Every project has its start in a weird place. For this one, it was an old, beautiful bell, a completely worn-out silver Sugino XD2 crankset and an old Pelago rear rack, which was replaced few years ago with an Ortlieb quickrack on my primary commuter. The second kicker was a move that, unfortunately, resulted in my grocery store being uncomfortably far. So I set out on a project to acquire a shopping bike and since our shop sells Kona, it just had to be one. My first idea was to acquire an old Kona 26er and convert it to a basket shopper, but then I stumbled upon Kona having a clearance sale on Coco frames, which, for some reason, were never built into complete bikes. I just had to get one of those.
Aside from the three items that I had lying around in my parts bin, I set out to build the bike as cheaply as possible.
I took the old Sugino crankset to a grinder and smoothed out the big chainring to become a makeshift chainguard and put a narrow wide chainring behind that to create a beautiful silver guarded chainset finished with MKS Sylvan Stream pedals from a friend. And this all is mounted to the legendary discontinued Shimano UN55 BB. Out of my parts bin also came an old Lightskin seatpost with integrated rearlights and a once broken Brooks B17 saddle, which I was able to restore. YAY, Brooks for having spare parts! Steering is a mystery silver bar mounted to the Pelago stem garnished with said old beatifull slightly patinated bell.
For the drivetrain, I had to go shopping and chose rugged with Cues' 10-speed system, giving plenty of range for what I need. Brakes were the next item to shop for, and I got some old adjustable Shimano levers from the shop's old stock, combined with a set of trusty Avid BB5 calipers and connected with beefy compressionless Yokozuna housing. And it wouldn't be a shopping bike without the Pelago racks. A new basket in the front and my old Commuter rack in the back, into which I was able to hack with some QL3.1 studs for panniers. And keeping everything clean is a set of SKS bluemels mudguards.
