VtwinVince

This Stratos basket-case, which now 'looks good from ten feet'.

Drillium Dude 

Just need to scare up a pair of genuine hoods:





Toothpicks and a magnifying lens helped immensely in ensuring a clean result.

Edit: Found hoods on Ebay, and have got three pairs on the way. But, they're coming from Italy, so I'll likely have to wait until a week or two into the New Year before I can mount these, hoods included, on the Bianchi. But they sure look pretty sitting on my desk in the meantime!

DD

ascherer 

Moto-a-gogo: respaced the rear triangle and forks (yay French frames!). Pulled the NDS bottom bracket cups and fund them freshly cleaned and lubed! I don't remember doing it last season but I know Phil grease when I see it. Hoping I did the headset too. If I'm not otherwise occupied tomorrow I'll work on fabricating the Huret dropout adapter. After that, a serious frame cleaning and I'll start hanging components on it.

VintageSteelEU

That sounds a bit like decorating a Christmas tree

PlymouthJLA

I've pulled my 1970 Raleigh Super Course out of mothballs and am giving it a good once over. I finally found a replacement 16GC crank spindle, after running with the original pitted one for too long, and a 26 26TPI adjustable cup (fixed cup was fine). Today I am just finishing servicing the original Huret Luxe Super Touring derailleur with a new cage spring and cleaning & greasing the jockey wheels. I commuted daily on my Super Course with this derailleur during my college years and I wonder how it survived so well, as the chrome is still stunning. Whatever people may say about these Huret derailleurs being awful, once I replaced the original Atom freewheel with a Suntour Perfect, it shifted so much better if it was kept clean & lubricated.

eeuuugh

Fixed up this old Peugeot carbolite for a friend. Last night:

This morning on a shakedown ride to work:

I was dreading working on this frame, as it had a stuck seatpost, clear evidence of a crash on the top and downtubes behind the head lugs, and I was told it had been flooded during hurricane Katrina in 2005. I was also told that all the parts on it were "probably still fine!" 🤣 (they were not.)

The LBS was able to remove the stuck seatpost, the frame cleaned up well with washing and waxing, and the bottom bracket and headset bearing surfaces were in excellent shape! Everything else got replaced. Very happy with how it turned out!

jamesdak 

Just messing around with stuff this morning while watching the World Cup Final. I've been wanting to get different wheels on the Olmo since the bike seemed awfully heavy for the size and tubing. Short on spare good Campagnolo clinchers right now though. So for now I grabbed a light set of spare tubular wheels and put them on the Merckx. That dropped it for now to 18 lbs 2 ozs without the pedals I still need to buy.


Need to still swap brake pads if I run it with these wheels.

Then I took those Mavic wheels and put them on the Olmo. The Mirage wheelset it had on it were absolute boat anchors. Dropped it to 19 lbs 8 ozs with no pedals which is more like you'd expect. Still giving up some weight with the quill stem adapter setup, the heavy saddle, and chunky Kalloy handlebars.

RCMoeur 

When you work on them, many bikes have a story to tell. And in the case of this bright red Bianchi Timber Wolf, it seems to be somewhat of a horror story.

Quick summary: doesn't seem to be crashed, frame & fork eyeballed as reasonably straight, paint in good condition for age, not a lot of visible rust. The plan was to appropriate the Avocet Cross K tires and the 3x6 thumb dial shifters, dump the crank (it's a alu-steel riveted beast with half-knocked-off plastic trim), salvage the BB, and then put the frame and wheels away for a future project.

Everything seemed to be going well until I tried to remove the left side crank dust cap. I suppose I should have noticed the fossilized stream of goo coming out of the dust cap, but anyway I put the small screwdriver in to pop it off.

And it wasn't going anywhere. After some effort of prying, the top plastic snapped off, revealing a messy mix of ancient caulk and epoxy completely filling the space between the spindle nut and the puller threads.

After many minutes with a screwdriver, scribe, and a healthy exercise of vocabulary, I was able to get the threads and nut face sufficiently cleaned enough to ratchet off the nut and a one-shot threading attempt with the puller.

Which fortunately was able to pop the crank off. Whew. Into the recycle bin you go, buddy!

Oh, and the cantilever brake pads were flipped over, with the concave side facing upward.

The wheels are odd - matching generic rims, but with a decent QR hub up front and a rather basic nutted steel freewheel hub in back. Doesn't seem like typical Bianchi spec, even for the low-end Asian-sourced bikes.

