A clean drive train part Duex

Before

Yesterday with the day of recovery I decided to be at least somewhat productive. So, I stripped down the Scalpel, soaked the chain, cleaned off the remaining dirt (some still from Snotcycle... ouch), cleaned and greased my bolts and seat post and whatnot and did a general thorough once over on the drive train. The results, once again are wonderful.

After

Spring cleaning... a bit early.

A clean drive train is a beautiful thing. Now, I'll start the betting on how long this lasts...

Part of my reasoning for not getting out today, at least on the bike was that; well it's clean! Finally! I've been wanting to do some work on the drive train of the CAAD9 for a while but it appears I'd lost the crescent wrench I needed for the cog removal tool. On top of that I needed a replacement pin so I could remove the chain for once and really get all the deep down embedded grit out of it. Or so I thought. After cleaning I finally realized the Shimano Ultegra (presumably) chain included a master link? Ah well; apparently it'd been a long time since I'd really gotten that chain clean!

The outer chain isn't perfect, but inside is what counts. Those still spotless teeth say it all.

I picked up the necessary things along with some heavy duty orange degreaser from Home Depot and set the chain, cogs, chain rings and chain ring bolts to soaking. Scrubbed everything down and left the chain to soak in the third tub of degreaser for a few hours. Some more scrubbing and individual link attention and I decided I had it about as good as it was gonna get.

Unfortunately even commercial grade degreaser can't do anything about derailleur scratches.

One thing that has always happened when I've tried to do a drive train overhaul is when I lube the chain afterwards the remaining grit I just didn't manage to get out would show up on the cogs and chain rings as soon as I started running the chain over them. That has to be one of the most frustrating things when it comes to cleaning a bike. Today, that didn't happen. It seems that extra soak time did the trick.

Who knew there was writing on the pulley wheel?

I always marvel when I see someone on a bike I know is far from new with a shiny clean drive train. Apparently I just never had the patience. Next up? The rest of the frame. Well, that and the Scalpel's drive train... Now that's a REAL train wreck...

Even the spacers tell you it's a 10 speed.

Karma building

Yesterday was the final Rosaryville State Park trail work event for the season. I managed to drag bro-in-law Brian out to help even though he's only been mountain biking once during the demo day at Rosaryville. A bit of pay it forward action never hurt anyone and you can always use good karma!

It's amazing how easy and simple little things can be that help the trails immensely. Paul, Eric, Tommy and the rest of the folks who've been busting their tails out at Rosaryville have done an amazing job on those trails. So much so that they were actually ride-able despite the loads of rain the previous two days. Well drained trails mean much faster drying and more riding time. Very cool.

Afterwards Brian and I came back to my place to put a new chain on his old Raleigh "mountain bike". I was amazed at how well the rusty grip shifters and derailleurs still worked with the new chain. The seat post was a bit seized but we let some lubricant seep in, took a few smacks with a hammer and got it moving again. Had to do some sanding and some serious greasing before putting it back in but everything seemed pretty good after that. Even managed to true the wheels to where they weren't rubbing 90% of the time on the brakes!

All great, except now Bri just wants to keep the raleigh instead of selling it for whatever he can get and using the $700 he saved up along with that for a newer, nicer (lighter) bike. A well I guess I can't live my "dreams" of newer and better through him all the time.



I've got to get better at remembering to pull out the camera so I can show off some pics. Maybe today I'll grab some shots of whatever it is I end up doing. For now I hope you enjoy Homer's (or homeslice as he is commonly reffered to as) morning face.

Cross rig maintenance

Last night I got a bug to finally pull out the cross bike (a little late for the season I know) from my shed where it's sat for the last 10 months collecting spider webs. I built the bike last year, my first and essentially still my only build and due to some pretty old and poorly operating shifters and some crappy brakes I never really got it working as well as I would have liked. Since then I got a bit of a tutorial on derailleur adjustment from Scott and figured out a bit more about bike maintenance. Last night I think I managed to get the shifting set up about as well as the still rough shifters will allow.

I also managed to adjust the brakes a bit so they fit a bit more snug and don't stick on the rear brake, though it appears any serious stopping power will not come until I replace the cantis. Anyone have any experience with the Avid Shortey 6 canti brakes? I'm eyeing up a set of them or a set of Cane Creek SCX-5's on ebay, both for about $60.



I gave the bike a good wipe down, switched out the crappy fuji saddle that came off the Fuji Track, for the slightly better WTB saddle that came off the Jamis, peeled most of the stickers from the frame aside from the Redline downtube decals and lubed and tuned the remaineer of the bike. Looks pretty decent not and appeared to be working well on the stand. I may bring it out this weekend to Rosaryville for some pre-trail work riding if it gets cold enough and see how well things are really working on it.

In the longer term I'll probably move the singleator over to it, pick up some cheap brake hoods or something and get it set up as a bit of a minimalist single speed cross bike. Is there a slow guy, single speed catagory at cross races?

Bicycle Maintenance Wisdom

Last night my friend Mandie stopped by with the front tire off her (somewhat) new Jamis cyclo-cross that went flat last week during a ride. As I started to pull out the tube (during the commercial breaks for Friday Night Lights which is a fantastic TV show fyi) and did my best to show Mandie what I was doing, my mind jumped to how simple of a task this is. But, then I started to think about when I had no idea how to change a tire and even when I knew how but still wasn’t very sure of myself in doing so and remembered how dumb I felt when I had asked for help in these occasions. I mean who doesn’t know how to change a bicycle tire, right?

While bicycle maintenance is far from complicated and difficult, it is also not just something that you pick up and automatically know how to do (at least not most of us). This past weekend I took my “new” polo/beater bike frame over to City Bikes to get a couple of measurements and I was reminded of just how useless one can feel when dealing with bike maintenance. The first reaction of the mechanic when I walked in with the frame was a bit of an eye roll and a quick run through of what he would likely need to do to build it up. When I explained that I was building it myself and that it was for polo his tone and the amount of respect towards me changed noticeably (keep in mind this was one of my favorite mechanics there and I am not complaining about him or his help as he has been more then helpful to me in his many encounters with my “dumb” questions).

After I told him this and said I was just getting a couple of general ideas for what I would need, he launched into a whole tirade on routes I could take for my bottom bracket and my headset which went well beyond my scope of knowledge. The main thing I got out of our discussion was that it looks like I’ve got an English threaded BB along with a couple of measurements he gave me. Hmmm, most of the rest came out to a smile and nod unfortunately, though I got the general idea for a bit of what he told me. Basically though my knowledge on these parts of the bikes are limited to what I’ve read in my basic bicycle maintenance manual which really is just a basic guide that doesn’t cover most of what I need.

So, I pretty much found myself in similar shoes as to when I first was learning how to do something as simple as changing a flat. I’m sure that after I continue to work on my bikes I’ll get a much better understanding of all the parts and measurements and then I’ll look back at this like I do changing a tire now. Until then though I’ll just have to keep asking questions and trying things out (hopefully with out breaking anything) until I get to the point that I am comfortable with it all.

Scott posted on the Racing Union blog yesterday a post which quickly discussed the differences between knowledge and wisdom. Here I can read about threadless and threaded bottom brackets and headsets all I want but until I get my hands dirty and get some real working experience with them, all this reading is going to produce is some basic knowledge; the wisdom will come with the work itself.

Luckily I’ve got Scott to provide some knowledge to me from his broad bank of wisdom and for the most part he is willing to deal with the “stupid” questions I consistently throw his way. Hopefully I’ll be able to do the same for my friends as they get more ingrained in the world of bikes as well.