Because there are always complications within complications, I might already have a recipient for one of the Jubilats. One of wifie’s oldest friends has a summer house near a lake in the region and has always been a keen cyclist. I would like to encourage her as she has already had a heart operation, and over the past years has spent too much time indoors due to Covid. She already has two bikes, both apparently having been ruined in some undefined way by one of her sons, even though he once trained as a mechanic. All she says she needs is a reliable, small-wheeled [tick] red [tick] folding [tick] bike, so I might do a straight swop with the ‘ruined’ ones. Whatever they are.
Her summer house was built about 1970 by her father, in concrete, styled like something moderne from the 1930s, and very much Communist chic at the time. One floor, two rooms and awkward-to-enter kitchen and shower rooms, plus a spider-ridden basement under the front veranda, entered via some steep steps, not my favourite kind of bicycle storage. The ‘house’ needed demolishing and replacing a decade or two ago, as all their neighbours did, to replace them with comfortable, dry and convenient wooden houses. But all that can be forgiven because it is really close to a beautiful lake in a very rural area, mostly sandy, flat, and ideal for riding.
We like to visit.
From left to right: Tigger, Danusia, Big R and Zenit - with Blue’s frame in front.
All that seems a long way away, as I have to make room for all five that I have now, plus the car, in the garage. It also means I have another 6 tires and inner tubes to inspect, 2 sets of genuine aluminium Romet mudguards to restore and one nicely painted steel set (all better than the paper thin steel/chrome ones originally on Blue/Tigger). I noticed what looked like a worn 20T rear sprocket on Danusia, which would be perfect for a test on Tigger, to save buying one that I might not like.
I began operations by stripping off all the baskets/racks, spraying some lube in the cables and over the brake pivots, then pumping the tires up. Big R rides much like Blue did before I stripped it down, although the front brake had to be pulled on and then pushed off, while the coaster brake was present rather than active. Danusia, with the big rear sprocket, was off up the garages like a rocket, but I quickly hit max speed, even in the sitting position. The coaster hub was hanging on when pushed in reverse and kind of participated - but it got around the garages much quicker than Tigger. Zenit was fiddly to get in gear, mostly because it was 40 years since my last friction levers, but once there it felt tight - which just left the high-rise bars feeling a trifle odd - and distant from the gear lever, a bit like a Raleigh Chopper from the 1970s. The rear calliper brake began to warm up nicely, an unusual feature on a Jubilat, while the front mostly just squealed whether you applied it or not. Oh, and Danusia has a different handlebar stem, more bent forward, so it dives easily into the corners but has to be lifted back out.
Three similar bikes and three dissimilar personalities. It must be a family!
Overall I am pleased, mostly because I now have plenty of new things to fiddle with after work: Big R, Danusia and Zenit. Wifie says that makes eight bikes, but I say seven because Kid is now just a frame destined to be hung on the wall as decoration, and even Best’s life is limited to a test ride for its gears - although if I sold the frame someone could build a bike from it. Blue is currently at frame level, but remains a bike as it will be rebuilt.
We popped into our local bench of Decathlon for a few bits and pieces. I would prefer to use a local bike shop, but while there are many here they mostly focus on bikes, clothing and sometimes servicing. Anything else means a day spent dragging around the many, and then maybe finding what you want against a background of many strange and unwanted comments: why would you want that, they are not available, they used to be available, you need a better/newer bike…
Bla bla bla, as they say in Polish.
I took the tire-less but tired front wheel from Best, and popped the wheel bearings out - start in the centre and work outwards sounding like a good plan. The wheel bearing on one side had broken up, probably smashed by one jump too hard. I hunted around in my collection of used bearings from Kid and used a bearing from its front wheel to assemble enough balls to create two traditional, cageless bearing sets. I could have bought new balls, but the cones show noticeable damage. If I were going to ride to France I would buy a new wheel, but it is going on Tigger, very much a ‘lokalny’ machine. With some grease and actual adjustment the wheel felt good when I rotated it - a pity about the kinked and loose spokes and weaving rim. A weaving and rather rust-pocked rim, but still smarter than those on Danusia’s.
One of the tools I purchased recently was a spoke wrench, and after a week of regular spraying with WD-40 I felt ready to tackle the spokes. I sat the wheel in Blue’s upturned forks and stuck a couple of pieces of masking tape to the forks to track “any” side-to-side and up-and-down movement by the rim. Masking tape is good because the rim can happily rub into it at will. And it is cheap, I use the stuff for all kinds of things, including marking which part of the spoke spanner fits these nipples. I also added a bit to one of the spokes so I would know when I had done a complete revolution. With the masking tape fest over, I went round and round to tighten all the spokes until they felt equally tight, then started looking for which spokes I needed to adjust further to pull the rim into shape.
It was all good fun, and I even managed to straighten out those spokes with kinks in them. Since it is my bike and it never goes far, I think I can deal with any spoke losses that might happen. I also bought a cheap Btwin off-road tire, which I ‘slipped’ on along with the Shrader-valved innertube that came off the wheel. It was the work of moments to remove Tigger’s summer front wheel, and get this one on in its place. A quick ride around the garages and everything felt OK.
What with all these new parts, I now needed more space to store them all. A neighbour chucked out two shelves that I took away and fitted high on one wall, and then I mounted three large hooks beneath them, with the plan of hanging Tigger’s summer/winter wheels from them and a few other oddments. Now it turns out that I have so many wheels that I cannot come close to hanging them up, and the frames I hide down one side of the garage.
Tire racks, wheel racks, frame racks - whichever I need them to be.
While I was at it I made a shelf for my radio and disinfectant spray (so wifie can find it when she visits), along with some coat hooks for when it becomes warm enough to remove some outerwear. I will still need to look out for some more materials, because I could do with somewhere to store all the rest of the things I am not working on.
Tigger’s tires worked well in the snow that fell incessantly the other night, as did my snow shovel - it worked well and fell. No one else ever clears the snow out from the garages, but I see it as something I can do for our garage community, such as it is.
Tigger in the snow, fun before shovelling...
Then it was home for supper.
Last edited by Geepig; 02-19-21 at 07:33 AM.