26th novembre 2012 Fixie project phase 5

 26th novembre 2012 Fixie project phase 5

And we are nearly there. A long Saturday playing with this thing, a slightly damaged toe, a bent socket wrench, a lot of Simon's special grease and eccola!

Putting the last few bits and bobs together was easy on paper, but beset with the usual difficultoes and difficulties (more later) of someone who doesn't know what they are doing. Paint was done and I started putting the other bits together. The tyres are really not up to much, a maximum of 95 psi and recommended weight to not exceed 65 kg (!!) and I managed to blow up one inner tube early on. I shall keep them only lightly inflated until I have more confidence in them, and in my ability to ride fixie.
So after wheels were prepped the first job was to put the bottom bracket in. I had been warned about putting the BB in, and was not sure that I had even purchased the correct one. Borrowed a bit of Simon's special grease and started to install and it seemed pretty sweet. Sweet until I had about 6 turns left when it became hard.  Very hard. Had I blundered with the sizing or the type, or was I jsut being a wimp? Did I have the correct tool for the job? that is a very leading question. I had purchased the bottom bracket on line with a buyer beware notification that it may well be incorrect. I had also purchased the bottom bracket installation tool, which required a socket wrench. And I didn't have one here.

In the UK, I could have popped to Halfords, or Tescos or the 99p shop or just about anywhere to buy one but here I know of only one place, a 30 minute drive away near Colle Val D'Elsa which sells stuff like that. I jollied off there and of course it was shut. All shops, especially remote ones, shut between 1300-1600 on Saturday. So I racked my brain and tried Decathlon. No joy there, although I did buy a chain cleaning rig and an indoor bike trainer(!). Then I went to Coop which has recently expanded it's tool range, but no luck. Then I went to Pam. No luck. Then I was driving around, looking for a petrol station that might have some tools (all shut). As I was heading to another shut shop I remembered the "Chinese Shop" - a shop selling lots of random stuff including some tools, and as luck would have it, in there I found a strange kind of socket wrench.

So, as I was tightening the wrench it got hard. At this point I was still using my workstand. Mistake. This was when I had the catastoephree or difficultoe. The frame fell out of the stand and landed plumb on my toe - my toe was ok, but went through waves and waves of pain all night, dulled by a lot of ibuprofen and a bottle of wine. The bike survived but suffered a couple of chips in the paintwork. It appears what I thought was lacquer was not, but it was just clear paint. Thankfully Stu has come good and will ship me some real lacquer soon.

The installation of the bottom bracket took about two hours. I was on the floor, pulling the wrench as hard as I could. I was using a seat post over the wrench as extre leverage and was levering against the downtube against my stomach. Towards the end the wrench was bending massively. For each attempt I was able to turn about a 20th of a full turn, and then needed to catch my breath for a minute! So, something was a little wrong, but that's not unexpected from a frame that hadn't been touch since it was made 28 years ago! Maybe I didn't need to change the BB, but it felt good putting a new one in, and this is an educational experience anyway!

Bottom bracket in, eventually, I started with the rest. Wheels were built, and the chain needed to go after the chainset. Cue the big Sturmey Archer 42 x 17 fixie with a 19 free on the flip flop. I built it up with the fixie, and after fiddling and making several great errors with the chain, having the chain pins fall out, I got it all on and looking very toooiight.

Next came the seat post. This is a little too loose and slides down, gaffer tape is attempting to hold it in place, but I may have some problems here - I have some metal spacers but they are too thick. Handlebars are in, and looking good. For the front brake I need to drill a bigger recess in the back of the fork to allow the modern brake to fit in. I'm not going to do this right now, and maybe never!

And finally the front wheel. Should be a simple but the fork wheel "holes" were always too small, and always were. When Dean used the bike this year in L'Eroica (www.eroica.it) a kind mechanic filed out the holes a little. It was always a problem - here are some pictures from the previous year, mid race when we are trying to change the front wheel out, after a couple of punctures turned it from round to something oval. Now this is very cool for Biopace, O-Symetric or Q-rings (http://www.competitivecyclist.com/whats-new/the-curious-case-of-osymetric-chainrings.415.html) but not so cool for a front wheel :)

Eventually I got out the big hacksaw and sawed straight through the holes. Done.

And here we are. Almost there. A couple of more mods and it will be ready for taking some nice photos. In the meantime my decals arrived - I got some guy in the UK to print on sticky a badger head (from Meles BC), a JJD #1 and a zitto e pedala. Just need to decide where and how to mount them. Plus, the lacquer is still lacking :)

Zitto e pedala!