What Have You Fettled Today?

[Andy in Germany]

Yesterday was largely spent dealing with this:

It's a bit of a BSO but I can't throw them all out so I'm cleaning it and getting it into safe working condition. Of course it is taking far longer than it should so it's unlikely we'll get much of a profit out of it, but such is life.

My client was working on this bike, but asked me to sort out the rear mech as it wasn't changing properly. It turned out that the tiny plate crimping the cable had twisted slightly in the socket and jammed solid so we couldn't change the tension: I had to take the mech off the bike and whack the crimping bolt on a hard surface until it would move, then re-cable the mech. Still, it's a nice looking bike so it should go for a decent price.

 

[bikingdad90]

Did some pro level bar tape wrapping with the lifeline bar tape. Pretty stretchy and easy to work with.

 

[ColinJ]

I like the bar tape, but I'm not convinced by those blue hoods!

I bodged a rear mudguard [a length of worn tyre, held by cable ties] onto the skinny rack on my singlespeed bike . It should stop most of the spray getting onto my back on wet rides.

That 'tail' flap looks a bit naff but it will catch more spray so I might leave it on, or I might trim it later.

You can see one of the 2 new SPD pedals that I put on the bike yesterday.

 

[bikingdad90]

@ColinJ, I do have the original hoods somewhere but Sod’s law you can’t find it when you want it!

 

[ColinJ]

I have been out for my test ride... The bike is now quieter than it has been since I first built it!

Except for one strange rasping noise, that is... I noticed it when yomping up the little climbs on my loop which are steep enough to be hard work on singlespeed. Some female pedestrians walking ahead of me could clearly hear the noise because they were looking round to see what it was. I eventually worked out that it was my heavy breathing!

The new cleats and pedals feel much better. The looseness has gone and the rattling sounds with it. I found that my left cleat was not quite aligned properly though. I felt that my foot was being forced into a heel-out position that it didn't want to be in, confirmed by me accidentally unclipping heel-in. I never normally unclip that way. I have now turned the back of the cleat slightly outwards, which will bring my heel slightly inwards.

 

[Andy in Germany]

Finally finished this clunker:

It isn't great: the freewheel is a bit gritty and it took a while to persuade the indexing to to work. It's going for 45€ (ca. 40 GBP) to reflect this, but the thing is out of the door. It did have dynamo lights but I couldn't afford to spend any more time on it.

New bike tomorrow.

 

[ColinJ]

I have now turned the back of the cleat slightly outwards, which will bring my heel slightly inwards.

That did the trick.

I hadn't realised how much difference replacing worn metal SPD cleats can make. I might start doing that every 3 or 4 years instead of once a decade!

 

[Andy in Germany]

Much of today was spent trying to fix a ladies drop frame town/trekking bike. Above can be seen the process of re-cabling everything, in part because the shifters were smashed.

It also needed a new chain guard but the ones in store either didn't fit or they were broken so it is now back on the rack waiting for me to put a chain guard in the next order.

The next bike was a diamond framed aluminium trekking bike which will also have to wait as it is missing one spoke and I haven' time to faff about with that at the moment.

Oddly, both were missing saddles, saddle posts and the collar to hold the saddle up.

 

[ColinJ]

I now suspect that it would be good to whip the cassette off, grease the splines on the freehub, and reinstall the cassette with the lockring nice and snug. Maybe I didn't tighten the lockring enough when I fitted the cassette? I don't have a torque wrench and have a history of overtightening things, so I have been trying to avoid it. I might have gone too far the other way.

Does sound like the cassette now; trouble with these sort of noises is they could be from anywhere as the sound source is hard to pin down.

I have just been reading that a 1.85 mm spacer is needed for an 11-speed MTB cassette on an 11-speed road hub. I think that might be my problem! (I don't remember there being a spacer when I moved the cassette from an old wheel to the new one but the original wheel might have a MTB hub.)

 

[Andy in Germany]

This wreck:

Frame looks nice so we'll sell it, but the components were either missing (rear mech, pedals and saddle) or battered (broken brake leverwheels caked in gunge and wobbly, axles so loose I could turn rotate the bolts with my thumb).

IN the background is a donor bike dragged out of the graveyard, a sort of proto E-Bike with a wrecked frame but a few decent components which is being cannibalised to keep this one going. I'll hopefully finish this on Monday and it'll have a tag of at least 200€; apart from the extra time needed, the cannibalised parts will be better than the original.

 

[Ming the Merciless]

Pumped up wife’s tyres ahead of her aqua bike event tomorrow

 

[Andy in Germany]

Pumped up wife’s tyres ahead of her aqua bike event tomorrow

Serious question: what's an Aqua Bike event?

 

[Ming the Merciless]

Serious question: what's an Aqua Bike event?

It’s Triathlon without the run leg. Usually done at same time as a triathlon event.

 

[Andy in Germany]

It’s Triathlon without the run leg. Usually done at same time as a triathlon event.

Makes sense when it's explained, thanks. All the best tomorrow.

 

[HLaB]

The last couple of solo rides my bike has been silent, no matter what the power/cadence but for some reason its making a chainsaw like noise when I've been in hard group rides. I've had this on other bikes in the past and it has usually turned out to be the hub/pawl springs. I found a minute amount of play in the hub so I suspect its the same. After a bit of effort I managed to unseize the cassette and remove the axle covers that hold the hub. The cheaper version of my hub slides out but mine didn't; its got a 2mm screw and a removable plate below which I think has to be loosened but rather than stripping such a minute screw I decided to put it back together and take it to a shop. I think I have a spare wheel that is set up 10sp which I can convert to 11sp so hopefully I won't be bikeless.