onre

I was innocently browsing the classifieds around last June when I spotted a listing for two Soviet trekking bikes not that far away from where I live for 5 € apiece. After driving to one of the most middle-of-the-nowhere locations I've ever seen in this part of Finland, I found a young gentleman who instructed me to a dilapitated barn next to an overgrown field, loaded the bikes in my car, paid and left.

So, at the garage I took a better look at what I had just bought.



These things were made en masse by Kharkiv Bicycle Factory for decades. The gold specimen is from 1981, the bronze one 1980. Upon closer inspection, the gold one turned out to be in better condition than the bronze one, whose frame had been repaired very crudely at some point. The bronze one actually became a fixie project and that frame now has a Columbus top tube, but that's another story...

So, after choosing the victim I took apart, cleaned and assembled the hubs. Nothing looked particularly worn, possibly this one hasn't been ridden a lot? Chain, chainring and sprockets were covered in some really thick grease-like substance, which had accumulated a rather impressive amount of grit.

Next I took apart the bottom bracket. These have cottered cranks, which were loose and both cotter pins were unusable - one was deformed and the other had apparently been tightened by the nut, causing the threaded part to stretch almost to the breaking point. The bottom bracket internals were fine, so just cleaning and relubing was enough.

Wheels were in hazardous condition - every spoke still in place was loose. I proceeded to disassemble the wheels and reassemble with fresh spokes. However, there was a certain challenge with the front rim.



I could make it somewhat straighter, but not anywhere close to true.

Next, I bought proper diameter cotter pins only to find out that the profile was wrong - when inserted, they went too far so that tightening the nut would not lock the pin in place. So, I figured I had to make my own cotter pins. Enter Nokia Hacklab (a collaborative working space) and their NC-controlled mini lathe.



The only problem was that I only knew the very basics of operating the machine, and no-one at the Hacklab knew any more - we had just recently gotten the machine and only tested basic functionality with the help of a person who had services these things back in the '90s. So, I bought some 10 mm axle from the hardware store and started figuring out how this stuff works.



In the end I had a NC program capable of turning a completely fine cotter pin profile, though without the... um... facet? Anyway, I mean the slanted surface that's on the pin. Luckily I'm quite handy using a file, so I took one out and here's the end result.



The pins were a perfect fit and I had learned something new. Yay!

Then the brakes, well, they required some attention:



Yes, that's a shoestring, but that's not the whole story - there's a piece of metal wire inside to provide structural integrity.

Then I took inventory of fenders. Two complete front fenders, one complete rear fender. The only rear fender was rather pitted, so I decided to try some chrome polish.



Amazing stuff.

...to be continued...

onre

At some point I also took apart the derailleur, cleaned it and put it back together. Then I just reassembled everything with some new el-cheapo tires.



In this pic the chainring is a 43 from the other bike. At this point I rode the bike for a couple hundred kms and figured out that it's a real fun thing to ride. Quite soon I decided to put the 53 chainring back in place. The rear is 14-18-22-28, I think. I've thought of an ideal socialist strike-worker who just does not need any lower gearing because he's taken good care of his physique and is easily fit enough to tackle any uphill with 53/28, including the Ural mountains.

After judging the front rim to be a hopeless case I decided to order new rims. Also, the rear rim had a weird manufacturing defect - the wheel profiles weren't aligned at the welding seam and this was taken care of at the factory just by grinding material from both sides of the rim until the sides no longer had a step but a rounded notch instead... Hard to explain, but anyway it was botched from the factory.

So, I had already decided this to be a keeper so I decided to go a bit overboard.



Mavic A 319 rims and Panaracer Gravelking SK tires. I built the wheels myself but left the final truing to a professional. I left the Mavic stickers on the rims because I can.

So, later that summer we went for a 400 km bike trek with a friend.





Everything worked just fine. I rode the thing for more than 1000 km last year, the only incident being a stuck pedal bearing which I repaired at the roadside and then properly cleaned and relubed back home.

Just recently the weather has turned for the better and I took the bike out from the storage. I've only done around 50 kilometers so far, but it's still a fun thing to ride.



Here's a pic from today. Toolpouch missing as I forgot that at the storage.

I think my appreciation for the machine comes from the utilitarian nature of the design. It's a working man's bike, nothing fancy but does the job. The small toolpouch contains everything you need to take it apart and put back together.

Spoonrobot 

Thanks for taking the time to make this thread. Interesting bikes and it's wild to see one loaded up and on tour, that's really neat.

TenGrainBread 

Bizare but satisfying restoration!

You're still riding it with only the 53t chainring??

onre

Yeah, the 53t is my new best friend. It keeps me humble and provides excellent motivation for leg exercise! Climbing hills with it isn't that bad after some practice - just keep the cadence up and the hill will eventually end.

