Passage Refit part VII Don't go braking my heart..

new wheels

As you may recall from my last post the stock wheels were giving me grief and rather than try to spend more time making them work I took the Amazon route.  And in a couple days presto, new wheel-set.  I did my normal protocol of opening up the hubs to add more grease, then adjusting them and finally putting them in the truing stand.  With that taken care of I mounted the new free wheel that I had originally acquired for the Motobecane Grand Touring.  The standard FW is a 14-28 but this one is a 14-32 for a bit more low end which will pair nicely with the new crank set up.

Then it was time for new rubber including some nice wide Kenda K40 27 x 1 3/8s (about 37c) tires.

rear wheel mounted

And the front

As I mentioned in the last post I went ahead and bought a new brake set, Tektro CR720s,  so it was time to get them mounted.  My first challenge was that the new mounting bolts were too long, fortunately I had saved the old stuff so I went with the original bolts.  I'm sure I've said this before but save the original parts until the bike rebuild is complete because you never know, more on that later.

The second challenge up front was that I had to apply some force to get the front brakes on the studs which should not be the case, they need to be able to rotate unimpeded, but despite my cleaning up rust the posts were still rough.

A quick application of some fine grain sandpaper smoothed things out and after applying a thin layer of  3 in 1 oil the new brakes slid right on.

 
Front brakes mounted with old bolts.

And they look great without the new wheel mounted yet, queue the ominous music....

The rears mounted up and ready for a wheel.

And with the wheel mounted looks like a good fit.  So half way there right...right? Nope.

Once I got the front wheel on I could see there was going to be issues as the brake shoes were hitting the tire rather than the rim and even with using only one of the thin curved washers (see above) on the rim side of the canti I could not get them to seat.

I recalled that I had some thinner canti brake pads from the brief time the Handsome Devil had Canti-brakes.  I could get them to seat on the rim but they were so long that they got hung up on the fork blades.  It wasn't looking good for this solution and I seem to recall reading somewhere that the fork canti posts on older bikes were closer together than current ones and that could result in issues using newer brakes.  The obvious solution was to use the original brakes up front, I am sure the matchy police will cite me for different front and rear brakes but I will take that risk.

I needed a break from brakes, so I decided to mount a couple items that had been ready for a while.  First I went with the saddle, I used a measurement from the Handsome devil to select the initial height which I hope will be close.

Second I mounted the new cockpit and started with the stem up about as high as I can safely mount it - it has a nice clearly marked minimum insert line.  And for the first time in a while its starting to look..

like a bike.  One of the good things about using the original brakes up front is that I get to use my Velo Orange Gran Compe Roller Straddle Cable Hanger. I have long admired this part but I don't usually run Canti brakes and it is kind of stupid expensive when compared to a normal cable hanger but I picked one up when I was ordering parts for this project last fall.

Because I needed to run a straddle cable that has "pucks" on both ends I had to disassemble the roller.

Which made it easy to thread the straddle cable ..

...and then put the roller back together.

My intention was to have this bike done on Monday so I could start riding it but since I was just going to being by riding the flats I decided to take my time and start by riding the Handsome Devil - more on riding in a future post.

I am hoping that running the cabling and chain and getting the shifting and braking dialed in doesn't throw me too many curves as I do want to be able to ride the bike enough be sure of fit and work out any bugs that might crop up and I will want to start riding hills with it too.

No one ever said mounting new parts on an old bikes would be "plug and play". Until next time.. Ride. Smile. Repeat.

Passage Refit Part VI Wheels are bearing me down

Original wheelset

I really do like to keep bikes as original as possible but sometimes it just doesn't work out.  Last night I took the rubber off both wheels intending to work on them today.  In fact I took apart the front hub to clean it and rebuild it with fresh lube and bearings.

Before I rebuilt the hub it felt like it had gravel in it while I held it by the axle and spun it, after cleaning and polishing all the hub parts, new lube and bearings, it  felt like it ......had gravel in it (Merde).  Fortunately, I hadn't spent too much time with the rim and spokes and a good lesson here is clean the hub and rebuild it first before you spend time on the rims and spokes because if the hub doesn't spin smooth then you have just wasted time on the other stuff.  Kind of a gut punch to spend the time thinking you are fixing things only to see no improvement.  I could try to find new cones and do some research to get things better and I may do that especially for the 40 spoke rear wheel - later.  Right  now I want to get this bike road worthy so i can ride it before my organized ride on the 29th.  Hello Amazon.

I have ordered this Sta-tru 27" wheel-set before, most recently for the Raleigh Super Course project and as I have mentioned before there is still some work to be done even with new wheels but it will be a quicker fix for getting the bike on the road.

Speaking of replacing the old with new I took some of my Gitane earnings a few weeks ago and ordered a set of Tektro CR 720 canti brakes.  This type of brake tends to be finicky in my experience and usually the more options for adjustment and dial in the better.  The Original brakes, Dia compe 960s, really only have the one spring to tension everything and I anticipated issues in getting things dialed in.

So we'll see how the new brakes work out but they were fairly inexpensive and get good reviews so I am hopeful. 

Its not all bad news, since the frame is all waxed I started hanging parts on it as I got the chance, like the cleaned up front derailleur

Upgraded crank and new pedals

And I skipped the original Huret down-tube shifters in favor of the lovely Dia-Compes

So I have the drive train attached now I will have to wait for the new wheels and then I can hang the brakes.

In the mean time I should mount my bike rack to the trunk so I can start riding the flats again.  Until next time Ride.Smile. Repeat.