My Carrera Blast 24 rebuild

Yeah, £70 each for the 24″ mk3 Crest. The mk1 are on sale $43 each (£35) from Stans directly in the US, but want $100 shipping, so £150 for a single pair.

I wonder if the Deviant will go up tubeless… Alienation have new tubeless-certified rims, but they’re also £70 each.

Following with interest.

Have a blast frame sat at home ready for a build and have been trying to figure out wheel options that don’t cost the earth!

gravitysucks: I’m sticking with the stock wheels for now. Means using 7-speed but I’ll keep my eye out for sales or used rims. The tyres that came on my Blast were incredibly heavy.

I’ve got a cyclist cousin in LA, and visit the states a few times a year in a C17, which is not short of boot space…

downshift: buy all the 24″ crests you can and sell them here for a (small) profit!

Between all the moaning about wheels I actually did a little bit of work on the bike. I’m determined to do most of the build with my son so fitting it in means this is taking a while though.

New purple eBay seatclamp is on, stock seatpost with new Madison Y04 saddle. Mech (Sora medium cage) and shifter (Altus 7-speed) are on. The outer I bought was just long enough to be a full outer, routing nicely through the existing cable stops (once drilled out with a 6mm bit) with a 6mm P-clip (metal clip with a rubber sleeve) screwed into the bottom bracket holding it in place. As discussed above I needed a cable tie to hold the cable tight against the downtube.

Front brake (eBay Deore M615, picked because the lever has reach adjust) is on, although the hose “might” need shortening. Discovered that front 160mm PM/IS adaptors are not alike and the Superstar one I have touches the caliper. Luckily I also had a Shimano branded one which is ~1mm thinner in a critical place.

The highlight of the day has to be the cranks finally arriving. Suntour XCT JR-T202, 152mm cranks with 104mm BCD and 9/16th pedal threads. So pretty much short adult cranks. The original big and middle rings attach as expected, with the granny ring riveted to the middle: there’s no mounts for a granny ring. I want to mount a single ring and bash, so this is perfect.

New cranks (rear)

The cranks weighed in at 900g out of the box, 580g with the rings removed. Adding my ring/bash/bolts it weighs in at 700g. Not exactly lightweight but not that bad. All I need are some purple anodised crank bolts…

Deviant will go up tubeless

My kids light 20′ build has Alienation deviants ghetto tubeless.
(DT 240s hubs with 1.8mm competition spokes)

I went ghetto as rim tape wasn’t sufficient to get the Mow Joe to mount tubless due to the baggy and floppy nature of that specific tire.
The double wall rim bed profile however is absolutely fine for rim tape.

So the pedals just arrived, Stolen Thermalite plastic ones in hot purple. They might be a little too big, but more importantly they just don’t seem to be spinning smoothly, it’s like they forgot to grease the bearings. Turn the axle slowly and you can feel it “clicking”.

that’s cause they are shit pedals lol I bought a pair, they didn’t last long.

Ha! I emailed Stolen to see if they can be opened up and greased, if they say no I’ll just return them and find something else.

Nice man at Stolen says yes if you prise off the outer cap then you can just unscrew some nuts and strip the pedals completely. At which point I discover that the inner race is missing about a third of the bearings.

Debating whether to return to CRC for a replacement pair, or get something like the Wellgo KC001 (smaller, lighter, but not purple).

Of course now I’m wondering how much it would cost to custom anodise two pedals…

Gusset Slim Jim’s come in a nice purple.

I’m going to order a set of those 152mm cranks, presumably square taper? Any idea what bb I need to match? Cheers

Yes, square taper. The original BB from my Blast was destroyed in removal and it’s in my LBS’s recycling box, but several posters on page one here said you want 118mm wide.

Someone on Amazon (mega-bikes or something) has the cranks for £18 plus a few quid shipping, but it took almost two weeks to get here. xxcycle.com want a few pounds more but I think would have shipped quicker and were very helpful when I asked to check the chainrings can be removed.

Cheers Ross,all ordered. Our build will start when the 75€ cube frame gets here from bike discount.

Does anyone know if I can swap the 7sp cassette on the blast to an 8sp without changing the rear hub?

My one at least is a 7 speed freehub which are smaller than 8 onwards.

rossburton – Member
My one at least is a 7 speed freehub which are smaller than 8 onwards.

Thanks. Looks like its rear wheel rebuild time and a new hub.

Just finished this

12.3kg
Not telling how much the parts cost, because I don’t want to know!

Very slow building so far. Put the wheels in without cassette or rotors to check saddle height and reach. He just fits so this will last a while.

