Gut Check

Before: My bike was oh-so-sleek.

It seems my heavy hoisting ways have caught up with me, in the form of a pair of inguinal hernias. This has been far more disconcerting than painful, as I find the notion of torn muscle and rogue bits of intestine conceptually bothersome. Fortunately, said breaches are small as these things go, and I have managed to go about my business and ride my bike as usual for the most part without making things worse. In the wearier/achier moments, I've taken to sitting as bolt upright as possible, maintaining tenuous contact with the aft end of my handgrips with my fingertips. This is not the best arrangement, control-wise, so I purchased a stem raiser.

With a few minutes' labor, the part was installed and the bars had reached new heights of both altitude and dorkiness. The “Delta” brand name on the extension has a cool factor more in line with the eponymous bathroom faucets than jetliners or the home of Mississippi blues. The silver linings are: 1) the looping cable routing I had previously done to accommodate the Yuba's front rack meant the cables were plenty long as-is, and 2) said rack's vertical capacity just increased by a few more inches.

Tomorrow, I go under the knife, or laparoscope, more accurately. It's fairly routine, as surgeries go, and I should be just fine, if a bit sore for the first few days. I will be able to wrench on bikes sooner than I can resume riding them (reportedly in the 2-3 week range), so I hope to get caught up on a few project bikes, including something substantially lighter than the Yuba for my first days back in the saddle. I'm waiting on a few more parts for the oddest of these, which will combine elements of obsolete English utility with recumbent part oddity, old school BMX toughness and a dash of modern road bike. I'll fill you in on that soon enough. Read more!

Ten Speed the Plow

The Bread Cycle Works project will be having their inaugural event tomorrow, Saturday, March 27 (rain date Sunday, 3/28) from 10:00 AM to 3:00 PM at their site across from 1055 Broad Street.

Ted Efremoff, artist-in-residence at The Workshops @ Billings Forge gave me a quick synopsis yesterday at the farmers' market.

Ted and fellow artists Emcee CM, Alexander Hill, James Holland and Rebecca Parker plan on doing every step of the bread-making process using human power and recycled objects. They are developing bike-based equipment for plowing and threshing the wheat. They seek to educate, engage and share this experience with the residents of the Frog Hollow neighborhood and beyond. For more info email tefremoff ("at") hotmail.com. Read more!

Crank Cull

Today, I present to you one of my least favorite bike components ever: The welded-together triple crankset.


I hate these for a couple of reasons: For one thing, they are heavy. For another, welding three chainrings permanently together prevents you from changing any individual chainring due to wear or personal preference. When one sprocket wears out, the whole assembly is effectively junk. The resulting junk is not easily recyclable in that it is mixed metal assembly, a hunk of steel-contaminated aluminum that is unwelcome at the scrap metal yard. I hate waste, and it bothers me that things are made to be so disposable, so I thought I'd see what I could do to repurpose and reuse one.

The subject of this experiment is a mid-90's Shimano Altus 38-32-24 from a Trek hybrid. It shows wear, but the 38-tooth sprocket still has some service life left. If only it could be freed from the albatrosses of its conjoined brethren, it would be a good fit for my current winter beater bike project.

I started by clamping the crank to a table. The fact that the pedal was still attached actually made it easier to secure it, so I'll pretend that I planned that. Next, I took a cutoff wheel to the 24-tooth sprocket, slicing it away close to its center.

I then tried to drill out the spot welds that held the 32-tooth sprocket to the biggest one, but didn't like how that was going. After accidentally drilling completely through the 38-tooth ring, I went back to the table and cut and ground it away with the cutoff wheel.

I ended up making five cuts and then breaking each fifth off with a big pair of pliers. An angle grinder would have been nice for the latter stages, but I didn't have one handy at the time. I made do with the cutoff wheel and cleaned up the sharp edges with a hand file.


I cleaned and sanded the remaining 38-tooth chainwheel, masked off the aluminum crank and primed and painted the freshly -exposed steel. I painted it blue because there was some blue Krylon handy. Whatever the color, a protective layer of paint was a must, given the corrosive salt bath it will endure on a cheap winter beater.


If I owned a drill press and had nice drill bits, I might have been tempted to drill a bunch of holes in it for some retro component-lightening flair, but I there is only so much time I'm willing to spend on this particular component. It's noticeably lighter as it is. This took about an hour from start to finish. I trial fit it to the bike, and it looks pretty good. Other than needing to swap the bottom bracket spindle for a narrower one (for a better chainline), I'm happy with the outcome of this experiment. The end result is that this part will be used again, which was the goal.


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Shifts

So, with rare mechanical skill, I installed some Deore XT Dual Control lever/shifters on my Stumpjumper and ran new cables. I didn't think I could do it, because I can't do much, and there were some hiccups along the way, but it's done and working. However, I'm not so sure I like these levers. Using the brake lever to shift on a mountain bike? I dunno... Maybe I should have put those thumbshifters on instead.