So now the frame is stripped and my sanity relatively intact, but I think I'll take a break from bike-dissecting for a couple days...

merziac

Sounds like a normal day at the office, especially since the crank actually did come off with a reasonable amount of "fun".

VtwinVince

That's an interesting use of rims on the left.

RCMoeur 

It's a fun chair, whose history is explained in post 5697.

52telecaster

You can buy them. I always do 36 hole 4 cross!

Classtime 

Doing some wheel building.
As it goes, I ended up with a mis-matched pair of tubulars with 7100 large flange hubs and 1.6/1.8 DB spokes. One of the wheels had crossing spokes flanking the stem so that had to be corrected pretty soon. I also had Normandy Sport hubs on 27 inch clinchers that came on my Peugeot PA-10 which was also not correct. So I dismantled the Dura Ace wheel set and put those mis-matched tubular rims on the Normandy hubs with close-enough used spokes and used nipples. I set aside the Shimano hubs and the ultralight spokes to go with some GP4s that were intended for the Normandy hubs but I think the 7100s are more deserving.

I put the stem on crooked and one spoke off.

Perfect for my next Eroica Bike

These will be nice.

VintageSteelEU

They could use some polishing Then again, I'm a magpie, obsessed with shiny things and cleaning the bicycle every other week. OK, every week actually.
These rims seem to be in a very nice shape for their age. The subject is timely for me, because I'm on a lookout for new rims now (noticed some deformation on the joint of the rear rim on my daily rider yesterday).

Classtime 

Luciano Berruti's bike was not very polished so I think I'm ok. The Normandy hubs were cleaned up quite a bit after being stored outdoors and finally put to the curb. I haven't done a thing to the 7100 hubs and they look great to me.

VintageSteelEU

Oh, I'm joking. There's nothing wrong with patina or these hubs. Whatever your preference, really

Aluminium oxidation is not usually a problem. Though depends how a vintage part was stored. One bicycle I got (obviously storedf outdoors for years) had all the aluminium (and steel) parts in a pretty bad shape and the neglect is still visible even after cleaning and polishing them. Both of my bicycles are basically L'Eroica ready (one has modern rims and modern saddle, which would have to be swapped out for something else to be fully compliant, the other is fully 70's with mid 80's MA2 rims). Which means the newest components are from before late 80's. Nothing too rare and they can be replaced, but I like keeping them in a good shape to prolong their life. Some components were NOS and replacing these would be more problematic or could be pricey. It may be "when they're gone, they're gone" kind of situation. Next thing is that whenever I get some vintage parts, they tend to be filthy. I was surprised with the latest set of Suntour Power Shifters I got that the seller actually did take time to make sure they are cleaned and lubricated. Extremely rare behaviour in V&C parts market.
My daily rider it's not that clean after riding in the rain, of course. Which, considering it tends to rain every other day here means things get mucky pretty quick. If I neglect that, that means quicker wear of the rims, brake pads and pretty much everything muck from the wheels gets onto. So it needs some regular cleanup.
I have polished the aluminium parts before they went on the bicycles. In one case (the 70's one), they just had to be sorted out after years of neglect. In the other case, I'm hoping that oxidation on polished aluminium will be a bit more even after several years. It's also easier to keep it clean this way. Not that I'm going to get back to going over everything with polishing paste again.
Also, I do like the esthetics of polished metal for practical reasons. If you have anodised / painted parts, like late 80's derailleurs, any scuff mark, dent etc. is going to stay there forever or be nigh-on-impossible to touch-up. With un-anodised and un-painted component it's easier to bring it to its former glory.

And finally, when I'm riding a bicycle gleaming in the rare rays of sunshine, with well maintained parts being quiet like a whisper, it's just such a nice dopamine hit

scozim 

I have a few bikes that need some work but can't remember the specifics for each bike since I forgot to write down what they needed. I'll have to wait until spring to ride them again and have the "oh yeah, I was going to do that" memory.

zookster 

Still plugging away on the refurb of my '87 High Sierra.

Classtime 

As I finish a ride, I tell myself to remember some little thing that needs to be addressed on the bike I’m riding. I always forget. There is a small whiteboard in the crawl space I should put up for writing reminders. But, I don’t want my wife to know that I acknowledge I’m loosing my memory.

