Rebuilding a BSO

Or, “is anyone bored enough to watch me…” etc etc.

My partner’s daughter announced a couple of weeks ago that she was recovering her bike from her dad’s. It’s turned up here and it ticks most of the Neglected BSO Bingo boxes. Unfortunately, I was several post-Sunday lunch drinks in and said “yeah, I can probably do something with that.”

The budget is tending to ‘zero’ and if nothing comes of it I doubt anyone will care aside from my OH glowering at me every time she walks past it. I am however likely to have questions.

The first step I think it to strip off all the things that should move but don’t. Whatever was once what I assume to have been well-meaning grease is now chewing gum. So, disassemble, degrease and refit, right? Except I seem to have run out of the 5L tub of Muc Off degreaser and it doesn’t seem to be available any more.

So, Q1: are all catering packs of degreaser created equal or are there brands I should particularly look for / avoid?

Cheers.

Does the BSO have any sentimental value?
if not buy something sensible 2nd hand

Unfortunately, I was several post-Sunday lunch drinks in and said “yeah, I can probably do something with that.”

That phrase covers a lot of options – one option being to take it to the tip and dispose of it… 😉

Never start repair work on a BSO, you’ll end up in a minefield of stuff that doesn’t work, won’t ever work well and won’t be economical to get working. As soon as you start replacing anything more than brake blocks and cables, you’re looking at more than the value of the bike.

There’s 5L Muc-Off on Amazon, or at least there was last week. For BSO purposes I’d probably save the cash and go No Nonsense, if it’s just about stripping grime.

But as said above, it’s often a world of pain.

Put a market value on your time.  Work out how long you think it’ll take to recover the BSO.  Double it and multiply one by t’other. That’s how much you should spend on an eBay special. 

In answer to the questions thus far,

There’s no expectations here. I offered to do it broadly as a weekend tinkering project. I’m not planning on doing much beyond taking it all to bits, cleaning it up and putting it back together. If I spend £30 on cleaning stuff and lubricants, I’ll be left with £28 of gloop for my own purposes afterwards.

There’s 5L Muc-Off on Amazon

There wasn’t when I looked, maybe just bad timing.

Isn’t there some saying about threads and pictures…. 😉

https://amzn.eu/d/byq0GrW

It’s been on offer as part of the Prime one-day sales before – so might be worth checking during tomorrow’s sale.

Wot crazy-legs sez.

I would avoid stripping it down at all costs. It will be a world of pain to reassemble and get it working again.

5 litres of degreaser from Screwfix for about £12 or just use washing up liquid. Big tube of multipurpose grease is £5.50. Be prepared to find that it’s made of cheese.

A friend bought the cheapest Halfords MTB in lockdown (it was all that was left). Bottom bracket was square taper so in theory bombproof but was knackered from new. Crank to bottom bracket interface wasn’t correct – lots of play even with a new BB so new cranks too. I think rear derailleur was next.

It was a fun project for us in lockdown but it’s probably taken £50 of parts to make it useable.

Sorry –  I’m safely at the age where pictures of bike fettling are more exciting than people!

Isn’t there some saying about threads and pictures…. 😉

Yeah, I’ll take a couple of snaps when it’s daylight.

I would avoid stripping it down at all costs. It will be a world of pain to reassemble and get it working again.

I doubt I could make it worse. 😁

Avoid as in “do it a different way” or “find a skip”?

Don’t do it. You’ll be stripping threads and breaking bits no matter how careful you are. Remember its a BSO, not a bike. You can’t fix that.

I doubt I could make it worse. 😁

I once built a brand new BSO for a friend – one of those ‘£79.99 from the back of a Sunday supplement’ thing. It came in a cardboard box with “some self-assembly required”. Frankly, I’d rather have built a load of IKEA furniture cos this thing was a disaster. Bolts made of cheese that rounded off as soon as you looked at them, nasty screws and nuts holding it all together – not an allen bolt in sight.

It was horrendous.

A used one will be like that ^^ except all the bolts will be made of cheese and covered in a layer of filth.

No way I’d be stripping down a bso as well. Jet wash the bastard and then squirt stuff everywhere to get things moving.

Hateful things always put together with the wrong type of fixings. Or parts that you should be able disassemble but can’t. 

I doubt I could make it worse.

I once fixed the indexing on a BSO, the twist shifter imploded whilst doing it!

As has already been said do not strip it down. Give it a good once over and work out what can be fettled and what can’t or will cost big money and go from there.

I’ve rescued BSO’s with crusty fully seized chains, corroded stanchions, corroded and seized gear and brake cables. Used tin foil on the stanchions, wire wool to clean the cables then greased them, an oil bath while wrestling the chain about to free up the links. All of which has cost relatively little (excluding time) and the bikes have been ridden for years after.

You can free up cables by just releasing the tension at the v brake bridge and pushing a rear mech inward, then pulling the cables out of the stops, slide the outers out of the way to free them up and get some light grease in there! Trueing the wheels and setting the brake blocks closer to rims, along with setting each sides spring tension evenly so the blocks hit the rim at the same time, goes a long way to sharpening up brake performance!

Look out for frayed/damaged/kinked/wrong length cables held down by a few strands and things which have been bent, front mechs chainrings, V brake bridge QRs etc.

So, Q1: are all catering packs of degreaser created equal or are there brands I should particularly look for / avoid?

Petrol. Followed by a lighted match.

Depends what variant of BSO you have, to be honest.
Some on here would probably consider a £500 Carrera to be a BSO.
I had a £200 Apollo mountain bike in the mid to late 90s that was a great bike and fine to work on. But, some of the £80 Tesco specials do look like crap, so adjust time & effort accordingly I guess.