Anyway, on to the weather that's been occuring. I'm not sure what all this snow is going to do, so Eel #4 might have to be truncated or something. Stay tuned.


This isn't really the best blog post ever. Sorry.

Update: here's some truncating. Read more!

I Heart Wrenching

I have been wrenching on a lot of vehicles lately. A few good friends of mine have had parts fail or wear out on their bikes and cars in the past two weeks, and it seems I have assumed the role of fleet manager/transportation coordinator. For the most part, the bike repairs are the more pleasant to deal with, though with both bikes and cars, a good repair stand (or lift) improves the experience exponentially. At the moment, I have no such stand, so my back is getting sore. If Park Tool or Pedro's would like to send me a repair stand for testing or review, I'll be sure to keep Beat Bike Blog readers well informed about my experience with it.

One recent ongoing project sort of bridges the two worlds: getting a car back up to snuff so that it can be sold for good. The owner is going carless, and will be depending on a pair of older bikes or public transit for transportation. Giving up a reliable Honda for a beater mountain bike and an early 60's 3-speed is a bold move, and one that I applaud. Many or most would consider it crazy, but it makes a lot of sense. The car gets driven rarely and consequently sits around taking up space, insurance payments and property taxes. Who needs it? I removed the starter from her car a few nights ago and pedaled home with that ungainly hunk of metal drooping in my pannier. I switched to a milk crate before heading off to the auto parts store to get a rebuilt one. That looked so ghetto. The guys at Napa were not amused.

My favorite mechanic of any sort is a man named Mike. He ran a Volvo repair shop in rough part of Paterson, New Jersey that appeared abandoned save for the open door and the sound of classical music and gruff obscenities coming from within. Mike was a mad scientist of sorts, crafting bizarre hopped-up hot-rodded 70's and 80's Volvos that looked like crap and blew the doors off of unsuspecting BMWs and Mustangs. He was semi-retired, spending a lot of time on his own projects while picking and choosing customers to actually do repair work for. He was intimidating, spouting engineering terms and army stories peppered with cuss words and vulgarities. He chain-smoked and pounded countless cups of black coffee from the nearby White Castle (I quickly learned there was no better public relations move than showing up with a fresh cup). The shop restroom was like "The worst toilet in Scotland" scene in Trainspotting. Mike did not suffer fools gladly, and his high standard for what constituted a fool meant that he was pretty easy to piss off. I'm still not entirely sure how, but I managed to get on his good side.

I showed up at his shop one day a dozen or so years ago seeking help with my 1979 245 wagon, which had inconveniently developed a cracked cylinder head at the same time my bank account had developed a very low balance. Never one to sugar-coat things, Mike explained that I had navigated my way far up the proverbial fecal creek. After a few moments of contemplation, Mike asked me if I thought I could change a cylinder head. When I replied that I was willing to learn he sold me a rebuilt cylinder head and all of the needed parts to replace the old one at a discount. He handed me a large, greasy cardboard box full of parts and said, "Take it apart, put it back together, call me if you have any questions." It took me a little while and I called him more than twice for advice, but I learned how to change a cylinder head. This was a pivotal event in my relationship with machines.

Mike is my favorite mechanic because he has never repaired anything for me. He saw that I was in a bad spot and turned that into a teaching moment, and for that I remain grateful . This concept is by no means limited to aging station wagons. We can all get more involved in keeping our own bikes and other devices working as they should. Flat tires, broken chains and other failures don't have to mean a long, forlorn walk home. Our bikes give us greater freedom of movement. They free us from big oil and other ugly institutions every time we choose them over a car to get around. Learning to maintain and repair them is another layer, notch, level or what-have-you of independence. Obviously, not everyone needs to be a master mechanic. You may not really want to work on your bike at all, and that's perfectly fine, if it's not your bag. You don't need to embrace the tinkering aspect of bicycling to enjoy it. That said, it IS worth learning to fix a flat tire at the very least, and know how to handle a few emergency repairs so you don't find yourself stranded. Knowing how to repair things out in the field is like CPR or the Heimlich Maneuver. You hope you'll never need those skills, but you'll be damn glad you learned them if you do.


The Hartford Public Library has a few bike repair manuals in its collection. Some are up-to-date, some of them date from the 70's or 80's which suits me fine, as many of the bikes I like and come across date from that era. "Richards' Bicycle Repair Manual" and Tom Cuthbertson's "Anybody's Bike Book" are two favorites, an 80's version of the latter title being the first bike repair book I ever read many years ago. "Richards'.." has an especially useful and amusing section on emergency repairs. Found objects figure prominently in their "limp home mode" solutions.

