Wednesday, July 19, 2017

Ritchey Project Part VII -Done


Just a reminder of where this project started; rigged for triathlons, no seat-post or saddle, no brake hoods, sad mismatched worn tires, and at least a decades worth of storage dust and must. I started today needing to address the front derailleur, after allot of fiddling its not perfect but with some finessing the rear gears I can get the FD to drop into the inner ring.  Then I needed to tweak the front brake and it is also not perfect but its functional.


With those items out of the way it was time to wash up and work on the white bar wrap.  Somehow I got the left side done without too many issues.


Not so with the right side, I felt like I needed 6 hands to address all the issues that kept cropping up; the strip behind the brake lever didn't want to stay attached, the brake hood didn't want to stay rolled back from the bars and those issues kept me from focusing on keeping the wrap taught and evenly wrapped.  I could feel the frustration mounting so I literally threw up my hands and stepped away before I did something dumb.  It was time for lunch anyway and as I stepped away it occurred to me I had a solution for at least one problem.


I stopped by my local ACE hardware after lunch and bought a clamp.


With the clamp acting as my "3rd hand" the brake hood stayed out of the way so I could focus on my wrap job -so much easier!  That was $3.50 well spent.

Taping the bars done! and that puts a wrap on the get the bike ready for sale portion of this project.


Bike forums has an appraisal thread so I have a request in to get some ideas on where to start with listing this bike.  Plan A is to list the complete bike locally, Plan B if it doesn't sell is to expand the listing to Portland and Plan C if there is still no joy will be to dismantle the bike and part it out on ebay.




I am heading down to Portland this weekend so that will give some time to get feedback on the worth of this bike before I actually list it on CL.  With the Ritchey out of the work-stand there is room for me to work on something else....whose it gonna be?

Ride. Smile. Repeat.

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