Training blocks for the big ride...

Today was the the day for the Passage shake down cruise...I barely got out of the harbor before turning back.   That is fodder for another post.

In addition to working on the Passage this week I have been riding my Handsome Devil, now the title of this post is with tongue firmly in cheek, by training I mean being able to go more than 5 blocks without having to dismount and bend over to gasp for breath.  And by big ride I mean the 10 mile short route I will be doing at the end of the month on Lopez Island.   The first step to doing rides longer than the 2km round trip farmers market run was to put my bike rack on the car.

When you are fat and out of shape you don't need to add hills into the mix to start things off, hence the bike rack to drive to the nice flat beach side Alki trail.  My goal for the week was to gradually increase my distance.

Monday

• Distance 10 km.
• Weather; dry and overcast

• Rest stop - midway point, just a mocha

Wednesday

• Distance 15km
• Weather, wet - rained the whole time and was the wettest ride I have done in probably 5 years

 

• Rest stop - about 3/5ths of the way into ride.  I sat outside, under cover, so I wouldn't leave a puddle inside the shop.  Mocha and snicker doodle.

Friday

• Distance 20km
• Weather, Sun glorious Sun!

• Rest stop - about 3/4ths of the way into the ride, Mocha with a side of donut for "refueling"

• Extra credit - a Hill! this ride was long enough that I ran out of flats, and ok its not much of a hill; short and maybe a 3 or 4% grade but when you're used to riding the dead flat route it counts.

(Postscript) I forgot to mention the best part of the Friday ride, besides the sun anyway, I got passed by a Grandma on a mid 70's Peugeot 10 speed, I am guessing it was a U-08, in a lovely blue.  As she passed I muttered "Go granny Go" between labored breaths.

Speaking of Hills that is on the menu for next week along with maintaining some distance work now that I have exceeded the length of the ride I will be doing.  I am also hopeful that I will have the Passage ready to go for next weeks riding and the event.  I don't care about speed or even dismounting to walk hills I just want to be as fit as possible in the short time before the ride.

 And while I am doing the short route I am not doing the really short route (5 miles), who knows maybe this will be the spring board for more event rides this year.  It would be nice to get to a point where riding exceeds wrenching.   Riding, Smiling, Repeating.

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.

Passage Refit Part V - 2 bearings down 2 to go

I have spent the last week doing my best impression of Daniel-San; wax on, wax off.  Three times to be exact using the Meguiars process as described in a previous post.  Its time consuming but the results are worth it.  The Passage frame looks great from 10 feet, pretty good from 5 feet but of course once you get closer you see the scratches and scrapes a 30 year-old frame acquires.  Taking care of the rust issues, touching up and waxing should protect it for a while. I finished last night and couldn't resist hanging a few things on the frame.

Put the new rear derailleur on- just because.

And the seat post binder bolt with rear brake cable guide which had been given a bath in the sonic cleaner.  No real rhyme or reason here other than I had been waiting until the frame was fully waxed until I proceeded with anything else and it felt good to attach a few parts.


My overall goal is to have this bike up and running and ride-able by April 17th so I can ride it and fine tune it for the Tour De Lopez ride on the 29th. My goal for today was to reinstall the two bearings I have already cleaned up; Headset and Bottom bracket.

First I had to reattach the upper crown race and lower cup which I had removed for cleaning.  I think I may have also fully amortized my headset tool with this use.

I decided to go with new bearings as I had some (left) but I am not sure I am fully satisfied with the ease of movement for the headset so since I am not too far along I may swap back to the original and every so slightly smaller bearings (right) and see if I like the feel any better.

One thing I did reuse was the black rubber seal (bottom) which keeps out the dust and moisture, I recently had a bearing set replaced on the Handsome Devil because it lacked a seal.  You can't see the new bearings in this shot because they have stuck to the cup (top) with the new lube.

I added the spacer, front cable guide and top nut and the headset is done, for now anyway.  I always like to lay out the headset parts in the order they came off so I can put it back together correctly.  I also find that Zinn and Art of Road bike maintenance has handy drawings in case I forget.

Now on to the BB, I like to be very generous with the lube on the bb bearings, I squirt lube with my mini grease gun between every bearing and lube the threads before I screw it back into the frame.

With the fixed cup done it was time for the spindle before installing the adjustable cup.  With this style of bb I carefully measure the spindle before mounting it as you want to be sure the long side of the spindle is on the drive side to accommodate the crank.

I have done a couple rebuilds where the bb had the plastic sleeve for the bb spindle, its to keep debris out of the bb, and I always seem to forget to put them on when I do the rebuild.  This time I remembered.

You want to make sure you grease the ends spindle where they will interface with the bearings.

I do the same lubing for the adjustable cup side, make sure the spindle turns freely without being sloppy -just right - and attached the lock ring and bada bing, the bb is done.

Now I have a frame-set back together.  Next step will be the wheel bearings.  Until next time; Ride. Smile. Repeat.