Today was the final function-check ride for my faithful orange Super before turning it over to a local buyer tomorrow afternoon. We're scheduled to do a longer test ride then; he felt comfortable during his short test spin around the library parking lot, but I suggested putting some miles on the Sammamish River Trail just to be sure. I'll ride along with him and hopefully get a few photos for posterity before he rides off into the PNW sunset.

We'd made a couple decisions on substitutions. Considering the ask, I was open to numerous tweaks; for example, I had a drilled set of RD jockey plates to swap in place of the unmolested pair and we agreed to go that route. While disassembling the drivetrain last night he texted that he'd changed his mind and wanted to keep the original plates. No problem - but while in the disassembly process I found the lower pulley - almost unused - had the dreaded Crack of Time. I substituted a lightly-used spare, then cabled everything up (including a pair of non-ventilated, black-enameled gear levers). Swapped out the well-used placeholder Vittoria 23s with a might-as-well-be-new pair of Vittoria 25s and put the bike aside for this morning's ride.

The first few miles were uneventful, except to say that swapping out to the reliable shift levers made me fall in love with the act of riding this bike again. Always having to be careful going from small to big ring was a bit of a bummer, but now? I could slam it, grip it and rip it if I wanted - not that I did, because I took off for my final 25 wearing jeans, a short-sleeved shirt, and a jacket! But, you know. Anyhoo, after 5 miles or so a squeak began developing in the drivetrain which surprised me; I'd used Boeshield on it after putting everything back together, and while it was only in the high-30s (I noticed the volume would increase when I was moving through shadows - as if the colder temperature was enhancing the problem), I'd had no issues with the similarly-lubricated drivetrain of the Casati in similarly-cold weather just a couple days ago. Hmmmm.

I thought the noise was going to (1) ruin my final ride on the Colnago and (2) cause an issue with the bike before I could get home to suss it out on the stand. I got to Marymoor Velodrome and looked it over carefully, going through the gears and running the chain backwards and forwards. The noise reduction when pedaling backwards was complete - weird! I then considered the only change to the drivetrain: the replacement pulley. Figured out that it was the culprit; there was simply not enough lubrication in the bushing and that's what was squeaking - it was really wailing while in the big ring, but less so in the small as there wasn't as much strain on it. Nice to figure that one out and I sorted it this evening.

So, tomorrow is it - but I still had today.

Before the squeak:



The hand that drilled the holes:



















Oh, and I just found this out totally by accident when I looked at my phone's feed right now: the ride was conducted on Ernesto's birthday. Serendipity.

DD