My $5 Ride

I got a message last week that on Saturday the University of Washington Police would be having a bike sale. Their website said that the sale started at 9 am so I was in line at 8:50 am....in the waaaaaay back of the already long line.

As the line inched forward I watched people emerge with 2 and 3 bikes each, mountain bikes, hybirds, hey was that an 1970s Raleigh Olympian? whoa nice Peugeot Mixte!  Apparently getting there 10 minutes early was 20 minutes too late.

The space formerly filled with bikes was emptying fast.  In what may have looked like a mad scramble to the uninitiated I executed a hard target search of the immediate area and found my prize.....of sorts

Hey for a 5 spot its worth it just for the parts and dammit I didn't spend my morning coming here in vain! Don't even think about a test ride however....

At least I was better off than arriving at 9:30, as I waited in another long line to pay for my prize things got even emptier and emptier....

One cool thing about this whole deal is that with everyone buying bikes that needed "a little TLC" conveniently  just a block away is a great bike shop dealing with new and used bikes and parts -Recycled Cycles and the folks were lined up down the block to get some love for their new purchases.

Ok so what does this awesome $5 find look like?  Well its a Raleigh Reliant which appears to be a USA made entry level bike with Suntour components and at no extra charge a extra helping of rust.....

Oh did I mentioned some urbanite converted this to a hybrid straight bar commuter?    Or that the once soft suede saddle was cracked and dried out? And a Reliant? was this some sort of unholy co-marketing with Plymouth?

My original thought was that for $5 I was getting a SunTour drive train and a wheel-set at the very least, and then I thought well I can do the whole down the frame refurb rebuild back into a road bike option, but my last idea was to do a "stealth commuter" as in make it mechanically sound but not too cosmetically nice so it would uninteresting to bike thieves but solid mechanically and great for the commute.  More to come on that subject.

Heretic....?

What I probably should have been working on and writing about is the oh-so-nearly-done Raleigh project.

I have all the pieces and its really just a focused effort from being done but instead I have been putting my time into this little project.....

No that isn't a bike boom bike, nor is it a refurbished or rebuilt bike, its all brand spanking new parts that I built up based on a Soma Smoothie frame-set .  And its caused some internal dialog hence the title of this post.  Now unlike my friend Tim Joe over at the trailer park cyclist I do not profess to hear a voice, not one I will admit to anyway, but that doesn't mean I don't have a lot internal dialog going on.  And for this build it went something like this:

You love working on bike boom bikes how can you go out and buy a modern new bike!

Well it is steel, Tange Prestige to be precise just like the 30 year-old Miyata 912 I recently sold, and the fork is lugged and curved and the seat tube is lugged.  And it has fender and rack eyelets so I would say it’s not exactly modern- you see any carbon bikes with fender eyelets?

But you have 10 speed brifters!

Well yes they aren’t down tube shifters but Campy came out with 10 speeds in 2000, almost 14 years ago so these aren’t exactly cutting edge.

Do I see a compact crank-set on that thing?

Well yes, but that is more a matter of what my legs, and knees, can take than trying to be modern and it’s a NOS 2006 model compact that takes a…wait for it…square taper bottom bracket. 

Ok what about the aero wheel set?

Those aero wheels are 36 spoke HD (heavy duty) hoops to support my Clydesdale ass.  And the tires are 28c rather than super narrow 23c.  I think I might even be able to squeeze 32s in there.

All the silly internal angst aside I do believe if what you are riding makes you smile then its the right bike.  And the Smoothie as its set up certainly does that.   I really do like resurrecting an old, seemingly, junky 10 speed and making it functional and even beautiful again but I did enjoy working with all new parts as it sure makes the build go faster.

After getting the initial build set up, minus bar tape, I took it for an alley shake down ride and discovered a few minor issues that needed dealing with.

Then the next day I got those sorted and the bars wrapped and out for a longer shake down cruise

It certainly lives up to the Smoothie moniker and I think I will be enjoying it on road rides for a long time to come.

Ride.Smile.Repeat

Schwinn Le Tour III putting it all together (out of order)

I already posted shots of the finished Le Tour II mxte project so here I am back tracking a bit to talk about how it all went together starting from the stripped down frame and (mostly) cleaned up components.

First I needed to get the fork taken care of.  I had used one of my spiffy new tools (Nashbar crown race puller) to get the crown race off so I could clean it.

Then I needed to clean up some rust on the chromed fork blades so they would be nice and shiny again.  Some Turtle was chrome cleaner/rust remover and brass brush wheel on the Dremel tool did the job.

Then it was on to using more cool tools (Nashbar crown race setter and headset press) to remount the crown race on the fork and get the cleaned up cups back on the head tube.

With the frame-set taken care of it was on to the wheels.  The wheel-set that came on this bike was just fine and I will certainly reuse it but since this project was financed by my brother for his wife I went with some brand new 27 inch wheels from Amazon.  They are relatively inexpensive (under $70 for the set) and; they are lighter, have a better braking surface and nicer spokes and hubs than the originals.  The drawback to the factory wheels is that both front and rear came too tight and needed to be adjusted and IMHO they don't use enough grease in the bearings so I took care of that too.  Not a huge deal if you are willing do to a bit of extra work and have the proper cone wrenches handy.

factory amount

Ryan amount

In getting the bike back together I encountered three issues.  I had purchased "thumbies" from Velo-Orange so I could mount the shifter's on the handlebar to make them easier to reach.

I got them all set up only to find that due to an issue with how the shifter hardware interfaced with the thumbies I couldn't get the front derailleur shifter to work properly -it basically loosened itself every time I shifted.

