Sunday, March 04, 2007

Maintenance update

Well, that bike is done and ready to ride. Chain whip and cassette remover arrived, and I took the rear hub all apart, cleaned and regreased it, and reassembled. Not a huge deal at all. Put it on the trainer and adjusted front and rear derailleurs for new chainrings and rear indexing, adjusted brakes, lubed chain, and all is well. Also retaped left side of handlebars that I just wasn't happy with, and it seems a little better now. Time will tell.

Took the old bike off the trainer and got it ready for an overhaul. Meanwhile, the Trek doesn't work so well on the trainer, because the clamp that adjusts the pressure on the tire also appears to be rubbing the tire at every turn. Not sure if the wheel is a little untrue or if the tire itself is a little off, but continuing to ride it would definitely ruin the tire. So now the old junk mountain bike is on the trainer temporarily. Can't get a high enough gear ratio to provide meaningful resistance, so have to spin in a higher cadence instead. Better than nothing, and spring is not far away...

Removed chain and wheels from old bike, but still couldn't pull off the cranks. The old crank tool was stripped. So, went to Plaine's and picked up yet another Park Tool, a crank puller for those old cranks. FINALLY, after about 10 years, got the cranks off. The bottom bracket feels like it has no grease left whatsoever, so a complete overhaul is LONG overdue. Disassembled the front hub, and discovered that any grease in there had long since congealed to the point of being useless. Gotta do this more often!!! Unable to remove the 14-17-21-24-28 freewheel without stripping, so will leave it and overhaul the rear hub around it. That hub seems a little tight, and probably also has some pretty useless grease. Next step is to find some environment-friendly solvent - Simple Green is working fine for chain grime and general frame cleaning, but not so well for degreasing some of these other moving parts.

0 Comments:

Post a Comment

<< Home