with cleaning all parts which we covered with chain grease. You spray it on and it almost immediately drips off. I have to say honestly to all other products I used before didn’t give the same clean result.

After all was montaged and cleaned this is the final result:

The bike was ready for its virgin ride, I took my normal route along the Rotte and I have to day the bike rides pretty amazing again. Although the difference with my Wilier is quiet big I am pretty sure this bike will be used more often then last year.

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During my ride is also used my Aeropax Aftershokz for the first time, read more about them here.