Wheel Day - Ritchey Project part IV

Before I get to the Ritchey I thought I would share this fatbike I walked by in the neighborhood the other day.  I know our local roads are crumbling and I sure love fat tires but it seems a bit much for a city bike!

Today was wheel day for the Ritchey, something I have been meaning to do for about a month, but I took care of a few other things too.

Filthy front brake before

After some Simple Green and toothbrush, its still going to need some detail cleaning and some mothers but its a lot less filthy.

I also stripped the last of the Triathlon bits off the frame

No more CO2 canister holder on the seat tube.  I may just put all the triathlon bits together on CL for $5 and see if anyone wants to get areo on their old road bike.

I also used my first ever Park Tool, a chain scrubber, to get the chain cleaned up,  It will have a long weekend to dry out before I lube it.


I had already stripped off all the old rubber from the Ritchey wheel set the last time I worked on it, the first step was to put each wheel in the truing stand, the front needed a few minor tweaks but the rear needed zero so it was on to wheel clean up.

As you can see the front hub is dull,  I went over the whole wheel with Armor All wipes to deal with the dust and dirt and then put some polish on the hub.

Its not going to blind anyone but its an improvement, one of these days I am going to figure out the buffing wheels for the Dremel but this wasn't the hub to experiment with.

Rims before a good wipe down

And looking much better after.

Because its on the dirty end of things the rear hub got a scrub a hub treatment with Simple Green and a tooth brush to get all the grime off.

A bit of hub polishing and a Cassette cleaning and the rear is looking ready for some new rubber.

However I couldn't forget the skewers, they had some rust spots that I dealt with via the Dremel and a brass wire brush,

 And finally it was time for the new rubber I have had for a few weeks, I think I mentioned I got a great deal on the tires from Nashbar and then I got the rim strips and tubes locally to support my LBS, all in I was able to outfit the wheels for a little over $40 total.

I was so excited to get the new rubber on that I had one tire half on before I realized I'd not put on the rim strip - oops - did a bit of back tracking and here we are.

Many tires have directional tread so you want to make sure you have that figured out before you start mounting the tires on the rim, especially if your a bit anal and like the QR for both tires to be on the same side.   The other thing I like to do is have the PSI info on the sidewall oriented above the tubes stem so its easy to reference if you are putting air in your tires or heaven forbid you have a flat.

Now I can check wheels off the list of things to do, I realized its probably been about a decade since I mounted tires this skinny or pumped up tubes to over 100 psi.  I run low pressure high volume tires on the HD and rarely pump the 27" tires over 80 psi.

I am headed to Spokane for a 3 day weekend to visit with my siblings, little brother  has already had a few "could you look at this on my bike" requests so I will be bringing a bike and some tools with me. Next week I hope to make more progress on the Ritchey so we can get it on CL with the weather warming up.

Until next time. Ride.Smile.Repeat.