Chuck M 

I'm going to correct the saddle tilt on this and send it off with the gentleman that brought it to me a couple of years ago. It was going to be raffled off for a fundraiser for a nonprofit. Plans changed and he is going to make a straight up donation for the program and gift this to his teenage daughter that enjoys and appreciates vintage things as a Christmas present. I like this better as it removes the possibility of it being won in a raffle by someone that may have put it in a greater state of neglect than it was when he found it and brought it to me. I know this young lady will appreciate it, take care of it and it will likely survive another 55 plus years.

RCMoeur 

The Rusty Spoke bike co-op has had a unicycle for sale for, well, a while, but tonight some special person came in to purchase it. Yay. Problem was, the 24" tire had become a mite... crunchy. So tonight's task is a tire swap. Where's that 9/16 socket?

merziac

Nothing better than a worthy caretaker finding a proper charge like this.

USAZorro

I picked a 24" wheeled unicycle just before Thanksgiving. Just need to trim the seatpost before I can ride it.

Winter is the season when I have the most opportunity to move projects along. Other times find me mowing the lawn and doing other tasks around the house and yard. With winter officially started now, I've hit the ground running this year. This evening I finished up the complete breakdown, overhauling and reassembly of my step daughter's old Schwinn Crossfit. The entire drivetrain looked as though it may never have been cleaned. It wasn't possible to make it pristine without replacing everything, but it once again appears cared for and is ready to ride.

Since I was on a roll, and had just received some essential parts from jeirvine, I wrapped up my conversion of a Bridgestone 100 that I picked up last spring from a generic 10 (or maybe it was 12) speed to my officially designated fixed gear machine. I had puttered away at this, but needed to install brake levers (for emergency purposes mind you) and re-cable the critter. I'm happy with how it turned out, and plan to take it out on a warmer day than it looks like we're going to have for at least another week.




I have no shortage of cottered cranks and decided this would be a good place for one to land.

Next on the stand is another full rehab. It's either a 1987 or 1988 Giant AT730 that I picked up in a threefer deal - also last spring. The other two were suspension mountain bikes (which I don't do), and were destined to be languishers, so I gave them away last month.

This one came to me with no seat post, ape hanger bars, a banana seat support and a rear rack rigged to clip a fishing pole to... not a tall tale - as you can see.




jeirvine also sent me a proper seat post, which you see here. I dig the stem, but found bars more suited.




If I can't just change out the rings, the crankset has to go. I'm 50-50 on rebuilding the wheels with new spokes, but thinking that can happen later if the wheels aren't too wobbly. The spoke protector will take up residence in a landfill, it will get new consumables and everything else needs deep cleaning and proper lubrication. It should be a fun project before I move on to rigging up the Motobecane Grand Touring that's behind it as a respectable touring bicycle and offering it for sale locally in the spring (too large for me).

Mad Honk 

Today was derailleur day in the shop. This one must have been treated badly and put away wet. Lots of aluminum pitting in hidden places and some damage to the cage plates. I am going to rehab it for a rough day rider unless a good parts donor shows up.

steine13

Not exactly new bike day, but I'm excited about this delivery from rosebikes.com.

I'm looking to build inexpensive wheels for my winter bike, and I've had no luck finding rims or even spokes for a good price. Enter my new favorite German mail-order company... I'd bought from them before and had stuff sent to my parent's house, but they do ship to the U.S. -- just not all products.

The Shimano Nexus hub dynamo in the picture -- an older model -- is only availabel from rosebike.de for shipping within Europe. I brought it back in my carry-on last time I went. The second rim & spokes is for a 3speed Nexus coaster brake IGH I got at the co-op.

Anyway, the front wheel should cost $20 for the rim, $10 for the spokes, and $45 for the dyno hub. Add a Lumotec light for $35, and all that remains to buy is rubber. I shudder to think what this would cost at current U.S. prices.. the strong dollar helps, of course.

I'm starting to lace this thing up. If I'd thought™ to include a couple of $2 40-count boxes of nipples, I wouldn't be re-using old ones.

In the past, I've used the Sheldon Brown method of lacing rims, but after I got confused one time and messed up the spoke hole, I now do the four-spoke "box" around the hole and go from there, using an existing wheel as a model. This has worked well for me, even if it might take a big longer. It also lets me make sure the hub label is facing in the right direction.

What I haven't figured out is the "handedness" of this rim. My usual method is to stick a couple spokes with nipples through adjacent holes and then tilt the rim sideways.. the spokes tell me which way they naturally point. This Belgian-made confection seems to be symmetric. Alrighty then.

cheers -mathias