I know that many of the people I know through this blog do a fair amount of work on their own bikes. I also know that many people who read this and ride bikes haven't had much opportunity to learn how to do their own work and might even feel a bit intimidated by the idea. I hope that those of you in the first group will take some time to share some knowledge, tools, parts and camaraderie with those in the latter group. The bicycle scene in Hartford can only get stronger from this sort of sharing, and the benefits flow both ways.

A friend came by yesterday whose well-used commuter bike had been in need of attention for a long time. She had been to one of the free repair clinics at a local outdoorsy retail chain a while ago (now out-of-season, but worth checking out), but didn't have the tools and such to keep up with the normal wear-and-tear of daily riding. We checked and removed the chain and thoroughly cleaned and lubed everything drivetrain-related as a team effort. I trued the wheels so that a set of new brake pads could be adjusted closer to the rims. She just called me from work this morning to thank me again for how quiet and smooth her bike now rides and remind me that I had a homemade black bean chili dinner coming my way (she happens to be an awesome cook.) The benefits flow both ways.
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Wheel Truing: Broken Spokes and Broken Hearts

This is not my wheel as Webshots currently won't allow my pictures to load into the blog!!

So I picked up a new road bike recently. Due to its low price I overruled many of its mechanical shortfalls figuring I could fix, swap, or modify its existing parts to get it back on the road. These maladies include a broken front brake lever/shifter, a slightly bent crankarm, and two wheels way out of true. The Campy shifter I intend to swap out for either equivalent Shimano parts or convert to downtube shifters (its 8spd Chorus which I hear is difficult to come by or outrageously expensive on Ebay). The crankarm I bent right back into line with an adjustable wrench. The wheels, however, required both skills and equipment that I yet possess.

Despite the poor condition of the wheels (being out of true is a bit of an understatement, perhaps absolutely false would be a more sufficient term, particularly for the rear wheel) they did not deter my enthusiasm to remedy the situation on my own accord. Regardless of the fact that I simply do not have the funds to have the job done professionally, I gain a certain amount of pride from maintaining and fixing my bicycles myself. I have a friend who owns a truing stand, and armed with a bit of internet-gained knowledge and a basic knack for the mechanical I set out last week to straighten up the new rims. A little overexcited about taking a hack at this new skill I foolishly brought just the wheels over to said friend's place and left the bike at home. After about a half hour of tinkering I had the front wheel spinning straight and true, success! I felt confident about the whole process and enthusiastically set the rear wheel in the stand to straighten it up. It was clear that this next step would be nothing like fixing the front wheel! The wheel looked more like a pretzel than something you'd place on your bike and the rim deviated left to right as much as a centimeter in each direction! After about an hour of cursing, sweating, twisting, and turning, I got the wheel spinning reasonably straight (good enough for my purposes at least). I took my wheels home feeling confident that I would have the bike rolling in no time.

Wrong. Turns out that while the wheels where true they were not dished correctly. The front wheel rubbed on the brake pads, slowing as they passed, while the rear wheel wouldn't even set into the dropouts due to its rubbing against the chainstays. I would have to attempt the whole process again.

Today was the day for my reattempt and I set out wheels in hand and (this time) bike on shoulder as I walked the several blocks to my buddy's place. This time I started with the troublesome rear wheel working on it for about an hour to bring the dish into line and re-true it. I set it in the frame which it dropped into cleanly and I felt I had done it! A slight wobble concerned me so I took the wheel back out and set it back in the stand to clean up my work a bit. Twisting and turning I worked through the spokes tightening and loosening to bring the wheel into line. One spot, however, alluded the perfection I was looking for. I kept alternating between loosening and tightening without success, I was beginning to get frustrated. Ready to leave well enough alone I turned one more spoke to finish up when... POP!!

I froze.

I couldn't believe it. It wasn't really happening. I looked down and indeed it had. I had broken one of the troublesome spokes that I could not leave alone. Perhaps I had bottomed out the spoke and was beginning to spin it rather than tighten it, perhaps it was just too tight or the pressure not balanced well enough. Regardless, my hours of work are wasted, and the wheel was in far worse shape than before.

Not to be defeated I picked up the front wheel and set to fixing it. No more than two minutes had it dished and spinning clean, no problems.

So now what? Part of me doesn't want to be defeated while another just wants the thing fixed. A part wants to finish what I started while another doubts I possess the skill to get this wheel (I like to think maybe just this particularly disheveled wheel) back into true. Do I simply fix the spoke or start from scratch and rebuilt it with new parts, do I have a shop do this for me? Oh tortuous decisions!! What shame and disappointment! How dramatic that I feel this about a bike, though im sure im not alone here. Regardless, there will be no riding of that bike for some time to come. Very sad. Read more!