BTinNYC 

Finished brazing on the Crescent project. Big !thank you! to scarlson for all the tips on brazing and the "go for it".

Next steps are paint prep. First is the filing and sanding of the lugs. It's pretty obvious that Crescent didn't clean off the lug's rough casting marks. They just put on a ridiculously thick coating of paint to cover the total lack of handwork. Cleaning up their messy brazing around the fancy lugs is stupid, but I guess I enjoy it.

The seat stay caps are so deeply scored (by the factory gorillas, the rips were under the paint) that I'm concerned about filing through in places. So they'll get a coat of Bondo.

Pompiere

I spent some time on the $1 Univega yesterday. I decided to leave the paint as-is for now, but there are a lot of bare metal spots, so it will need repainted at some point if I decide to keep it. I am building it mostly with parts that either came from the BOC, or were destined for the BOC. I thought the correct seat post was 26.6 mm, but when I tried it, the post would only go in about an inch, even after honing the inside of the seat tube to remove any burrs. I didn't have an alloy 26.4 post, so I tried a 26.4 steel post from another bike. It's a loose fit, but the ears didn't pinch together when I tightened the clamp, so I guess that is what I will be using. I might chuck the other post in the drill press later and sand it down a little bit. I still need to decide on a stem and bars, mount the brake levers, and do the cables. I did a preliminary weight check (including everything but cables) and it was just over 25 lbs, so not too bad considering the number of steel parts it has.

Mad Honk 

I wound up having to shave a bit off the seat post for my Ochsner frame. Should have been 26.8 but 26.6 was too small like yours. I had a slightly damaged 26.8 and used a 3M wheel to shave about .1mm while also polishing the post to a nice round and even finish. Good Luck with shaving the post down. Smiles, MH

darnet

Cleaning, reassembly, 2nd & 3rd Rides, & weight loss formula

Lo and behold, last Saturday I saw a custom-painted Schwinn Approved something-or-other (made in Japan, might have originally been a red color) at the dump. It was parked alongside, for your viewing pleasure, another, what might be considered REAL, Huffy. So many clunkers, so little time!


I did not adopt either, but I did give the Schwinn a reprieve from the scrap metal pile, during which I harvested the headset cups, tires (27 inch and not bad), a kickstand (to hold bike upright for photos), and stops for the shift cables. It also had an allow front wheel which I will use. The cable stops I mentioned last post.



I used the headset cups to replace the rusted and peeled bottom cup from the Red-Winged Black Huffy (aka Le Huffy).



Since reassembly I have ridden twice more, 8 km and 12 km. The Huffy now stands at a total of 32 km. The 2nd ride was on hilly streets, and the wobbling of the untrue front wheel started to bug me on descents, so I trued it before the third ride. It is now steady. The bike has a really nice feel, and I wonder if the heavy steel wheels contribute to that. I’ll soon find out, when I upgrade to alloy rims.

The Red-Winged Black Huffy, after the handlebar swap, shorter cable housings, and lighter shifter, has shed 1kg (now weighs 13.8 kg). Today, my body weight is down 1.8 kg. When I drop another 1.2 kg I’ll have the green light to further lighten the Huffy.

jdawginsc 

I love how you are approaching this. Very cool.

Pompiere

I wasn't intending to participate in the On The Road Again Project Challenge this year, but since I got this Univega frame for almost nothing, I thought maybe I could put it together completely from my parts bin. As I began to gather the pieces, I realized a lot of them had come from from the Box O' Crap. So I decided to see how far I could get using BOC parts. I began participating in 2011, so over time I have accumulated a fair number of parts.


It all began with this Univega frame I got for $1 at the Monroe Bike swap. It looks pretty beat up, but it is straight.


BOC parts in the cockpit include the hoods, stem, and the cracked mirror. I found a Road Champion bar with a 77 date stamp to match the year of the frame. The bar tape has probably been reused a dozen times. Cables were salvaged from other bikes.


BOC drivetrain parts include the front and rear Altus derailleurs, freewheel, pedals, crank bolts, downtube cable guide, and bottom bracket cartridge.


