What Have You Fettled Today?

[Punkawallah]

Some very nice rim braked bikes out there at the moment. I have my eye on a Willier Cento Uno with super record, £1k.

The XT SPD's I won on ebay finally turned up after two weeks (combination of seller being on holiday and Evri). First job, pop the axels out, wipe, squirt fresh grease into the body, then put the axels back in. Done. Old grease just get's evacuated as you screw the axel in (old grease was still clear). They were going on the CX bike, but the existing M520's don't seem to want to come off - can't quite get enough leverage, so that's a job for another time.

“You can only do what you can do”.

 

[HLaB]

Cleaned my bike yesterday and let the chain dry out over night before reapplying the drip wax. That chain has done over 3,200 miles now and still isn't 0.5% stretched. Whilst I was at it I stuck another 30ml of sealant in either tyre.

 

[geocycle]

Cleaned my bike yesterday and let the chain dry out over night before reapplying the drip wax. That chain has done over 3,200 miles now and still isn't 0.5% stretched. Whilst I was at it I stuck another 30ml of sealant in either tyre.

View attachment 819611

That’s about my level of floor protection! Good use of junk mail though.

 

[Ming the Merciless]

but the existing M520's don't seem to want to come off

Did you grease threads when you fitted and when you last remove and regrease?

 

[DCLane]

June happened with an intention to complete this project within a week. We're now in late August ...

With a couple of days off I've finally spent a bit of time finishing the Viner Mitus re-build using Dura-Ace 9000/9100 components with a smaller Absolute Black 50/34 chainrings for climbing. With only a 28 tooth cassette - the plan is for 32/34 - it's been a bit of a pain but I'm done.

Most of the components have been transferred off my previous Thompson Capella which was lovely but a size too big. I've added a Dura-Ace 9100 rear derailleur so I can go for a bigger cassette if wanted and used a KMC X11-SL chain in gold plus Fabric's Hex tape in black / lime green which went on well. Final weight as shown is 7.3kg and my climbing wheels will knock at least 1kg off this should I use them.

And the finished photo, with Greta the kitten doing a final check-over inspection deciding that Specialized's 26mm Turbo tyres aren't 26mm at all but more like 22mm:

 

[pippy]

And the finished photo, with Greta the kitten doing a final check-over inspection deciding that Specialized's 26mm Turbo tyres aren't 26mm at all but more like 22mm:

Calico Cats are Clever with Computation!
Ours knows whether her allocation of 'Dreamies' has been reduced to four instead of the expected five and lets us know in no uncertain terms...

Anyhow...

Fettling over the last few days hasn't achieved anything of note since post #18554 in the 'completion' sense nor much in the overall visual stakes as it has been mainly concerning the touching-up of the worst of countless dozens of paint-chips on the '76 Holdsworth frame accrued simply through hard use (and, unfortunately, some 'not my fault' abuse) this past half-century.

Not helping matters was that although the paint bought for the task is a very close match to (and possibly exactly the same as) the original H-Campag. team colour its 'opacity' hardly merits the use of the word. The paint also has the viscosity of water which hardly helps the process and so a greater number of coats than expected need to be built-up all of which means that, for me, it has been (so far!) an almost impossible task to end up with an opaque yet smooth top-coat surface-finish even after the T-Cut stage. On close inspection areas of the stays appear to have experienced a mild outbreak of orange measles...

Heigh-Ho. I'll sleep on the problem overnight and see if I can find a solution that works (no pun intended).

Anyhow; as the preliminary stage of the rebuild - merely re-grease headset & install forks / attach saddle - began just a few minutes before stumps-up this evening I'm looking forward to getting stuck in tomorrow and hope to get the bike back on the road as soon as is possible.

I'm still in two minds as to what to do with the finish of the saddle. For the model-identical saddle of the 'Green Bike' (mentioned hereabouts) a jar of leather pigment / dye / conditioner worked wonders lovely things in terms of renovating / renewing / nourishing the leather but I suspect that the 'very worn' areas of the saddle here are a bit too far 'gone home' for Salvation.
Adding to the awkwardness is that with the NOS Campag. hood rubbers and the way in which the rather old 'bar-tape cleaned up all of a sudden the saddle looks (and, to be honest, is!) rather shabby. Hmmmm....Another thing on which to cogitate...

Where we are now;

Philip.