1991 Trek 820

I mentioned in an earlier post that I have spent a few month looking for a bike for my Nephew.   He had asked for a recommendation and based on what he wanted to used it for I suggested a early 90-ish mountain bike,   I did find bikes for under $100 but they tended to be gone before I could act. Finally this Trek 820 popped up for $120 in my neighborhood and I snapped it up.

I was planning to replace the cassette and chain and when I was removing the old cassette I noticed the hub felt a bit gritty so I took it apart for a clean and rebuild.

This where I made the first of two stumbles, first I put all the grease and new bearings in the cassette hub before I had replaced the threaded cylinder (at bottom of the picture above) that connects the cassette hub to the wheel.  Guess what?  you can't fit the cylinder after you do the bearings, you have to put it in the freehub body before you do the bearings.  Yes I had to remove all the bearings and seat the cylinder and then replace the bearings.  I had to laugh at myself.

My second gaffe was to reverse the axle when I put the hub back together.  That resulted in the wheel not being centered and more vividly the chain fell off to the inside of the cassette - as seen above.   Fortunately it was easily resolved by correctly fitting the axle and viola the wheel was centered and the shifting all worked as intended.  Opps!

So I updated the tires, cassette and chain and throw in the price of the bike it was all done for under $200.  Considering what I see on CL and Facebook marketplace for that price in this crazy COVID market I think we made out pretty good.  He is picking it up today so fingers crossed it works out for him.

Ride. Smile. Repeat.