Rewind to early this year. After being completely fed up with the piece of crap that is my first bike ever - a USD$150 26" Walmart bike, I decided to get something a little bit more pro. I had a mindful budget and headed over to the cycle shop. Well, they politely informed me that there was no chance I was going to get a bike from them until about winter - something about a bike shortage in the US? Hmm, ok... let me find another option.

That's when I was introduced to the world of Chinese carbon frames and bikes. Lots of reading and research led me to believe this was probably my best chance of getting a bike this year. I contemplating assembling my own, but figured that would require tools and skills I don't possess, so I opted for a pre assembled route.

Again, more research and reading led me to the decision to pick up the Dengfu M08 assembled bike (29er "Standard" level), as shown here: https://www.dengfubike.com/collections/carbon-mountain-bikes/products/m08

I direct your attention to the part that reads

The bike is pre-assembled but wheels will be discharged in another carton, totally 2 cartons.

Cool, that's fine. First box arrives, the wheels, exciting. I open the box to ensure there is no damage, looks good. Except, wait... there is no brakes, no cassette installed. The hubs are there, and the tires mounted, and I believe tubes inside even, but that's it.

Arrive the 2nd box. Again, no damage, but...



Well crap. I expected pre-assembled to mean something else. I suppose the frame is pre-assembled, yeah? Having no idea where to go from here, I start watching youtube videos. SRAM has quite the youtube selection, which is good considering most of the equipment here is SRAM stuff. Basically I binged bike assembly videos for the rest of the night.

Confident in my skills, I went about assembling this thing. I got good use out of my torque wrenches and torx and hex sockets. I enjoyed making a tool to press in the SRAM DUB bb, as well as a clever way to press in the tapered headstock. I trimmed my fork with a pipe cutting tool, that worked well. The headstock had a split ring for the tapered fork, and it used an expanding nut for the fork cap instead of a start nut, so no special tools needed for those items.

I only had to make one trip to the bike shop - pick up a SRAM front caliper spacer for 180mm rotors - something Dengfu did not include. I also grabbed a cassette wrench adapter, chain breaker, a bike stand, shock pump, tire pump, grease and carbon gripper, and a SRAM brake bleed kit - something that my research told me I'd need if I was shortening my brake cable. I also picked up a new dropper post lever, the one that came with the Zoom dropper seat was of really poor quality.

A couple of issues I ran into: I needed to break out the Dremel and grind down the screws that held in the internal cable routing guides - they were too long and rubbed against the fork when it was fully installed. Also, I needed to drill out one of the guides to accept the dropper post cable, the hole was a bit too small.

But, never even having worked on a bike before, I managed to fully assemble this selection of parts:



Now, I have to figure out how to tune it, and then see if it falls apart on the first trail I ride.