Lemond1985

Phew! What a relief, I thought maybe the previous owner "half-assed" the repair. Clearly he took some reasonable precautions (i.e., wire inside the shoestring).

squirtdad

hosting an olut to you

bikemig 

Great story and great job. I toured through Finland once. I've never seen more mosquitoes in my life and I've done a fair amount of touring in the upper midwest which has a lot of mosquitoes as well. But Finland has those states beat and it has some of the best bread I have tried anywhere,

Salamandrine 

Wow. That's not a bike you see everyday! Very interesting story. Thanks for posting.

Doug Fattic 

I'm sure I'm one of the very few members of Bke Forums that has actually been to the XB3 factory in the city of Kharkov Ukraine near the Russian border. Around the year 2000 they had a sign at the entrance celebrating they had been in business for 75 years. They had a fascinating bicycle museum. From what I understand the factory has closed now but I haven't verified if that is true. It is an enormous plant taking up a whole city block that was mostly idle when I was there. At one time they told me they made a million units a year. Of course with the opening of western markets after the fall of communism their old fashioned parts that were all made in the factory was not competitive in quality or performance with what could be imported.

3speedslow

ryansu

Excellent Job Tovarich, the 53t ring is for crushing fascist invaders. Nice find

non-fixie 

Great bike and a great story! Thanks for taking the time to post them here.

I like what you did with the cotter pins.

I also like the crude-but-effective way that XB3 stuff was made. I'm rather fond of this derailleur I found at a swap meet a few years back:

noglider 

Wow! Especially the cotter pin.

GrainBrain

Oh this is one of the better reads in awhile

Did you thread the cotter pin in the machine or use a die?

The Golden Boy 

In Soviet Russia, touring bicycle rides YOU.

jonwvara 

OP: to repeat what others have already said, thanks for such an interesting thread. Come and sauna if you ever find yourself in Vermont!

onre

Thanks to everyone!

With a die. The threading command of the machine is still a bit of a mystery to me. However, I've pretty much decided to make my program use it the next time I'm making cotter pins.

Sure. So far I've only taken it apart, repaired the frame, stripped the cable holders and sourced wheels for it.

Here on the left you can see the botched repair I mentioned - someone had just rolled a piece of sheet metal around the cracked tube, MIG-welded it in place and finished the job with some stickers. Being a forerunner of cool, I also came up with a completely new piercing style.



Here the new tube is going in place. As the XB3 is all millimetre gauge, the original top tube was 25,0 mm instead of the expected 25,4. I had to grind the lugs with a handheld grinder to make it fit.



I did the repairs at a fillet brazing workshop event arranged by a Finnish framebuilder. Haven't done any high-temperature welding since the elementary school. Fun.

What comes to copying, I think the hubs might be inspired by British designs. Only one bearing cone is adjustable, you're supposed to tighten the other one against a notch in the hub axle.

Now that is really interesting. I've tried to find out the current situation of the factory, with little luck.

Planned economy seemed to favor megafactories. In Tallinn, Estonia there used to be, and possibly still is, the plant of Norma, who made all the seatbelts for the whole eastern bloc car industry. It wasn't a small one, either.

Lascauxcaveman 

Oh, now it's shame you didn't get to visit Williamsburg, NYC while you were sporting that look. You'd have been a Hipster God, with everyone lining up to buy you beers.

Bianchigirll 

That shoestring brakes repairs isn't any worse then Mrs Douglas's HotsCakes Head gasket

repechage

gugie 

Someone in Portland, Oregon will be very pissed that they didn't think of this first!

noglider 

This thread just got awesomer.

Doug Fattic 

I just heard back from my friend Dima who lives in Kharkov about the status of the XB3 factory. This is what he wrote: "I heard there was a huge fire on XB3 factory's storehouse a couple of years ago. I've asked my mates - nobody heard about any bicycle production on XB3 for now, even about assembling bicycles.So seems like XB3 is totally over. I will notify you if i will have some news about it."

Dima is an amateur frame builder that came to our workshop west of Kiev where me make frames and assemble them into bicycles to learn more about making frames. I taught him and another friend how to put on a rear triangle accurately without using an expensive fixture.

Kharkov is a large industrial city designed by Lenin in the 20's. It is close to the Russian border and just a bit north of where Putin is trying to take Ukraine territory by force so he has a land bridge to Crimea which is an ideal location to launch submarines into the Black Sea.

Deal4Fuji

great thread and documentation on the repairs ! This is the 2nd recent thread on Russian XB3 bikes. I really like the head badge and stickers on this green XB3, and I'll bet you could fix the dented tubing. https://www.bikeforums.net/classic-v...sian-bike.html

I'd love to find an XB3 close to me.