After much frustration with relying on my local bike shop (LBS) to deal with the problems nagging me on my bike, and their increasing lack of cooperation in catering to my needs, I have decided to learn everything that I could about my machine so that I could take matters into my own hands and custom-tune my bike.
The first step to this endeavour started with buying a cycling maintenance manual, which I should've already had but would always borrow from the library instead. Since I didn't want to mess with my daily commuter as I learnt about bikes, I decided to go about this in two ways: by rebuilding a '70s road bike, and by building a bike frame from scratch.
For the rebuild, I found an old Sekine road bike in the dumpster; for the build, I will be brazing chromoly steel tubing with lugs. The rebuild will be on-going as I learn about welding and hone my CAD skills for the build, and the entire process will be recorded as a "photo-diary" of sorts in an effort to hone my photographic skills. Here we go!
Sekine Rebuild- Day 01
I am keen to discover more about this bike. After some research I found out that Sekine was a bike manufacturer in Canada during the cycling "boom". In the hopes that someone else can help me identify it, here is all the information I could pull from the bike before starting to tear it down:
Sekine Medialle (serial # 0244 CY)
Made in Canada (probably SHA or SHC)
Components
F/D: Thunderbird
R/D: Eagle 2
cranks: cottered, Takagi 310
brakes: Shimano Tourney
brake levers: Shimano Dee-50
hubs: Shimano 5358
Geometry
ST (c-t): 546mm
TT (c-c): 558
DT (c-c): 622
HT (w/headset): 127
CS (to drops): 457
SS (to drops): 482
crank arm: 165
handlebar width: 355-406
And before stripping the bike, Shad recommended a thorough soaking in WD-40. That way, nothing would snap off and break as I try to take it off the bike. Good advice indeed; take a look at the "before" photos. This is how the bike looked as I found it in the trash.
Follow the whole story as it develops:
http://www.ascendant-online.net/v/Us...avId=xf5d68bc1