You are currently browsing the category archive for the 'Bike parts' category.
Photographed on arrival at our home. It can only get better.
Hopefully this will soon be a beautiful bicycle for Beautiful wife. Eventually. We found it in a cellar where it’s languished for at least 12 years, unwanted and gradually gathering dust . It’s a bit of a wreck a complete wreck. It’ll be a while before we can even make it ridable. A few months ago I wouldn’t have looked twice, but talking with people here and reading things like the old bike blog have got me interested in having a go at a full bike makeover.
Those brakes will have to go. It needs dusting too...
And this will be a full makeover: the gears are shot, the bottom bracket is a mess , a complete crank is missing and the tyres are shredded, but it’s still what I’ve been looking for since I started the blog: a steel small framed bike with metal mudguards, a luggage rack, and most importantly, 26″ wheels. And it was free.
Ghastly colour scheme and remains of Bottom Bracket
Beautiful Wife has laid down one condition: I can do whatever I want with the components to make it ridable, but it needs to be a different colour. First. Before anything else. I’m in full agreement as I think the current scheme could frighten horses. She wants a dark coffee brown, matt. A friend has access to a paint shop and I’m waiting for him to cost some paint.
Front end with odd handlebars.
So that looks like my winter project. I’m no expert though so I’m open to suggestions and ideas: What would other people suggest I look out for? What would be a good place to start on the renovation? And what suggestions would other people have for replacement parts?
All suggestions gratefully received…
Many thanks to those who answered the questions in the last post: I’ll be working on the Xtracycle (and post how I do) as soon as I can, but that annoying thing called work is encroaching on reality again. It’s a bummer, but there you are. I’m also enjoying getting out on the bike(s) as we’re having a beautiful November right now, and I’ve a couple of other bike-related projects that I’ll tell you about when I have time to write about them.
And my birthday prresent was delivered yesterday…
Mwahahaa…
‘Could you fix my bike?’ is becoming a more common question these days, and the latest request was a rebuild of two old well used bikes, which the owner wanted rebuilding into a decent commuter, preferably as cheaply as possible. This would be a challenge: one of the bikes was okay, if in need of urgent repairs, while the other was an unambiguously awful supermarket special with full suspension, shoddy components and a frame made of scaffolding.
First thing we did was take off any usable components from the suspension bike. This didn’t take long. Almost everything was either worn out or such poor quality it was unusable. The shifters turned out to be pretty good, which was fortunate as the front shifter was broken on the other bike. Andi also took the rear forks to some dark corner while muttering about a wheel jig. We then took everything off the other bike, repacked bearings, and swapped the shifter. It was all looking so easy, but then we found the cable to the front mech was 5mm too short, and this being a grip shift it took a lot of muttering to thread a new cable in.
German law states that a bike must have dynamo lights, so we (ie. Andi) somehow put together a system from the pile of bits that was once the supermarket special, and built a whole new bracket to fit them onto the MTB frame.
A new commuter, for the princely sum of €6.
From ‘Twas on a Monday morning” on the Autocyclus blog:
“I am man: hear me roar (oh, all right then, I am bloke: hear me drone on about spanners). “
If I’m looking pleased with myself this morning it’s because I’ve managed to fix a front Mech for the first time ever, and fix it so that it changed gear when I tell it to, into the gear I told it to. This on a very aged, wobbly, and soon to be replaced Altus mech that’s suffered goodness knows how much abuse over the last 11 years. I’m amazed the poor thing works at all.
This little saga began when the mech suddenly stopped shifting onto the big ring. On closer inspection this was because the cable had shredded (goodness knows how) and had gone relatively slack: instead of pulling into the big ring when I pushed the lever, it was taking some coaxing to reach the middle.
As I’ve said before, I’m not the worlds greatest bike mechanic. However I’ve also said I want to learn, and I couldn’t face admitting to both my readers that I’d chickened out and got the shop to fix the bike yet again. so I nervously took pliers and hexagonal key to the mech, and after much muttering and fiddling, totally over-tensioned the whole thing. Now I couldn’t change any gears: it was jammed in first.
