This is probably the most compelling reason to build your bike: it’s just fun.

If you like bikes and love an excuse to mess around with your bike setup, putting your own ride together is as good as it gets. You can do it all in an afternoon if you’re a dab mechanical hand, or really prolong the process and put a component on every day for a week, but either way, it’s a bike geek’s idea of heaven – all those components to play with and nobody to tell you what to do.

And part of the enjoyment is the satisfaction. You start with just a frame and fork then, piece by piece, it morphs into a fully working bicycle (well, that’s the aim anyway). Sure, some of the tasks can be a pain (we’re looking at you, internal cable routing), but ultimately it fulfills that innate desire almost every cyclist has to tinker with the equipment and it feels extremely satisfying.