The seat post bolt is the last piece from the BOC. The Avocet saddle came from a bike swap last year.

I bought the tires and thread-less stem adaptor on clearance from pre-bankruptcy Nashbar. These tires have been a pain to mount on every rim I've tried. I stopped riding on them because I was afraid I wouldn't be able to fix a flat on the road. Today, I tried the tires on these wheels and the beads slipped right on. The wheels were gifted to me a couple years ago. Every part of this build I had on hand prior to the beginning of the year, so my only outlay was the dollar for the frame. I did a short test down to the corner and back and it looks like a hundred kilometers will be a breeze. If I still like the bike after putting some miles on it, I would like to paint the frame, but that will most likely be after the contest.

AdventureManCO 

Two things stand out to me:

You know, as long as the bike is 'relatively' aligned and doesn't pull to one side or the other, they aren't as bad as people think. Yes, change the seat and the brakes. And wheels. And cranks. And headset. And...and...and...(and I guess this is really a Raleigh)...


Which leads me to -

You have to be careful here, because I found it quite addicting to keep asking myself, 'Hmm...so I wonder how much better the bike will ride when I drop this amount of weight?'...because it does keep getting better, and the cycle seems to go on forever.

The antidote to this is to remember a quote from that other valuation that, which seems to really ring true in my case, something to the tune of...'One man's junk...is still just junk'

Pompiere

The first official ride on the $1 Univega is in the books. I did 20 miles with the local club. I am really happy with this bike. It tracked straight, soaked up the bumps, and didn't feel like a cheap bike. Finishing the required mileage will definitely not be a chore.

AdventureManCO 

Well it finally came out!

darnet

Problem is, I haven't lost any more weight since km 32 (about two weeks ago), even though I have reached 74 km to date. So I can't yet give myself the green light to further lighten the Huffy. I would really like to install alloy wheels before I complete the challenge!

darnet

4th & 5th rides – 5/29/24 & 5/31/24

I didn’t think the Red-winged Black Huffy coasted freely enough, even though the wheel bearings were smooth and the brake calipers had lots of clearance. I wondered if the old dried out tires (possibly as old as the bike) might have high rolling resistance. For ride #4, I replaced them with a pair of more pliable Specialized “Roadsport FlakJacket” tires harvested from the custom-painted Schwinn-Approved.

Then I drove my car out to a shop for some repairs, and rode the Huffy back home. I made it 16.3 km, almost all the way.



I’m can’t say she coasted any better, but when braking, esp. on longer descents, there was again some unpleasant pulsing. The calipers seem to be normal.

Incident 1: I was rounding the last turn onto my home street, when the front tire deflated with a whoosh. I normally would have made use of my spare tube and finished the last few km, but my loving wife just happened to be driving home from Leda Lanes (Candlepin Bowling), and was about 1 km behind me in her car. She stopped for me and I rode home with her and the bike in the trunk.



Well, the bike was in the trunk, she was driving.

Afterward, I found two small holes on the rim side of the tube. They were about 180 degrees from the valve stem. Not like a typical “snake bite” puncture, the holes ran circumferentially. I thought maybe I damaged the tube when installing the Roadsport tire.

I replaced the tube and inflated the tire when noticed these two bubbles emerging from the sidewall. I always align the tire label with the valve stem hole, and the bubbles were at the same area as the first tube's holes (right after I took a picture the tube exploded with a gunshot sound). Now I wonder, did the Huffy brake pads run through the tire, or was the tire was just weak at the rim’s edge, or had the Schwinn Approved brakes rubbed the tire ?

Regardless, the go-forward plan will be to toss the other Schwinn tire, install two even newer tires, and mount newer and thinner profile brake shoes. As long as I’m paying attention to the brakes, the rear brake cable tends to stick, so I’ll replace that able and housing, the last long cable-in-housing on the bike.

Question: does anyone know what the marking in the bottom right panel of the first picture, “Fits T&RA SS6 Rim,” means?


