Wiring it all up

The bike is now loaded with most of the components that it needs, although I have to say I have not put the mechs in the correct positions. In fact I am not even sure what the correct postions for these are! I am sure a little reading and a lot of fiddling around will sort this out. The chain will have to wait until this is completed.

I have cabled up the brakes which was a comparatively simple job. On this bike the brakes are of the cantilever style, which to look at the forum were going out of style in favour of the better stopping power of V style brakes. I am pleased to see that the brakes have made a come back, mostly due to the style conscious fixie couriers who clearly prefer them for some reason.  Not quite an evolutionary dead yet.

Cabling the brakes was simple as the brakes have a fixed length of cable defined by the hanger to operate the brakes. The rest of the cable length is actually irrelevant. It doesn't really seem to change the stiffness of the brakes. This means you can get away with bigish loops of  cable in the housing. Which is exactly what I didn't do, and I am now regretting the rather measly amount of cable I gave myself for the front brake. It is not affecting performance but it does look slight inelegant. I'd go back and change it, but that would mean a new cable and I am loathe to buy more just to satisfy a little bit of artistic flare. It can be correct when the brakes need changing again.

Cursing and fumbling with a 10mm spanner and a 5mm Hex key I remember that there is a pay off for canti brakes. Each brake block is adjustable. Fantastic for getting the perfect fit, but then again each of the two pairs of brake blocks needs to hit the rims at exactly the same point in time. Time slows as I fiddle moving blocks back and forward, fingers cramping from holding spanners and pulling brake levers. Back is aching from leaning over the bike until the stopping power of the brakes can be applied cleanly and evenly. "Think of it as a pay off", I tell myself "in the wet weather when a car decides to stop suddenly or turn across you. Then the bike will stop in a straight line and not slew across the road."
"Or I could just not cycle in the rain!" I reply.

I am now left with a large amount of cable housing and some spare cable. The housing is fine, there is always a need for housing and it fits both brakes and and gear cables. But the cable is a different matter. You can't use it on the bike to replace cable so what can you use it for. I am sure there is some hidden purpose for which it could usefully be employed. But what?

Stripped naked

One frame stripped and cleaned with the exception of the the bottom bracket and the headset. The reason for this is that both are moving smoothly and I have no desire to introduce dust and dirt into the bearings without reason. Looking at the cantis I decided that they could do with a good clean. There was a lot of road crud round the mounting bosses and while everything is off it made sense to clean right down.

Of course this causes a little confusion as when confronted with assembling something that you have got so used to seeing daily there is a moment of "how does it go?". A little bit of logic thinking though solves most problems and it was easy to see how the cantilevers fitted together. I was a bit thrown by the cable routing for a moment but that is because the line runs across of the back of the seat tube.


The cassette was really the only issue for the strip down. I have a Shimano lock ring tool for removing the lock ring (obviously). It is not a particularly expensive one coming as it did as part of a Halford's basic maintance kit. It does work though as it was used to do the work on the cassette of the P3 (Cassettes and Remasters). This time though it would not budge and was in danger of stripping all the splines off the tool. In fact it has done enough damage that I am going to have to get a new one.

Well and truly beyond the shifting with my short arm ratchet spanner and my middle aged bulk, after soaking in GT85 and a tap or two with a hammer to break and magnetised bond. I was down to a blowtorch (I don't have one), a longer spanner (I don't have one) or an angle grinder (I don't have one). Rather than fork out more than £40 for one of the above I thought I will give a local bike shop a call and see if they will take on the job. Having not got anywhere positive with one "local" bike shop. I say local because as you know they are a significant drive from central Croydon. I tried the other in Beckenham - "yes" said Deen's Garage in Beckenham. Not only did they happily apply a longer lever to the problem they also didn't charge a workshop fee because it was a quick job.

They say it easier to destroy than create. Now is the time when I find out if this is true. A bike that has served as a faithful servant riding across the West country along the Bristol to Plymouth route and over Welsh hillsides, as well as recent commuting to and from Greenwich, is about to have a make over.

And so the Legacy begins

In the absence of any project bikes, and despite my recent experience with bits falling off the P3 frame (must buy torque wrench). I decided to start work on my hybrid bike. Over the past couple of months I have been assembling a series of spares to overhaul the quite frankly knackered shifters and the aging drivechain parts. The experience of changing gears has reached the top end of tempermental. Which is to say the occasional inconvenience of forgetting your house keys as opposed to the Alzheimer memory loss.

