I volunteer at a co-op in Seattle. Last night a fellow came in with a bike that had a very sloppy Ashtabula crank. I figured that one of the bearing cages had broken up. I asked him if it were an old bike and he said he had put maybe 5000 miles on it. Anyway, after a bit of struggling and penetrating oil we got the crank locknut off and were able to remove the crank. Sure enough, the bearing cage had broken into several parts. When I looked into the BB shell, I saw no signs of grease whatever. Lots of dirt ground in to the bearing races though!

I sent the guy off to a local bike shop to get a couple Ashtabula bearing sets and cleaned out the races. When he came back, we put the crank back together as best we could. I think the fellow had ridden the bike with the loose crank, because the threads on the drive side race had stripped. But even so, I was able to get the crank working all right.

I then told the fellow that we should check the other bearings for grease and proper adjustment. I popped the front wheel out, and then took out the bar stem and found copious rust. The headset bearings were ok, with at least a little grease. I added more grease and reassembled, then greased the stem and put it back in.

While the front wheel was out, I spun it and found that it was grinding terribly. I pulled the axle and again found a smidge of grease, but no damage. It was just a very poor adjustment. After I reset it to my liking, we tried to get the wheel back into the forks. Nothing doing. The fork was a good 1/8” too narrow for the wheel to fit. We tried pulling on both fork legs to no avail. So I pulled out an old axle, put a couple nuts on the middle of it, and proceeded to cold set the fork legs outward.

That was successful, and all in attendance were admiring my skill and knowledge (a crowd had come to watch the disaster.) I figured I would adjust the brake next, and in testing the brake I saw that the brake cable was frayed at the lever.

It took me a good ten minutes to untangle the frayed brake cable from the lever, housing, and cable fixing bolt.

Anyway, I threaded in a new cable, adjusted it all, and spun the wheel. Of course the wheel was out of true and the brake grabbed at one spot. No big deal, I will just pull the wheel again and true it. Should have thought of that when I had the wheel out the first time, right. Annnnd . . . As I spotted the place where it was out of true, I saw that the rim was bulging badly and in fact was cracked.

I gave up. Told the guy to go find a used wheel and come back.