It all began when I got on craiglist for a road bike to commute on in portland oregon. The guy sold me the bike for $80 and threw in a pair of clip ons with the shoes in my size and a jersey. No hairlines in frame as far as I could see.
I quickly fell in love with the bike but had no idea why. I beat the hell out of it, riding every day in city traffic. Every time I got on some other road bike, it just wasn't the same.
I broke three too many spokes on my rear wheel, and knew it was time for a rebuild. This is when I started to realize the gem I have on my hands, and I'm really excited to turn this bike into a nice project bike.
I have (what I think to be)
a 1986 Klein Performance
with campy record front and rear hubs and shifter levers
suntour most otherwise
On my bucket list: rebuild a rear bicycle wheel from scratch. check.
I replaced the axle which had a slight wobble from it being an old freewheel.
used a very sturdy but heavy Deep V velocity rim that I got for $39 and DB, DT spokes.
But this is where I need you!
This bike has a unique shifting system that I fall short of finding on any other bikes. The shifting levers are on top of the downtube and the cables go into the tube through two tiny holes (not accessible from the head tube) and out on the bottom through two more tiny holes and to the derailleurs via outside the tubes.
Methods I see on most other internal cables, you can finagle them from the head tube to do what you want them to. I like the fact that Klein was pioneering internal cables (despite my brake cables being outside, ha) but
what is the best way to re-wire my shifter cables? Hopefully your answer will save me hours of trial and error (I don't give up easily).
This is a two part question, this one being the more important of the two:
The actual mount that attaches the levers to the frame has finally snapped completely off. It was hanging by one bolt until I started messing with it trying to find out how to fix it.
If someone actually knows what the original type of hardware is on this mount, I will kiss you via internet. It looks to be like a type of threaded rivet insert, with a tiny bolts securing the mount into the inserts. I called this custom rivet company in L.A. to see what I could get my hands on
(link included**). The only thing they could really offer was for me to order a box of 100 "thin-nut threaded inserts" for a little over $15. This would mean an aluminum threaded rivet with a length of 3/8inch and the diameter of the shaft at 2/7inch (which is a hair over 1/4inch) with a thread size of #6-32tpi. I still need to stop by the hardware store and see if a bolt that size will fit through the mount holes… to make it more difficult, the heads of the original bolts are recessed quite far into the mount. I doubt I will find any bolts this size with a head that small. Then I have to raise the mount slightly to account for the heads of the inserts… if you can picture what I mean by that. Basically… it won't be possible to have the mount flush with the tube, which means making some custom curved washers and plate.
I don't see why any of you would be interested in this silliness, but just thought I would let you ride along on my adventure.
last resort would be to drill straight through the downtube using the same location of the original mount holes and use a threaded rivet with really long bolts… but I still run into complications there.
FAQ: why don't you just re-route them with bosses on the side of the frame? No, no, and no… won't do it. I would buy a whole new bike and never use this one until I figure it out, before I did such a thing.
For now (since I need a functional bike) I have secured the levers in the right place for three dollars using two hose clamps and a zip tie… because remember the frame is aluminum. By the way,
is that little mount aluminum as well? I had to do this, because when the mount snapped off, the tension was released on the cables… causing the derailleurs to take the chain off the sprockets. This might be sacrilegious and hard to look at for some, but It does work for now… and you can't beat a three buck fix that's removable, adjustable, and not harming any components.
**THREADED RIVET WEBSITE:
http://www.hansonrivet.com/w65.htm
The best option, I thought, would be their threaded clinch nuts with flat heads,
but I would have to custom order a minimum of 1000, and it would be around 100 bucks
http://www.bradenprint.com/pdf/Decim...version_IS.pdf