Building a bike

Bungle79

I'm after a new bike, preferably with lots of carbon fibre bits, and am thinking of a TT bike.
Having looked at too many bikes to mention and picking fault with most of the them (usually about colour) I started mulling over building my own.
I don't have a bottomless pit of cash and would look for bargains wherever I could find them. I am reasonably competent with bikes and have my own tool kit and everything, so am after stories and pictures of successful bike builds and good places to look for components to inspire me, and convince the long haired general it won't cost the earth or take me forever to do!

Ta.
Bungle

Zacnici

Perversly it seems to be cheaper to buy a bike than build one up. PX have the Stealth with Rival at £999, and with SRAM Red or Ultegra at £1099 and there is also scope for choosing a frame colour. You can always get the bike custom painted if you are of mind to be completely individual.

The advantage of a build though is that you get exactly what you want and if going self build there are two options I would say:
1. The frame, BB, chain, cables etc should definitely be new, everything else can be had off ebay or the Wanted/For Sale postings here.
2. Get a bargain bike with the compnents you want, swap them to the frame you want and sell the spare frame.

My first Tri bike was a Focus Izalco and was very well specced for the price and when totted up I would have spent the same on the components as the bike price so effectively the frame and assembly was free. When I built up my new bike I simply transferred the components (except for a new chain, cables, BB and bling wheels) to my new frame; all up about £2,500 but spread over 3 years of use and two bikes, hey sounds like a bargain. I still have the old frame, wheels and BB which I decided to keep and am building it up with ebay bargains as a training bike.

Or buy Coneheads bike.

Good luck.