Should have a good hour of building with the boy tomorrow afternoon so hopefully it will be finished this weekend.

I really like the Spank Grom grips, thin and narrow for little hands, and good colour accents on the lock rings too. Still need to sort out the reach on the brakes obviously.

These anodised skewers were a good find on eBay for £5 the pair. Can’t remember if the skewer should be on the brake side or not though!

Ooh, I like those grips, think I’ll get a pair of those for the lads bike.

They come in a range of colours but the green ones are basically impossible to find in the UK, the distributor is expecting stock next month. bike24.com (German) had some in stock and I was ordering tyres from there anyway so the postage wasn’t too expensive.

What cassette are you putting on that ross? I’m also thinking of sticking with the stock wheels in the short term, but 1×7 doesn’t sound like much of a range of gears for little legs. Can you get a decent spread of cogs at the back?

chainreaction have the grips in black, blue, and red, but out of stock of green at the moment. £9.99.

Wow, totally transformed that frame Ross!

Nice work.

Wonder if this thread will be cached somewhere 20 years from now so you can show your lad the work you went to building up one of his first bikes?! 😀

poopscoop: even if the forum is gone, I’m keeping the photos!

Garry: my cassette is a 12-28 or something, which paired with a 32t chainring and little 24″ wheels shouldn’t be too bad and isn’t unusual for quality single ring kids bikes. SRAM do 12-32 for a bit more range, but my long term plan involves the spare hubs I got from eBay and learning how to build wheels… whether the plan is “next month” or “at some point” depends how the first few rides go.

What cassette are you putting on that ross? I’m also thinking of sticking with the stock wheels in the short term, but 1×7 doesn’t sound like much of a range of gears for little legs. Can you get a decent spread of cogs at the back?

The shimano MF TZ31 cassette (14-34) is the widest you’ll find. Pair it up with either a 30 or 32 tooth chainring depending on how hilly you regularly ride and it’ll be enough. The only downside of this cassette is that your kid may spin out on faster rides, but you don’t need to go single ring at the front if you don’t want to.

Love those grips. Great project build there.

Isn’t 12-32 a bigger range than 14-34?

Yeah 13-32 is better, but I’ve not seen it available for a threaded sprocket (thinking of short term solutions re: Garry_Lager’s post on p.3)
However I’ve just noticed that sunrace do a 13-34 threaded.
Personally as our 24″er is only going to be used by one member of the family, I’m not going to invest much in it, relatively speaking, so the wheels aren’t going to get changed (unless there’s a lotto win or large inheritance in the next few months)

My Blast’s stock freehub has a standard (but narrower) splined cassette holder, so the SRAM 12-32 will just slide on.

My hope is that I would be able to hand the Blast down to my daughter after the son has grown out of it, but at the rate she’s growing I’m worried that I’ll be doing all this again next winter…

Cool, didn’t realise that they had freewheels. I just assumed that they were threaded jobbies.

It’s going to be so much easier when they’re on 26’ers 🙂

Thanks both – that 12-32 looks right.
Might just stick with the triple in any case until I can sort the wheels out properly.

Great build thread and I’m following with interest. I built up a Scott Spark 20 Jr a while back (build thread is on STW if you’re interested and I’ve added a full parts list) so I appreciate the work these labours of love take.

I’m hoping to get more done on my current project this weekend – a 24″ bike.

Another hour before the boy got distracted and wanted to play on his iPad. Not quite the father and son build experience I was hoping for but what can you do.

Anyway, rear brake fully installed and hose shortened (why have I paid for this before, it’s trivial). Cranks on. Still to go: pedals (in the post still), front rotor and hose shortening (need to get more olives and rotor bolts, LBS had ran out), chain. Then done!

Weight so far is around 9.5kg. I’m hoping for less than 10.5kg when it’s finished.

An Islabike Beinn 24 is 9kg, but this should be a better ride on anything that isn’t a smooth road.

The big open question now is how to hold the front brake hose to the fork nicely as the fork doesn’t have its own clamp. A cable tie looks ugly and moves. Can you buy glue on clamps?

I’ve used one of these before.
Holds it on with rubber o rings

These?

http://www.sjscycles.co.uk/cables/mpart-selfadhesive-cable-guides-3m-pack-of-3/

Could also use one on the downtube as well.

Perfect! Went for the o-ring one to avoid gluing stuff to the carbon fork.

15 minutes of very enthusiastic helping by my daughter (age 6, so inheriting my sons bike when this build is done) and we have pedals and a chain. Now revising how to adjust rear mech as I always forget…