What Have You Fettled Today?

[GuyBoden]

I've put some new cantilever brake blocks on the tourer, soft red in the front, blue on the rear. I managed to get them about 2mm from the rim, but it took some fiddling and wheel truing.

 

[Nibor]

fitted new TRP HYRD brakes to the exploring bike

 

[Salty seadog]

Adjusted the sale but over tightened the clamp bolt and sheared the head off. Yes now down in the engine room for removal of the rest of the bolt. They say they have spare bolts I can have. Hope so cos I get off in 2 hours and ride home.

 

[overmind]

Ain't steel brilliant?

Dropout adjustment in readiness for the new wheels on the way...
This headset press is better at doing this than it is at pressing cups in!

View attachment 373130

Can you use that tool the make the dropouts narrower too, or only wider ?

 

[Deleted member 1258]

New saddle on my Eastway, plus a clean and regrease of the saddle post. I also stripped, cleaned and regreased the headset, its still noisy though, that despite no free play and smooth operation. It looks like I'm going have to check other places to track down the noise.

Bikes now as quiet as a church mouse, the headset is not one of the better quality ones, caged bearings, and I reckon it's possibly knackered despite it being quiet and smooth. It wanted nipping up a lot more than I expected it to, and it feels like I've over tightened it but it's quiet now so at some point I'll put new bearings in it.

 

[Illaveago]

I had a bit of a look at the Woodrup and see if I could sort out the problems I found yesterday.
I found that the clamp bolt wasn't stripped but that the rear derailleur stops were out of adjustment and weren't allowing the arm to move sufficiently. { Accy's ghost has been meddling.} It was all working fine the last time I took the bike out for a test ride.
The next thing I had a look at was the rear brake. It was toeing out and juddering. I removed the brake calliper and brake block, placed two strips of wood in a vice to protect the arm and gave the brake a slow hard twist. Two attempts and the brake blocks are now parallel.

 

[Sheffield_Tiger]

When you have the house all to yourself......

 

[si_c]

Shifting was really poor on the way home today, derailleur wasn't changing gear smoothly and was jumping gears randomly. Assumed there was some dirt in the cable housing or something, so flushed the derailleur and gear with some WD40 and was changing gears up and down to work it into the inner cable, had only shifted a couple of gears down, when the cable broke.

Less than ideal, so need to get a new set of cables now, and will have to ride into work on the spare bike again tomorrow

 

[Elybazza61]

Messing with Magura hydraulic rim brakes; cut hose to length, new olives and fittings, bled and working perfectly

 

[Sheffield_Tiger]

Oh well, the tyres didn't scrub up as well as I hoped - or rather they scrubbed up but revealed that the sidewalls weren't in the condition they appeared to be under the dirt.

A shame as the genuine Tioga Farmer John's were what everyone wanted when this bike was on the go, but on pocket money / paper rounds / saturday job money, cheap copies were all we could afford for it.

Nevertheless, it looks fine with black tyres - finally finished a Lizard restoration I've been on with for the past few weeks. Under a protective layer of grime, it's all pretty much like new - I doubt it has done 100 miles. The original tyres had perished due to age & the rims had got too much rust to polish back and stay polished back (they rusted in anything but a vacuum) but the stupidly wide chrome 2.125's buckled easily and were a suicidal combo with the Lee Chi cantis and motorbike lever copies, so rear triangle widened to 135 and a set of new (Raleigh of course) alloys.

Looking forward to test riding it to work tomorrow, before it gets put up for sale. Or I keep it. Not sure yet...

 

[Hugh Manatee]

Having had to resort to a set of cobalt drill bits to remove a very stuck cotter pin, the rest of the front end was easy. The Hercules folder gave up the other pin very easily. The two bottom bracket cups were a doddle and the good news is despite a quantity of hard old grease, cups and bearings are fine to refit.

Now the chain is soaking in Deox C which will remove the odd sprinkling of rust. I might try to reassemble everything tonight.

 

[DCBassman]

Installed new brake blocks all round. Rears kept as spares, about 50% left on them.
Note to self: must learn all about Shimano road caliper operation/adjustment.

 

[stoatsngroats]

Bought a pair of SKS Velo, at £9, and fitted the Tortec Transalp rack to the Cube e, then managed to fettle the rear mudguard under the rack and a add a rear reflector and Smart light to the OHs bike. Ready for some evening rides across the fields.
Just deciding whether to do mine too!

 

[Hugh Manatee]

Front hub dismantled, cleaned, checked and rebuilt with fresh grease. Once again, apart from the old grease being hard, everything is good. No signs of wear or pitting on either bearings or surfaces.
Here it is ready to be done up.

 

[ColinJ]

The 10-speed chain on my singlespeed bike was not super-worn, but I was having to take up too much slack with the chain tensioner so I put a new chain on. I have decided to put cheap 8-speed chains on now and change them more frequently.

Bikes now as quiet as a church mouse, the headset is not one of the better quality ones, caged bearings, and I reckon it's possibly knackered despite it being quiet and smooth. It wanted nipping up a lot more than I expected it to, and it feels like I've over tightened it but it's quiet now so at some point I'll put new bearings in it.

I had put a very cheap (sub £10) headset on my DIY singlespeed but it turned out to be a false economy - I could never get it smooth without being overtight***. I ended up binning it. The replacement was a cheapish Ritchie costing about double the price and it works really well.


*** The reason being that the top, er, cup (?) was undersized so not a tight fit. I could actually push it in by hand without the use of tools!