When you have a stable of bikes you must be careful to spread the wealth of riding so as to blunt the petty jealousies, back biting and in fighting that can arise when bikes feel neglected or out of favor. To that end I rode the handsome devil to the market today. I didn't remember to take any pictures but I did have a market breakfast sandwich and of course sampled some beer. After quite a bit of rain yesterday it was a nice sunny ride.
Schwinn LeTour
As I mentioned last week the Dia-Compe rear brake I had sourced for the LeTour didn't work, the arms were to short.
I was fortunate in rooting around in the caliper brake bin at Bike Works yesterday to find a long reach 47-57 rear Shimano brake which I picked up along with a new brake cable since one of mine was too short.
And success! the brake arms are more than long enough and the brake is dual pivot rather than single. This means the front and rear brakes are mismatched but at this point what I care about is functionality.
So the brakes are done at least from the initial set up and running the cables and housing just need to dial them in and maybe true the front wheel a bit.
While waiting on a rear brake solution I had threaded the rear shift cable only to have the $%(*! cheap cable guide pop off. This one has a post that goes into the hole in the bb, I think it supposed to be a bit bulbous on the end to keep it from coming out but that wasn't working, perhaps why later model under bb cable guides were bolted to the frame.
The hole in question..
Some good 'ol Elmer's glue which I have had for literally decades to help the cable guide stay put.
I rigged a rubber band clamp to keep the glued cable guide tight to the frame overnight.
I then got the rear derailleur hooked up and ran the new chain I purchased for the bike, a SRAM 830.
I would like to keep this bike indexed shifting as it was when I got it, but at first try it only sort of works, the derailleur isn't truly inline with the freewheel , its a bit outboard of where it needs to be. As I have some other irons in the fire I am saving fine tuning the limit screws for when I have more time but I am inching closer to being done with the Schwinn.
Bianchi Ibex.
I had a local interested party come ride the Ibex Friday, unfortunately it dropped the chain while they were test riding it, he was very complementary of the bike and price but the trigger shifters weren't his cup of tea, can't blame him, trigger shifters aren't my top choice either. I suspected the chain drop was the sticky freewheel rearing its ugly head again even though I though it was fixed. I decided to pull my CL ad and ordered a new FW and chain and will relist after I have installed them and test ridden the bike. I will raise the price a bit but I'll have more new stuff to list and hopefully won't have to worry about dropped chains!
As I was prepping the Ibex Friday for the test ride I noticed something about the seat tube bottle cage mounts, I am not sure they really thought this through. Sure with some spacers you can make a bottle cage straddle the FD but why not just move it up the tube about 3 inches so the top bolt braze-on becomes the bottom one? Then the cage bottle is above the FD, like it is for most bikes. Curious choice.
I mentioned other irons in the fire..... I should have an entire Cresta post coming soon.
Ride.Smile. Rattle-can a fork. Repeat.
No comments:
Post a Comment