This bike is a Ridgeback Adventure SX120 - bought back in the early 90's and still going strong. When it was relatively new there was an inadvertant upgrade of wheels and hubs which looks to have been a very positive move as they run as smooth as the day they were fitted. It will also allow me to fit a 9 speed to them taking the range for the cassette from its lowly to 7 and adding a bit of low climbing gears for my tired old legs.

In my previous round of parts purchasing I had picked up some Shimano LX mechs and although I had planned to put these on an MTB build, I have decided that these should be the basis of the equipment change. Should these second hand parts fail then I have the option of buying a new part that will slot into the system. As this is to be a workhorse bike I wanted all the parts to be of a decent level of mechanical soundness. Most LX parts are relatively cheap and the shifters were easily located at a low price due to discontinuation of the items. A 9 speed chain and an HG50 cassette make up the drivechain parts.

The brake levers were also a little tatty and quite frankly as the levers themselves are plastic, I decided that replacement with some Avid Juicy 7's was a nice touch. Finally to complete the comfort rating I am going to add some Ergo grips and a new saddle (the old ones have been on from new, and I'm sure I deserve it).

My first task will be to strip down the bike and clean, I will leave the cantilevers on the bike. I'm not sure I want to go as far as a bare frame rebuild, but when I look at the bike I may change my mind.

Cry "Havoc!" and let slip the dogs of war.

Finally, the bike is complete! There are a few niggles, like the fact that it is unrideable in its current configuration, but it is complete and I am hoping that the issues can be overcome quickly and cheaply.

brake boss line up

Finally, I have brake bosses that at least partially work with the XT brake arms. If you look in the photograph you can see the three versions that I managed to get. Look at the different size of the lip next to the screw and if you can compare the profile of each boss fitting. Not all bosses are the same and so when you get to adding brake arms it is clearly a question of the right ones for the job. I'm keeping the others in my spares box for anyother job. The one to the right is from Tiawan and made of titanium, but is far better quality and has a better profile than the others. Even so it does not provide a perfect fit for the brake arms, with a small 3mm gap between the frame and the arm. I am hoping that this will not cause to much strain in braking, because if it does I will need to see if the adaptor kit works any better.

just a small gap

Confident that I would at least have some braking potential, and finding my Sunday afternoon surprisingly free, I continued on completing the last jobs on the bike. First up chain onto the bike. Simple enough, I'm not going to explain the ins and outs as it is done well enough in Zinn and in other bicycle maintance books. I had not appreciated how much you need to be an octopus though. I was most pleased that I was fixing the chain together with a powerlink and not having to force a pin into place with a chain tool. Really simple, but a little more fiddley was the task of aligning the rear derailleur (mech). Setting the high and low screws to match the limits of chain movement is simple in theory. I found that holding the derailleur over the low position and looking at where the limit screw was holding gave me more confidence that this phase was set up.

powerlink

I then needed to cut the housing for both the brakes and the gears. I wish I had a proper wire cutter for this as it was hard work with the cutter on my old pliers, but they worked adequately. Fighting to not strip the wire as you thread it through the housing is also a must. Not only does it make it difficult to thread, it will also weaken the cable.  Finally, I fitted the handlebar grips, (some lizardskin ones which have lock down bolts) and adjusted the shifter and brake levers into position.

I have however, created a bike that is a little overdeveloped in the tyre department. There is an alignment issue with the rear wheel which I think is easy to sort, but there is one major problem that is preventing me from riding the P3 today. The tyres are too fat. Inflated the rear tyre is one large balloon wedged between the downstays. Not so bad at lower pressures, but it still rubs the frame badly. The original tyres that came with the wheels, I seems to remember, were fine. So I will try a switch back. In the short term there is a potential to borrow some from Uncle Riotous who is storing a load of spares. The ultimate will be a rebuild of the hub on a narrower rim. Whilst I have enjoyed assembling a bike from its components and I even feel that framebuilding might one day be an option- I have visions of being an old man with a shed in the Welsh mountains building custom frames. Wheel building is an art that requires specialisr equipment, much patience and many hours. So to rebuild the wheel I think I may need to employ my local bike shop.

The beast nearly ready for action

Oh arse!!

There are always times of frustration in the progress of any project, today the P3 project encountered another one. The bosses arrived in the post and I went outside to fit them in a spare 5 minutes at lunchtime. They looked a perfect match, the thread an exact match for the screw in mount housing on the forks. The the first grrr moment. In order to screw them in I was going to need a 9mm spanner - I had 7,8......10, 11?!!! What the? Where? Resigned to not finding the missing spanner I walked up the road to the local hardware store and bought a cheap replacement.

Almost, all in and the bosses are getting tight. Wondering how much further I slide the XT brake arms on to the bosses, only....they won't reach. Not they won't reach because I need to screw the boss in further. They won't reach even when screwed in flush. Arse!!!

