It also happened that this arrived in the mail:
I figured it was time to stop eyeballing stuff, especially since it seems that on older bicycles they made stuff in all sorts of sizes.
Thank to my seven dollar caliper, I found out that I ordered the wrong seat post size:
Turns out that puppy is a 26.8.
See now if I had ordered the caliper first, I could have saved like twenty bucks.
Okay, not really cause the caliper cost me like twelve bucks so I really would have only saved eight bucks.
If you know what I mean.
So anyways, I rolled the BWTFN out to the garage and got to work.
First thing to check was that rust on the fork. Out came the Dremel and off came the rust.
It wasn't that bad:
As you can see it was pitted some, but I don't think it jeopardizes the structure of the fork.
Which is a good thing for I think it is one of those Tange steel thingys:
Or maybe the drop out is Tange I dunno, anyways it saves me from hunting down a new fork.
The stem though is stuck.
I mean really really stuck.
Still figuring out what to do about that.
I cut off all the cables and tried to do some cleaning.
The shifters it turns out were indexed. Unfortunately the rear shifter is cracked and I already ordered a stem shifter.
Still, I'll look and see what some five speed indexed shifters will cost.
Just in case I feel the need to mount the shifters on the bars.
The bicycle seems to have sat on something, what I don't know:
It appears to have dented the stays a bit, though I won't be able to really tell until I grind some of that rust off.
Which means I guess, that I'm painting the bike.
Which means I guess, that I'm taking it all apart.
Which means I guess, that I'm probably going to find more stuff to fix.
Oh well, I knew the job was dangerous when I took it Fred.
The free wheel and the pie plate cleaned up okay:
I swear that thing must weigh like fifteen pounds!
Maybe they CNC'd that thing out of an Olympic discus or manhole cover.
Did they have CNC machines in the olden days?
Well they did have Biopace rings:
My second Biopace bike.
Cool!
The cranks are 165s, and seem like they are still in good shape. The pedals still turn freely so I'll probably just keep them.
I didn't want to get into the bottom bracket and stuff so I stopped there and since this post is getting long, I guess I'll stop here too.
There were a couple of strange things I found but I'll get to that later.
Stay tuned.
6 comments:
Is it possible that the bike could have had a two legged centre stand...? If that had been clamped too tight that could account for the dented stays and the rusty marks that you show in the photo...
I think Trevor is right, though I've seen similar symptoms due to a regular Pletscher kick stand. It's the plate clamping that does the damage. Considering that's where nobody's going to look, simply paint the chainstay bottoms where the rust is - unless you didn't like the color anyway in which case you have your excuse.
Rumor has it the Biopace HP rings are more conducive to 90+ rpm spinning without bouncing. I guess we'll see, once you get it all painted BRIGHT SCREAMING RED and take it out...
Trevor, Steve A., you guys may be right. There are some marking on top that sort of look like something was there.
Boy, I can't imagine someone clamping it down so much as to compress the stay!
JRA, it seemed like I had trouble maintaining a high cadence with Biopace rings!
And yes, leaning favorably towards a BRIGHT SCREAMING RED.
I would put money on the dents being from a kickstand. It doesn't take as much force as you would think, to do that. (That's why so many bikes sport the same damage.)
Shouldn't cause you any problems, though.
After looking at the area again, it doesn't look as bad as I thought.
I'll post up some pics when I grind the rust off.
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