We had snow this week, and the temperature was more than a bit nippy at times, down to -20C, and I really needed to up Tigger’s winter off-road performance. I was thinking that it would be handy to get a second steering stem to give me a choice of winter and summer options. As there is nothing on the handlebars but two grips and a bell, and the clamping system for the handlebar is so crude that it makes more sense to loosen the stem clamp and replace the whole unit between summer and winter, and vice versa. The Winter Tigger set could then comprise a pair of wheels with off-road tires, a BMX-style handlebar and stem and a lighting set. Summer Tigger could then be the current road tires on the black-painted wheels and the straight bar off Best on another stem (Best’s stem looks too wide where it goes into the fork tube). The alternative is to seek a second frame, which is less of a space problem for a small folder - I just need another hook on the wall.
As everything comes off Blue or Best it gets a clean and then goes into storage. Once there I can ponder the opportunities that each component has - could the front fork from Best be repurposed into a wheel truing / rebuilding stand? Maybe I could make another set of mudguards for Tigger based on Best’s, as they are made of a thicker, non-chromed steel? Procrastination in action!
Best upside down while I clean some away the 20 years of dirt accumulation
Talking of mudguards - the rear on Best has clips underneath to take the wire from the dynamo to the rear lights, plus the wire is thicker and more suitable for 6 volts than those skinny ones that usually wind their ugly way around the various frame components. While I had the mudguard on the bench I removed the round rear reflector that had replaced the original rear lamp - and close inspection revealed that it was ‘Made in the USSR’ (in Russian Cyrilic text, obviously).
As expected, many of the nuts and bolts were not original, but a previous owner had clearly fallen deeply in love with twisted wire. “Oh, the chainwheel protector has fallen off, let me wire that on!” or “This wiring is loose... “. The chainwheel protector was not going anywhere - but neither was the chain ever going to slip onto the largest chainring. Now all I need is to find a way of fixing the protector back on again, but as this is my first I need to learn how it is done.
Best’s rear wheel has a 5-speed Sunrace freehub, meaning that I need the tool to remove the hub and some good luck to get the hub moving on its threads. It is not vital that I remove it, but I do want to learn about these kind of things and it would make cleaning and bearing greasing much simpler. The freehub feels a little gritty, and I would like to take a closer look at it. At this point the majority of people on bike forums start telling you that you should just buy a new hub - but to me if it is rebuildable then why should I not attempt to rebuild it? Who cares how fiddly and ‘time-wasting’ it might be considered to be.
What I do know is that I dug a lot of crap out from between and behind the gears.
I have now stripped and rebuilt the coaster hub off Blue, and it was much easier than I thought and no more difficult than the farmyard, Russian language video had suggested. People often think that language relates solely to nation or similar, but it relates equally well to who we are. People can bang away at you in your own language about some political view or some technical things that makes no sense to you, or you can watch a foriegn language video made by someone who shares a similar skill set to you - and I find the latter easier to understand. In fact my wife does speak Russian, but she still needed my explanations to understand the whats, the hows and the whys of what he was doing.
I pulled the gubbins out from inside the hub and noticed a thin brown line around the smoothly ground interior of the hub. I thought at first it was rust from the years Blue had sat unused, but it was a thin ring of solidified grease. Similarly some of the components were reluctant to move, but a quick squirt of WD-40 and the grease dissolved. I ended up stripping it down almost fully, cleaning up the grease and applying fresh. Not too much - that would be fatal because it would slow its reaction speed by increasing drag and reducing friction.
Now a big difference between a Velosteel hub and many other types: like other hubs there are two large caged bearings inside the hub and a separate one under the sprocket - about the same size as one for a front wheel hub. However, other hubs allow the adjustment of the sprocket bearing like a normal hub bearing, but here the sprocket bearing cone has to be tightened onto the shaft. I have not undertaken an exhaustive analysis of why it is like this, as I was more concerned with being able to rebuild it, but suffice to say that adjusting the hub is like a front wheel hub - just by turning and locking the big nut on the non-drive side.
Most of a Velosteel hub in bits, my first strip and rebuild - and the rug is there to slow the escape of any dropped ball or roller.
I locked the errant loose sprocket cone nut onto the shaft, put it all back together, fitted the off-road tire and, with a little fiddling, got it all onto Tigger. Interestingly I had to push the rear-mounted dynamo out a bit more as the knobbles on the tire hit it - another something to think about and resolve. I took it for a ride around the garage and the coaster brake hub did exactly what it should. It needed a bit of riding for everything to bed in, and the tire allowed me to climb some wet grassy slopes that were impassable on the previous tire. If I had stripped that hub several months ago Blue would have not been such a pain to ride!
Thinking a bit further - if the knobbly tires render the lights inoperable or unreliable then there is no reason to have the lights fitted during the winter wheel season because it is to cold to ride at night. During the summer season it is unlikely that I would ever be out that early or late, or in such foggy weather, that I would need them, because I don’t really ride on the road. The only times I would use them is in the spring and autumn. So either I use cheap battery lights or I eliminate the awkward cable between the front and back by using a separate dynamo front and back. Best has the same type of dynamo (it needs testing), the front fork has a dynamo mount and I have made a mount for the rear. Simpler to achieve, and no more effort to use than two separate battery lamps - and all without the worry of the wire getting caught in the folder clamp.
I have also bought a vice, a rather cheap one it must be admitted, but I did all my home work on cars when I was an apprentice using a smaller one. I bolted it onto the tire store/table as it would make the work bench too heavy to pull around and limit the available surface area on it. This makes me wonder whether I should modify the electrical system in the garage, as currently there is lighting at the back and front of the garage but only one power socket - at the front. A second power point beside the table would be highly desirable.
We all need some kind of vice.
I added a large chunk of board under the table top to spread the load of the vice, but only the screw heads are visible. I also had to lubricate the threads and tighten some of the screws before I used it. I knew I would need one at some stage, but needing some way to lock that cone nut on the Velosteel hub axle was a final straw.
With my workbench situation sorted out a bit I am considering some more cheap/free storage systems to mount on the walls, and maybe some hooks get frames and wheels hung up out of the way, such as Blue’s during the winter and Best’s before I sell it. I have a whiteboard I use to make notes that could go on the wall too, plus there is space to add a backing to the table on which to hang things. The garage backs onto a shop, and there is a thick layer of polystyrene blocks covering the back wall for insulation - nice, but no good for fixing shelves to it.
I still have many things to be getting on with for the next month or so.
Last edited by Geepig; 02-19-21 at 07:36 AM.