More muttering and a bit less tension (on the bike), and success: the thing changed gear. More than that, after some fiddling with those little screw wossnames on the top, it did it accurately without the clicking I’d confidently expected to drive me slowly potty until I gave up and took it to a bike shop to be fixed properly. I took it on a test ride- silence, and pretty responsive gear changes.
I am bloke, hear me drone on about gear cables…
Family transport step 1.
The boys favourite Christmas present was this pair of swept handlebars with cork grips on the end which I mounted on the Xtracycle. It’s a good job as it was probably the biggest present they got (the box was over a metre high). As eagle eyed readers will have already noticed, this was on the Xtracycle before Christmas day, but I’ve always been a bit bad at dates and anyway I had to put it in when I had workshop time. It’s getting lots of comment, not least from three lads who paused their football game to shout “Geil” (“Cool!”) as we passed, which made Eldest Son very happy.
The bar was from Ebay, cut down by 60mm each side (because otherwise the boys would have been spreadeagled like a driver of an extreme Harley) I fitted it using a standard 120mm mountain bike aheadset stem: thanks to David Hembrow for advising that this could work without a tandem-styled Stoker Bar. All the boys think this is the most awesome idea to hit transportation since… well, anything really, and every time I put a coat on a have a small shadow starts asking if I’m going somewhere by Xtracycle and if I’m open to passengers. Its a bit slower with a small person on the back, but who cares? it’s Daddy Time.
I also changed the front handlebar grips for a cork pair, just because the bike looked nice with matching grips. What’s happening to me? I think I’ve been reading Copenhagenize too long…
Winter approaches, which means dark days and wet roads. We’ll see about snow: it’s been pretty minimal in the last few years. The dark is no problem -I’ve got headlights powerful enough to illuminate passing aircraft- but the damp surface is putting me off. Wet roads mean mudguards if I’m not going to damage the plywood deck on the Xtracycle.
I don’t like mudguards. When I first got the M-trax a decade ago, I fitted a pair of plastic ones and got halfway home before the front one fell on the road. Of course, it did this in the dark, in the middle of nowhere. The ’securing bolt’ disappeared under a bush and is probably still there. I fixed the mudguard the next day, using two bolts this time: it fell onto the road again. When the back one went the same way I replaced it with a Crud Catcher which handled everything I threw at it until last month. Then I discovered there was no way it would fit under the wooden deck that comes with the Xtracycle.
I suppose I could just leave it, but spraying plywood with water can’t be good for it. I’ve got a carpenter friend who I could probably persuade to sand and re varnish it if I ask nicely, but prevention is better than cure- and I’m working on him for a pair of footrests anyway. So yesterday I tried calling a couple of shops and looked online for some decent traditional mudguards, preferably without the self-destruct feature. It took all of yesterday morning to find some that would fit on my bike but eventually I tracked down a pair that claim to be solid and which have a pretty good reputation in cycling circles. Hopefully these will prove me wrong and stay on the bike. I’ll believe it when I see it.
Yesterday I went out on a couple of errands. No big deal, probably less then a couple of K’s. Suddenly I was hearing this “Thunk… thunk” sound coming from under the Xtracycle: quiet but persistent, the sort of thing that could mean nothing or could be the prelude to the wheel dropping off. At the next stop I did a quick check of the back end. I guessed part of the Xtracycle was getting get friendly with the wheel, or the brake was catching, but the Xtra was miles away from the wheel and turning the wheel slowly didn’t bring anything odd. I turned the pedals: nothing.
I got back on, rode uphill to the main road, down into the traffic, and suddenly there it was again. At speed it sounded louder and harsher, but only when I coasted: pedaling stopped it. Something on the freewheel then.
Now I had a choice: do it myself or go to the shop? I need the bike next week, and I’ll need to organise workshop time to fix it myself, which probably won’t work until Tuesday at the earliest. I decided I need to be riding, not fixing, and took it to the shop. I’ll pick it up on Monday.
Well, it was raining all day today anyway.