For ride 5 (5/31/24 -- 12 km) I hadn't sorted out new tires or brakes yet , so I temporarily installed the wheels and tires from a Raleigh Gran Sport I bought in 2022, and off to the rail trail again.

The loaner wheels were 27” with QR front and rear (originally Huffy rear hub was bolt-on), with a six-speed freewheel. The lighter shifters I’d installed after ride 3 were also six-speed, and indexed. But they were Shimano, and the rear derailleur SunTour. So I got to see how the Shimano shifter and Suntour rear derailleur got along. Answer: The indexing did not match. So I shifted in “friction” mode (which I don’t at all mind).

Incident 2: after the first couple of rail trail miles, the rear wheel slid in the dropout and started rubbing the left wheel stay. I recentered the wheel and tightened the QR skewer and went on with no more problems.

Total distance to date: 60.3 km.

Parts installed to date: stem shifters, handlebar, cable stops, shift cables
Parts pending installation: tires and tubes, brake pads

Hope for the future: alloy rims & alloy seat post (when I manage to drop a couple more pounds – stuck on a plateau for the time being).

AdventureManCO 

Yeah, alloy wheels would be great, also to gain access to a nice world of quality 700c clincher tires as well.

EDIT: Oh snap! I just saw your post above! Now you've got a great excuse to change out those wheels - time to get some new tires as well! Got a co-op near you?

Pompiere

This morning I finished the official distance for the challenge on my Dollar Univega. I did it over three rides, more as a testament to my conditioning than how the bike rode. I now have 110.7 km (68.8 miles), but I will probably ride some more before the challenge is over. If I can find the time, I would like to throw some paint at it, so it would look a little nicer for the judging. Paint doesn't count against the total, right? I would probably be using a leftover can anyway.

USAZorro

I think it's unlikely you'd bump the limit with a rattlecan.

Thrifty me definitely understands that a $1.00 build confers a certain aura of efficiency, which I would not dare to dispute. Just tell us that the bicycle was vandalized, and the paint will add zero.

darnet

Ride 6 --- trails

In the last century (millenium) (1900’s), I often rode my Miyata Alumicross on a conservation land trail that took me through the woods to the Nashua NH airport perimeter road, where I could cross the airport, a convenient shortcut to and from Merrimack, NH.

In that century, the trail entrance was near an abandoned and grown-over industrial building. Sometime in this century, that building, along with the trail entrance, was effaced by a cul-de-sac, 50+ senior living, neighborhood.

Recall that on ride 5 I'd tried without success to find that trail, on the way home from the auto body shop.

Ride 6 (shown as captured on Strava) was an attempt to find that trail entrance. I rode into the 50+ neighborhood, and found an entrance to some off-road path. Turned out it was not the trail I wanted. But, I rode a bit of cyclocross, made it across some water moving across the trail, and the trail ultimately led me to the edge of Pennichuck Pond.

Before the ride, I replaced the rear derailleur, for no real reason except that last year I just had to get a SunTour 3-jockey wheel derailleur (also for no real reason). Onto the Huffy that went, and it shifted nicely, and is just cool, not at all ugly.


According to Disraeli gears, the design gave huge capacity with a relatively short cage. https://www.disraeligears.co.uk/site...ey_system.html.

11.7 km; total: 74km



Ride 7: out and back to exercise place. 6.3 km.

Steep uphills on the way out. That’s when I noticed my new derailleur was not adjusted quite right, and would not make it out to the big freewheel gear. I didn’t need it on the rail trail so hadn’t noticed.

Total: 80.3 km



Ride 8: 6/8 – new “rail trail” 5.4 km; total: 85.7

On this beautiful Saturday afternoon, my wife and I went to ride the “Granite Town Rail Trail” in Milford, NH. We’d never been there


, and I doubt we will again. Not the typical rail trail, more suitable for hiking. The bike rode and shifted fine, but the trail was narrow and bumpy, and we had quite a few dismounts for steps, hills, and road crossings (including one tunnel). We made a short trip of it.