What Have You Fettled Today?

[TheDoctor]

About to fit SPDs to the Brommie in preparation for holidays.

 

[HLaB]

A successful evening of fettling thanks to a mate. I ordered new brackets for my TT pad so they could take angled spacers, which I ordered at the same time. When they came neither had any bolts so he offered to find some in his garage. Unfortunately they were M6 bolts and he had none long enough with a flat head. So we ordered some and they came yesterday and we fitted them tonight. Hopefully that spreads what was a point load on my elbow which was causing my hand then whole arm to go sore and numb. It probably not helped by bad circulation after my chemo a few years ago.

 

[Andy in Germany]

Three bikes fixed and ready for sale. I was fortunate: all three were fairly generic city bikes with derailleur gears and two came as part of a house clearance and had hardly been used; half the job was shifting the cobwebs.

One gave me a bit more trouble; I had to replace the chain and cassette and BB. This one had already been in the showroom once and had a price tag of 185€; I was going to reduce that to 155€ because it wasn't a high end bike, but before I got around to replacing the price tag it was already sold.

Oh, and with some help from the main workshop I fixed a punp a client had bouught from a supermarket, and which turned out to be lacking proper screws in crucial places, so we riveted the thing together...

 

[Elybazza61]

Had this at work the other day, excellent bit of design meant that the rack had to be undone and moved to get the pad bolt out of the calliper .

 

[HLaB]

Had this at work the other day, excellent bit of design meant that the rack had to be undone and moved to get the pad bolt out of the calliper .


View attachment 660489

A deliberate design it to stop the bolt falling out by accident

 

[ianrauk]

From this

To this.

New bar tape is always a nice, satisfying job

 

[TK421]

Thanks to my late brother I am now switching from scale model aircraft to something more useful to me, my girls and the planet.

My long story is here,
https://www.cyclechat.net/threads/newbie-in-the-bomber-county.287668/
I'm pulling everything I can off a 56cm specialized tarmac for my new 51.5cm Boardman Road Sport. Already started planning a gravel bike as well. I used to play with old Fords and I must admit that the idea of building cycles is rather (addictive) fun!
Any advice gratefully appreciated

 

[CXRAndy]

I've just got back my Load-all from the dealer. Its an old machine but now in reasonably good condition. I've been over the other bits and spent a little while greasing all the zerts. A few zerts were missing so swapped them around to apply new grease to pivots. I got a new clamping grease head with a lever, it's perfect for greasing up. No need to pulloff the from grease nipple, which I think is the reason for missing zerts.

 

[DCBassman]

zerts.

Felt impelled to find out what zerts were. Appears it's zerks, and is basically grease nipples. Every day's a schoolday!

 

[CXRAndy]

My ignorance, what a 'Zerk' I am

 

[DCBassman]

My ignorance, what a 'Zerk' I am

Just one of those things where I just had to find out what THAT is!

 

[ColinJ]

About to fit SPDs to the Brommie in preparation for holidays.

I built my singlespeed bike from old bits and bobs when money was very tight, before getting my pension. I like the bike but some of the used parts annoyed me so I have been gradually upgrading the bike since my pension started and spare cash for new parts became available.

I had originally installed a pair of singlesided SPD pedals. Not the kind that have a platform on the flip side. The ones I have are almost unusable on the other (curved metal) side. They are fine once clipped in, but doing so in stop-start traffic or uphill can be pretty dodgy. My shoes have slipped off the backs of the pedals too many times so those pedals are now going to my turbo trainer bike. I bought some classic double-sided M520 SPDs to replace them. They arrived today so I will be fitting them after my coffee break.

What I have done thus far is to put the new cleats that came with the pedals on my shoes. The old cleats were very worn. The metal cleats last a long time, but not forever! The old ones were starting to feel sloppy and rattle.

Simple job, eh? Well, the start of it was... 3 of the 4 cleat bolts came out easily. Then I spotted the 4th one and remembered why I had not changed the cleats sooner - the allen head was rounded off!

I tried all sorts of tricks but in the end I had to saw the old cleat off so I could get my mole grips on the duff bolt. All done now.

I'll finish my coffee, put the new pedals on, and go for a short test ride.

Other recent fettling...

The saddle on the singlespeed had started creaking again. It has been a recurrent problem which I decided to fix once and for all. I took the saddle off and the seatpost out. I cleaned and greased all metal surfaces that contact other metal surfaces. That gave me the micro-adjustment of saddle angle back. The saddle is not only quiet again, but I have also now got the angle spot on. Before it was always slightly too nose up or down. It must be a very critical adjustment for me... It looks like it did before but feels much more comfortable. I might struggle to replicate the position on my other bikes because I think that most of them have coarser saddle clamp adjustments.

I recently put a narrow-topped rack on the singlespeed bike. It struck me at the time that I could bodge a rear mudguard by attaching something to the rack. I just found an old tyre that I had cut up to make some tyre boots. A long length of that tyre along the rack should keep 95+% of spray off my back on damp rides. I have wedged it in for now in case I want to take it off. I will probably buy some releasable cable ties to use to fix it more securely but still allow it to be removed easily.

 

[Ian H]

Not today but last week, I discovered the chain on the Blue Hallett was worn beyond sensible, so replaced it and the cassette.

The Campag chain has the special pin rather than a quick-link, and five pages of instructions to fit it. It makes a neat job though.

I forgot to road-test it, so the next outing was our Saturday social - a 40 mile or so ride which I usually extend to around 70 by riding to & from home.

Anyway, nothing went ping!, the bike was as silent as a fixed-wheel, the gear-changes as crisp as when it was new.

And it didn't rain.
The chain after 75 miles

 

[november4]

The other day, changed out a freehub for first time, and put on hutchinson tubeless tyres, easily by hand, and one of them even seated with normal pump

 

[ColinJ]

I'll finish my coffee, put the new pedals on, and go for a short test ride.

I did do the post-coffee pedal transfer but haven't done my test ride yet. The forecast is good for tomorrow so I'll go out then instead.