greatbasin

I did some work on a bike today.
I don't have a bike stand, so I just lay the bike on the lawn under the maple tree.

I took the wheels off, removed the QR skewers, and unwound the nuts on the axles. I greased these hubs about 10 years ago and I could still see some red Staplex in there. I wiped that out and cleaned the 7 balls from each side. I don't have Staplex anymore, so I pumped the bearing race full of green Lucas X-tra (polyurea-based) grease. This isn't what I'd use in my skate bearings, but it should last a long time.

The spokes had uneven tension and the rims were out of round. I used my kid's tablet and pulled up a guitar tuning app. I rotated the wheel to put each spoke in the same position and plucked it with a chopstick. The app read out the frequency of the vibration in Megahertz. I went around the wheels and found an average frequency for the front, rear dish, and rear non-dish side and used a spoke wrench to make them all the same. When I was finished, the rear was a bit out of round laterally. I did about a half-turn on the spoke to pull the rim in where it was out, and then the opposing spokes on the opposite side of the wheel. I trued two areas that were out of round this way and called it good.

I took the stem off and took the nut off the headset. I pulled the fork out. I found the head had caged bearings but they didn't appear to be lubricated. There's not a lot of movement there, but I put a light coat of green grease on the races and packed the cages with my fingers.

Whenever I'm putting bearings back together, I like them to be as loose as possible without having any play. I really try to avoid denting the bearing races.

The bottom bracket was next. I don't have a puller for the cranks, but I found some kind of puller for something in the back of my toolbox. It's a two-finger puller, so I could get the non-drive side crank off. I have a claw wrench. It's actually for the nut on the head of a Triumph motorcycle, but it works for the bottom bracket nut too. My puller won't work on the drive side, so I just loosened everything up and took a big syringe of green grease with a big needle on a Luer-lock and stuck it through the bottom bracket shell into the bearing on the opposite side and pumped it full of grease. I filled the near side with the syringe too. I reassembled the crank, again making sure the bearings spun freely before and after I tightened the jam nut.

Next, I moved onto the freewheel. This one is an Atom 77 Compact. I don't have that tool, just like I don't have the 24-spline Maillard tool I needed last month. A problem on this bike was the aluminum dork disc was ripped up and bent and there was some really tough weeds wrapped around between the hub and the freewheel. It was almost like jute twine, but I remember riding through some tall grass and that's what it actually was. I used a propane torch to burn through the twine-like fibers. Then I cut the dork disc out with a cold chisel. Since I couldn't open the freewheel, I poured some 75W140 gear oil in there while spinning it around. That quieted the pawls. I think next time I will try injecting it with CV joint grease which is a blend of gear oil and lithium grease designed not to leak as much as gear oil.

I adjusted the toe on the brake pads, lever positions, and tire pressure. I put a new chain on it a couple weeks ago. Cables are lined Jagwire so I don't lube them. I adjusted the stops on the derailleurs, especially to make sure the chain wouldn't go off the big sprocket without the spoke protector.

So am I an idiot? What did I do wrong? What would you rip me for or rag on me about if you saw me doing any of this stuff? The bike, by the way, was my '87 Schwinn Traveler.