How to Assemble a Mountain Bike

In this hubpage you will find a description of every step required for assemble a mountain bike from scratch and every thing you will need during that process.

I remembered to make this page when I started to assemble my newest full suspension mountain bike and began to photograph every step of the process.

This guide will help those who are beginning to assemble a mountain bike for the first time but it will also help everyone who need to make some maintenance on their bicycle and never tried to dismantle it and put everything together again in the end. Almost everything on a mountain bike can be easily fixed or changed by any average biker and as you all must know - you will save lots of money doing it by yourself.

The best thing about being able to assemble your own mountain bike is the fact that you can choose every component and in the end you will get your unique dream bike!

Everything on this page and respective chapters is licensed under a Creative Commons License.

Chapter 1 - Assembling the Headset and Suspension Fork;

Chapter 2 - Assembling the Bottom Bracket and Crankset;

Chapter 3 - Assembling the Handlebar and all the Commands;

Chapter 4 - Assembling the Brakes, Front and Rear Gears;

Chapter 5 - Assembling the Seat post and Saddle (soon);

Chapter 6 - Assembling the Wheels and Tires (soon).

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First thing you need to do is choosing your mountain bike frame and you should not forget this is the most important part of your bike. Almost every other parts are going to be replaced sooner or later after some usage but the frame will go on being the same as long as you have made the right choice when you bought it (frame materials, general quality, finishing, size of the frame, etc.).

My choice went to the beautiful Carver frame from the Italian brand MDEbikes. Their frames are handmade by request and you can choose anything from size of the frame to its finishing.

This time I decided to try the polished finishing and as you can see it makes the frame shine like a star but more important it makes the frame much more resistant than any kind of painting.

When you decide to "built" your own mountain bike with all your favorite components you must know it will cost you more than if you bought a complete bike from a bicycle shop. But this way you will have a unique bicycle and most of all your mountain bike will have all those components you like the most (at least if your wallet allows it).

Before deciding which frame or which components to buy you should get some tools to be able to assemble your bicycle properly.

I will start by showing the essential ones and then I will describe other tools which can help you simplify some of your tasks.

The first thing to do is to buy one of those bicycle tools box which bring almost every essencial tools to work on your bike.

In my case I also bought a good set of hex key wrenches because they are needed for almost every part of the bike and the ones which came with the box were not very good.

There are much more bicycle tools that can be used during a mountain bike assembling and which can make the all process much easy.

One of the most important for me it is the foldable aluminum workstation where I can put the frame or the entire bicycle and be able to work on it without having to stay on strange and tiring positions while I am working.

Of course there are many other ways to hold your bike during assembling or maintenance of your bicycle but few give you the stability and safety as a good bicycle repair stand.

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I will show you more bicycle tools during all the assembling steps.

Some of them are very important to facilitate several operations as you will notice later along the process.

Chapter 1 - Assembling the Headset and Suspension Fork;

Chapter 2 - Assembling the Bottom Bracket and Crankset;

Chapter 3 - Assembling the Handlebar and all the Commands;

Chapter 4 - Assembling the Brakes, Front and Rear Gears;

Chapter 5 - Assembling the Seat post and Saddle (soon);

Chapter 6 - Assembling the Wheels and Tires (soon).

If you need some advise or if you have any doubts, please feel free to ask me through the comment box bellow or using the fan mail link on my profile page.

I will try to guide you through the process the best I can and if by any chance I could not help I will forward your questions to a much more experienced bicycle mechanic.

Have fun!