Today was build day. Combination of heatgun and scalpel and a bearing press dealt with extracting the painted-over bearings in all but one of the pivots. It was a long, laborious process which the mechanic didn't enjoy, and it should not have been necessary but for the carelessness of the painters Carbonda used.
Unfortunately we couldn't extract the double bearings in the middle linkage. As there are two on each side I suspect it's not easy at the best of times, but per the photos, there was a large amount of clearcoat penetration of the bearing recess (worse than all the others) and they're completely stuck fast. There's no way to remove them without using force sufficient to destroy the linkage.
As such I emailed Carbonda requesting a new, painted middle linkage and bearings, to replace the current one when the bearings fail - which I can't imagine will take more than a season as we have fine dust like icing sugar here.
Aside from all the time spent on that, things were relatively trouble free until it was brakes time.
Titanium planet magura bleed screws refused to seal the caliper, despite looking identical to stock ones. Took ages to diagnose what the issue was as they weren't leaking visibly initially but all pressure was gone. Then we discovered Hope floating rotor attachment points don't clear magura MT 2pot rear calipers. Going to have to swap the XTR one from gravel bike in. Also forgot I needed a PM 160->180 adapter for the Manitou R7 Pro, which fortunately the LBS had.
Both the mechanic and I felt the Acros headset bearings were significantly worse quality than the ones provided by Carbonda. Also the IP seal that Acros provide to go between the bottom of the headtube and bearing results in play and won't work. Crown race they provide is also not split and won't work on the R7 Pro, or I suspect many other forks. So we used the original Carbonda bottom bearing and crown race, and the Acros upper bearing, cable routing insert and headset cover that I needed for integrated cabling with the Syncros Fraser bar.
Hopefully finishing it off tomorrow.
