Gettin' the Word Out

Big thanks to Hank over at the Flickr photo group Three Speed Bicycle Lovers for posting a nice comment to the group about my blog (with photos and everything!). I hope reading over my miseries and joys proves instructive and/or entertaining for any folks who followed the link over here. And I hope my new 10-speed project doesn't disappoint--the Columbia is still my main ride. If anyone has questions or comments, please feel free to post them, and I'll either write you back personally, or post answers to the blog if they'll be useful to the group. It was fun and (relatively) easy to refurbish my bike, and while I'm sure I inadvertently did all kinds of things wrong, it all seems to have worked out in the e...

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More Photos of the Peugeot

I took my customary before photos today, as much to show what needs work as to document where everything goes when I put it back together. Some of the photos here show the dirt, rust, and wear on the bike, others just turned out looking neat, so I put them up. I'll probably get started dismantling and cleaning this weeke...

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A New Old Bike

Hmmm, well, I bought another bike (yeah, I know, this is how it starts). Actually, my father bought me an early Christmas present from 1,000 miles away. See, I was at a thrift store with my wife on Saturday (our version of Black Friday shopping), and I saw the bike sittin' there for $99, and it was on sale. I'd been wanting a road bike to use for exercise, since my Columbia is more for getting around town and less for longer-distance rides. I didn't buy it then, I just figured it was an unnecessary expense. But, I kept thinking about it, talked to my dad, and today went back and bought the...

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I know a place where no cars go.

I took a ride today down into Balboa Park, down to the Prado area--the pedestrian-oriented complex of museums near the San Diego Zoo. Since it is Thanksgiving today, I figured the roads would be pretty bare, and for the most part I was right. The picture above is at the intersection of Park Boulevard and Village Place. Park Blvd. is normally a very busy north-south thoroughfare through the park, but not today. There was some traffic, but not much. Once I got to the park, I was surprised to see quite a number of pedestrians strolling about, despite the fact that the museums were all closed...

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On Doing It Yourself

I have rarely been so happy as when I looked at my finished bike for the first time and thought, "I did this." It was a big project for someone who had never done anything like this before, and who considers himself mechanically disinclined. But, I'll be danged, I did it. The whole project came out exactly as I imagined. I now have a bike that works better (like new, in fact) and looks better, and I did every step of the process myself. I learned how to cut and install new cables, adjust a Sturmey-Archer 3-speed shifter, make fine adjustments on caliper brakes, sand, prime, and paint a bike, grease and reassemble the crank, headset, and axle bearings. I took my time (boy, did I), and I made sure that I did every step of the process just...

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After Pictures (first of many)

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IT LIVES! Mwaaa-ha-ha!

Two big revelations today: 1) I actually have a bike with three speeds now, instead of a three-speed bike that doesn't work right; and 2) I am dramatically out of shape.Both of these came to me today while taking my bike for its first test ride. Let's focus on the first one. After much adjusting and fidgeting and swearing, I finally got the shifter cable adjusted properly (see Sheldon Brown's how-to section on 3-speed cable adjustment--it's about half-way down on the linked page.) The real bugger was getting it adjusted so that it wouldn't freewheel in the middle gear. I now thoroughly understand how to make such adjustments in the future. Thoroughly.For the first year that I had the bike, I never noticed much difference in the three gears,...

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Putting on the Brakes

My task yesterday was to put the brakes back on, a somewhat daunting task because it involved my first-ever cable cutting. I was afraid I would somehow cut in the wrong place and have cables that were too short or some similar disaster, but that part went pretty well. I just used my old cables and housings as a guideline. The only problem came when I actually assembled the hand brakes and noticed that the metal caps the bike shop gave me for the ends of the new cables were too small for my hand brakes. I was able to reuse the plastic cap on one side, but on the other side, it had cracked. ...

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Arr, she's a fine lookin' craft, but will she sail?

That, more or less, is the question. I put the fenders and wheels on today and it was nice to see my bike looking like a bike again, instead of just a collection of parts. I have to admit, I was a little surprised at how good it looks. Damn good, if I may. If it rides half as good as it looks, I'll be happy. I was a little afraid that when I put it back together, it would come out as something else entirely, like when the Simpsons tried to build a pool and built a barn instead. Then, the Amish guy says, "'Tis a fine barn, but sure 'tis no pool, English." Yeah, that's what I thought would...

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Surprise! Reassembly!

I had planned on doing the second clear coat today, and even started on it, but the first piece I coated (the front fender) got all bubbly and cracked and spotty-looking. I think I must have put on a too-heavy coat, but I decided not to push my luck with the other parts. So, instead of doing two coats of clear coat on everything, I'm calling it good with just one. Tomorrow, I'll buff off the botched clear coat on the front fender and then try to reapply it more smoothly. I put a coat of Turtle Wax on everything else, which will also act a protecting layer. Then, I took off the masking tape...

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A Long, Strange Trip

Well, it wasn't that strange, but it sure was long. Three weeks is a long time to be gone when you're a homebody like me. I spent a good amount of time doing research in central Illinois, then another week in my old stomping grounds in Chicago, where I snapped the pictures below. There were so many old bikes around Hyde Park, I couldn't hope to snap them all, but I got a few. It was great to see so many of them being used. Of course, most of them, the chain was squealing, the fenders were rattlin', and the tires needed air, but they were being ridden, at least. Of course, they were usually...

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