In the diagram below, part 3533 has a "shaft" that all the shifter parts fit around, Velo-Orange very kindly provides an extra long shaft to use with the thumbies, except that the shifter "guts" would not fit around the VO part as it was just slightly too big and using the stock part, meant for a stem shifter mount, the shaft was too short to fit all of the washers that go at the end (3526, 3527, 3528).  Where is Goldie Locks when you need her? I speculate the lack of a key washer is what allowed the front derailleur shifter to keep loosening.

So I had to scrap that and go with the original stem mount system (below).  Thank goodness for keeping and cleaning all the original parts!

I also mounted the basket (a key piece of the build) only to find it hung down low enough to interfere with the front tire.  Luckily I happened to have a Dia Compe mini rack I had intended for a later build that mounts to center pull brakes and that solved the basket issue.  I did have to add an extra washer to keep the rack "tang" from getting hung up on the headset and interfering with steerage.

Finally I was ready for the last piece of the build adding on the cork grips.  I was lucky I had two pairs of grips because I destroyed one set in getting the #$%^* things mounted!  I read somewhere you are supposed to glue them on but I had no luck getting them mounted until I greased them up and I still ended up with a small crack near the front of the left grip because they were so tough to rotate onto the bar.  I do like the look, especially shellacked but boy they were a pain in the rear.  (Note its possible that the cork grips are meant for a 22.2 diameter bars rather than the 23.8mm bars I used but I checked the packaging and it did not specify.)

One thing I really liked about this build is how much detail they put into this bike, almost all of the components had either a Le Tour marking or said "Schwinn Approved".  Even the seat post has a Le Tour marking that you would never see!

It really made me appreciate the level of detail they put into these Japanese Schwinn's.

As always -ride.smile.repeat.

Schwinn Le Tour III -Finished

Its done, she loved it, more later when I am not so darn tired

finished product in new home

Blue, Bell, Basket

Spiffed up crank

Final stages

Schwinn Le Tour III Mixte Rescue update

When last I left you, my erstwhile readers, I had obtained a Schwinn Le Tour III mixte to build up so my brother could give it to his wife on her birthday at the end of April.  While I'm not as far along as I would like to be I have made progress and should be able to get it completed on time.  First the little minx made it into the rack for inspection and deconstruction

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And I ended up with this

And this

And then the packages started to arrive, first came the nice new 27 inch allow wheels, to go with some fat 27 x 1 3/8" Kenda K40s I already had in stock.

And lots of cool bits for the cockpit, new pedals, basket etc.

I have also made use of a handy little item that my buddy Hugh, at Hugh's bicycle blog, turned me on to.  The ultrasonic -cleaner.  This little helper (below)

Turns dirty, grimy, nasty  stuff like this..

Into nice clean shiny stuff like this - I didn't even notice the first time I saw the derailleur that it had a Le Tour badge, now that its clean it really stands out.

So now its time to finish the cleaning and lubing parts.  Checking the new hoops for spin and true,and adding grease to the hubs as the wheels from the factory are usually miserly with the lube.  Then on to building this baby back up and ready for the road.

Normally I am pretty conservative with my rebuilds, I make sure that I have at least a little profit after donor bike and parts costs,  but I am going off course with the LeTour III.  I am going to blow way past the $250 my brother had slated for this project, but that's ok as I went overboard in large part for myself to build a really sharp mixte.  Big bro will get a deal, my Sister-in-law will get a bike she will hopefully have fun riding and I get to create a cool ride.  Until next time.

Ride. Smile. Repeat.

Oh the Humanity! or What did they do to you little Peugeot? (May 2012)

Last May,  I went to my usual old bike haunt, BikeWorks, looking for parts but of course couldn't help but go look at what they had in the warehouse for project bikes. As it turned out they had a big line of bikes all leaned together that they hadn't sorted yet.  I was looking through them somewhat distractedly " Road bike, Mountain bike, Mixte, Hybrid, Stingray, Road bike..wait..what the HELL!" and then I took another look at what I had thought was a old Schwinn Sting Ray and then did a double take worthy of a bugs bunny cartoon- some ingenious and blasphemous bastard had taken a 70′s Peugeot UO-8 road bike and equipped it with Ape Hanger handle bars and Banana seat effectively turning it into a Schwinn Sting Ray. I was stunned, impressed and horrified all at once. Is it a Peug-winn, a Schwin-geot or a UO-Ray8?

What the hell happened?

And then the bike spoke to me in heavily accented English; Pleeze Monsieur, HELP!, remove my shame, Merde! undo what zey did to moi, I want to be ze road bike again. Lets Allez!  How could I possibly walk away?  When one of the other customers overheard me telling the wrench I was getting the bike solely to restore it to its natural state, he offered to take the ape hangers and banana seat off my hands for $10,  since the bike was only $25 I was able to take on another bike project I didn't need for a net of $15 bucks.


 Once I stopped shaking my head over the absurdity of what had been done to this former road bike,

I realized that except for the saddle,  handle bars and brake levers I had a pretty complete road bike and in fact it didn't take much digging around the garage to mock up a road bike once I had stripped the offending ape hangers and banana seat off.

And although it was "only" a lowly entry level UO-8 it still had its charms...

classic 70s head badge

Atax stem with made in France flourish and non plastic Simplex stem shifters

Once I got down to business cleaning it up, replacing all the standard pieces and cleaning and rebuilding the bearings it all came together pretty nicely.

Once I had it back to its 70′s entry level road bike glory, it sold in a day on Craigslist to a nice young lady who teaches science to kids.

Ride.Smile.Repeat.