Hang on. There’s a difference between a £79.99 mail order job and basic Halfords. But even then, everything can be repaired and restored one way or another. Give it a go. I have fixed and sweetened up lots of cheap bikes (because they are bikes, ignore the snobs) and they have worked well enough.

Regarding the original question I wouldn’t bother with de greaser, I just use WD40 on a rag or brush, or if something needs a bath I use white spirit in a jam jar.

Just ignore them all

Please do go ahead with your full strip and rebuild of the BSO, posting regular updates, with pictures 😀

There’s an expectation of a molgrips level of detail in the number of pictures too! Though this reduces to one if you follow @thols2 advice.

Get some Elbow Grease from B&M. For the price it’s a great degreaser.

Some on here would probably consider a £500 Carrera to be a BSO.I had a £200 Apollo mountain bike in the mid to late 90s that was a great bike and fine to work on. But, some of the £80 Tesco specials do look like crap, so adjust time & effort accordingly I guess.

Isn’t the definition of a BSO that it has non-serviceable parts? ie stamped chain rings riveted to a crankset running in pressed bearings where the bottom bracket should be or similar?

Kramer

Isn’t the definition of a BSO that it has non-serviceable parts? ie stamped chain rings riveted to a crankset running in pressed bearings where the bottom bracket should be or similar?

Dunno. It just seems to be the moniker given by someone for a bike which falls below what the person using that phrase deems suitable for a given level of ‘bike’.
Going back to my Apollo above – that had chainrings riveted to the crank, but a sq taper BB.
It had a rigid fork, cantilever brakes & quill stem.
A replacement crank was probably cheaper than 1 XT chainring.

crankset running in pressed bearings where the bottom bracket should be or similar?

Like the pressed-in bearings in my carbon Stumpjumper FSR BSO? 😉

I’m not sure what they have, but a common complaint amongst bike mechanics seems to be that they have a lot of parts that aren’t repairable up to and including the frame.

Just ignore them all

Please do go ahead with your full strip and rebuild of the BSO, posting regular updates, with pictures 😀

That’s the first post which has actually made me not want to try.

Hi-tensile steel frame, or scaffolding tube thickness alloy. Pressed steel (or nowadays plastic) components. Galvanized spokes. Quill stem. Weighs as much as a downhill bike from 1998. Propensity for everything to corrode.

I once had the “joy” of assembling a catalog full-suss BSO for a customer one Christmas Eve. The frame alignment was out, both wheel bearings needed adjustment, the chainrings were bent, plastic brake levers that pulled back to the bars and it took a while to get it all to work. Last job was to remove from workstand, drop and reduce the seatpost – at which point the seatpost clamp bolt snapped. It was 7mm diameter – I eventually found something suitable from a shop fitting after much furious rummaging. The same bike after 10 years of neglect – no thanks.

a common complaint amongst bike mechanics seems to be that they have a lot of parts that aren’t repairable

So does my bike.

I mean yes, non replaceable chainrings – but you can replace the whole crank for less than the price of a chainring on mine.

at which point the seatpost clamp bolt snapped

That happened to me on a Hope one, ok so it was mid 90s. This stuff may not be durable, but the bike is almost certainly able to be restored to its original condition. And let’s not kid ourselves. Corroded spokes? My Mavic Aksium spokes have corroded too and I had to re-nipple an entire Bontrager front wheel. I’m sure they were older than this BSO at the time it needed doing but it still needed doing.

I think what people are missing here is that it’s for his daughter. Different rules apply for ‘love’ jobs.

Give it a go.

A bike’s a bike. Getting one back to a usable state is a good thing. Get on with it!

(and yes, pics please!)

I’m in camp ‘car shampoo and WD40’ – as long as the chain doesn’t snap and as long as the front brake works it will be good enough to go

Here you go.

Cat included for scale as I didn’t have a banana.

Looks just like a 90s DH bike. Cool.

There has to be a magazine article in this… 😂

Or some kind of bet as to how much really top end kit you can put on it. Carbon wheels, XTR mech… Really go to town on it.

Some idea of current weight would be interesting too. I’m going with “medium sized asteroid”. Any other bets?

I’m particularly impressed with the “2X suspension.” That’s like twice as good, right?

That’ll clean up fine.

Add bar-end plugs to your shopping list!

That’ll clean up fine with a bit of effort. The only points that could make it unviable would be a seized fork or a knackered pushing on the swingarm pivot, the rest is standard cheap bike fare. That’s a mile away from some of the BSO’s that really are unfixable.

I had a mate who ordered one from a catalogue and asked me to assemble it for him, it was impossible to get it working as the brake and gear cable bosses had been welded to the frame 30 degrees out of whack! It had exposed cables along the top tube but the friction from the misaligned bosses meant neither worked and the only way to fix it would be to cut the frame. A work colleague bought one from Amazon and it was made with such terrible metal that the front hub’s disc mount sheared off the first time he went to stop at a traffic lights. Unbelievably lethal, especially as the disc brake didn’t even produce much power in the first place.

Or some kind of bet as to how much really top end kit you can put on it. Carbon wheels, XTR mech… Really go to town on it.

There was a reader’s bike featured in MBUK once where he had taken a really cheap Raleigh FS bike and fitted it with top tier Fox fork and shock, XT drivetrain, Magura brakes (front disc, rear hydro rims) and some very bling wheels. I know it started life as a Raleigh Vulture as (for my sins…) I used to sell them!