Well, recently I have finally stopped putting it off and went and bought the cruzbike kit and the 700c Kent GMC Denali bike. If you haven’t read my previous post about the cruzbike conversion kit and my idea for using this bike you can check it out here.

Things have gone rather smoothly as far as the conversion goes. I have to say that the instructions that came with the kit were definitely not user friendly, so that was slightly frustrating at times trying to figure out how certain parts went together, especially the fork brackets that came with the kit.

But thanks to some helpful posts at the cruzbike forum I was able to eventually figure it out.

I also ran into trouble getting certain parts off the bike, like the bottom bracket for example. The thing just wouldn’t budge no matter hard I tried. So before I totally stripped the thing beyond repair I made my way over to the local community bike shop in my home town, krank it up. With their help, expertise, and bike specific tools I was able to get almost everything put together in just one day. They are really helpful, so if you are ever in need of some bicycle repairs and want to get it fixed for a small donation while learning how to do it yourself for future reference, this is the place to go. All communities should have a place like this.

So here is what it looks like so far. The seat height is 24 inches at its lowest point and 28.5 inches at its highest. This is about two inches higher than I had wanted but its low enough for me to comfortably put my feet on the ground when I am sitting on it.

Here is a list of things that I still need to do:

1. Purchase a 1 1/8″ threadless road stem. I tried to make the threaded stem work with the conversion kit with the use of a shim but the stem still rotates a little when I try to pedal, so I will have to scrap that idea and just go with a threadless stem.

2. Purchase a new front brake since I lost the brake cable clamp screw and apparently its some weird unknown and unavailable size, therefore requiring me to purchase an entirely new brake assembly. Fantastic!

3. Purchase a new front derailleur and rewire shifters. The front derailleur that came with the bike was a bottom pull type and the conversion kit uses a top pull derailleur. This should only put me back a few dollars so its not that big of a deal.

4. Remove decals and paint. I dont know about you but I’m not really a fan of peacock blue. Right now I’m probably just going to buy a can of black spray paint and go over the whole thing. You can’t go wrong with black (unless I ride a lot at night, which in that case it could be bad).

5. Ride!

Look for new posts for updates on my progress.

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