I unscrew one, extra time wasted, and extract one of the brake arms from the old bike out of the shed. This slides on perfectly. I go and check the XT arm again, no dice. There is a ridge on the boss which allows you to tighten the boss in the mount. It is also where part of the brake arm locks in, it is too bid for the XT arm, but not for el cheapo fitting. I'm left with a quandry, do I fit el cheapo and look for an alternative? Do I file off the excess? Perhaps a little chat with the suppliers and a chance of an exchange? First though, I need to get the other boss off the forks, and its stuck! The cheap 9mm spanner is bending under the force. I give up and get on with living the rest of my life. I can have a real crack at it some other day.

Who's the boss?

Well not me it seems. I had expected small hiccups in the process of putting this bike together, but really I didn't expect them all to come at the end. I feel like I am at an evolutionary dead-end. The forks arrived this week, and yes they are all they were descrived to be. Certainly not the forks to sit on the machine forever, but good enough for some casual cross-country/downhill riding. They are also dual brake capable, that is you can fit disc brakes or the more low tech V-brakes (also known as side pull cantilevers). There is a snag. I could fit disc brakes to the forks, but the hubs I have are not designed to take the disc. I can't bolt on V-brakes straight away because the forks lack the brake bosses needed to fit the brake arms. This would not be a difficult proposition if there was a surfeit of brake bosses on sale. I think I might have found a kit for the forks, but it only mentions forks produced from 2007 onwards. This leads me to some concern as I am worried that my local bike shops will not stock the spare parts I require.

This is what leads me to feel at an evolutionary dead-end. The trend is towards disc brakes on sports mountain bikes, and although V-brakes are common on low end leisure bikes, no-one takes a high spec sports bike and puts V-brakes on it. A problem for all those retro-bike builders out there. Soon the spare forks will only be off leisure bikes, which are not capable handling the punishment or a more aggressive riding style, and we will no longer be able to ride some of these classic frames. The bikes will not be superceded because they were unable to compete in the environment, but they lack the input of the manufacturer's resources. The world has changed and moved on.

Making the most of time

Project management is all about getting  a task accomplished within the confines of limits such as time and cost. The trouble with personal projects, such as project bike builds, is that they always cost more and take more time. The former is a result of finding that parts that were thought to be sound are not and need replacing or the need for extra tools. The latter, is the result of the work being performed in your "spare" time. If like me you are a family man with an interest in many things in life "spare" time is a precious commodity. So far this week, I have helped out at mini-rugby, watched a match, taught my 4 year old daughter to ride her bike, said goodbye to the wife, polished all the shoes and boots in the house, cleaned the house, clothed, ferried and fed the kids, knocked down a wall and cleared the rubble. Finally, come Friday, I have an hour to work on the bike. Only, I can't really do what I want to do, which is to assemble the fork to the frame.

You see this is time for another cost over-run. What I hadn't seen coming was the need for a specialist tool for seating the headset cups (Storm in an H-cup). So although, I have set Uncle Riotous to seeing if any of his contacts have one in their tool locker, I am at an impasse. I have managed to source a tool at a sensible price (£30 vs £60), but I am unwilling to spend money if I can borrow the tool. Having said that, at £30 you are only looking at three workshop visits and it is paid for, so there is a potential to earn beer money here.  There is also the ability to make you own, using various bits of DIY ironmongery. However, the precision can suffer, and I would rather not leave the alignment to chance.

So I am waiting, and I have free time, so I do what any good project manager would do and try to find something that can be done while waiting for the next logical step in a project to be completed. Thankfully, the rear derailleur fitting does does not need the forks, but it does need careful storage. A bent rear mech will be no good later on, and a waste of a straight out of the box bit of kit. So I will have to add the rear wheel to keep the rear mech off the ground. With the rear brake bosses also fitted to the bike I can at least fit these, if not wire them up. If I have time I think, I could also add the chain, although this would be easier on a workstand, when adjustments can be made.

First up then, fit the rear wheel. Seated in the dropouts, I am slightly worried. The tyres are rubbing against the frame work, even when seating position is adjusted. I hope this is just due to the tyre being deflated, or else my tyre choice is just plain wrong. In comparison, bolting the rear mech to the hanger is a doddle. I am impressed with how it sits there like some big black spider above the silver web of the chainset. Then comes adding  the rear brakes to the bike, also, I had forgotten, in black. These are returns, and there are signs on the bolts that they have been used. Coupled with some paint and rust, it actually takes longer to fit all the parts and it is time to do the school run again. The chain can wait, but already I can see the overall effect of the bike; black, red and silver.