1998 Hardrock Singlespeed

The next chapter in my budget bedroom build odyssey features this 1998 Hardrock in Warm Silver. Sticking with 98 as I love this era of graphics and it was a cheap starting point.

I'm thinking singlespeed pub bike this time, haven't ridden ss for a while and it'll make for good exercise as I don't like to quit and walk up hills.

Picture from the listing:

Re: 1998 Hardrock

Got it home, and like a true gent stripped it bare*. I'll leave the metaphor there as it starts to get kinda weird when you factor in all the rust that fell out of the bb shell.

*except for the headset cups, I'm awaiting a tool for that.



All I'm keeping is the seat QR. Not a fan of quill stems so the forks have to go (shame as they match), can't reuse the crankset as the rings are riveted on, and want to put V brakes on.

Props to whoever had this bike before me, everything had been well lubricated and nothing was difficult to remove (unlike my other '98 Specialized whose bb is welded in as far as I can tell).

Picked up a set of Judy Cs on the way home which had just been serviced. They look pretty neat to me. I couldn't find any decals online to replace the damaged ones with, I guess they're not particularly desirable forks. Oh well. They'll be fine. I'm not a huge fan of red but at least it'll compliment the red on the frame.

Looks like you have everything for a good build -- looking forward to seeing how it goes.

You should easily be able to pop those headset cups out with a piece of pvc pipe and a hammer.

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I do like a Hardrock, 1998 a good year too. Frame looks in good shape, it should be a more straightforward build being Singlespeed

And so it begins - the constant checking of the mail for little packages of joy. Today's offering:

The postal gods were kind to me today...





It's going to end up looking rather strange, I can already tell.

And yet more parts. Eagle-eyed viewers may notice that I now have two chainrings and sprockets. I'm going to try both 31/13 and 34/14 combinations, hopefully one of them is a magic gear for this frame, I used the FixMeUp! calculator which suggested these combos. Fingers crossed.



The brushes are primarily for cleaning out the bb threads which are pretty rough. The old bb came out with minimal effort so the threads are fine I believe.

A little progress, still waiting on a load of things but this made me happy. Always nice to see it's progressing in the right direction:



Uno - singlespeed - gettit? It's a nice detail, entirely unplanned.

That's the first bb I've ever installed. The threads were in a pretty bad way, lots of rust in the shell. I gave them as good a clean as possible but it was still tough getting the bb in. It's in now, and all spins nicely.

More parts have arrived, and I swapped out the white V12s for chrome ones. I decided that although I was trying to do this as cheap as possible, I would also like for it to look good. With that in mind, the red Judy Cs are gone, and some black 2003 Bomber EXRs are on the way.