Fathers day and more progress on the Moto_GT

On Fathers day I was up early and went for 45 minute ride on the Allez, down to a local view point and back, its not all that far but its the farthest I have gone so far in 2018.  My girl had baked me chocolate chip cookies and made me a card ;-).  I sent out some good thoughts and FB tribute in memory of my dad and got on to working on the Moto_GT.

I got the front brake polished up and mounted and then moved on to the levers.

I liked that the original levers have a built in quick release, but wasn't thrilled that they had been set up for safety levers and so the red pivot sticks out and that wasn't going to fly.

I got the lever apart for a closer look and to make it easier to clean.

I have found out that back in the day bike shops stocked alternate pivots like the one above but shorter so you could convert an extension lever version to a normal brake lever, but I couldn't find any on Ebay and I don't really have the facility or tools to cut down the pivot without it become tedious and laborious.  I choose a different course.

I went to bike works and found a set of (non-safety) levers for $8 and tax - see the sample on the right.  Because of the funky leatherette bar wrap...

the levers for the Moto_GT don't clamp onto the bars the bolt screws directly into a threaded section on the bars so I had to do a bit of cannibalizing....

.. to make it work but the original bolt worked in the new levers so I could get them mounted.

Its not perfect as the new lever body its a touch longer than the stock ones but I came up with two solutions;

Black bar tape from an orphan roll I had in the parts bin and

Electrical tape.  I am going to ride it a bit before I decide which to standardize on, I am leaning towards the bar tape.  Its not the best result but -

I like it better than having that stub from the extension bars on the stock levers sticking out which would have meant cutting into the new hoods to make them work like the old ones.

The new levers are drilled so they do have that going for them even if they aren't a perfect fit.  I am keeping all the original stuff I don't use so perhaps someday if I have a shop area and decent cutting tools I will adapt the Original levers and use them.

As long as I was bending the as stock as possible with the build rule I decided I would swap the 40T inner ring for a new 38T ring, which is a small as the stock crankset will take,  Its not a huge jump but a  38/32 low gear will make the hills a bit more palatable.

And this evening I got the crank set broken down so I can proceed  with the cleaning and polishing.

Until next time. Ride. Smile. get creative. Repeat.