AP
January 6th 07, 07:10 PM
Took about five hours in the end. Cost £6.79. Works beautifully.
Once everyone's advice had calmed me down and undauntificated me, I thought
'I can do this'. Found an ideal freewheel on ebay -
Shimano,14,16,18,20,22,24,28 - brand new, with a starting price of £3.84 +
£2.95 p&p. Searching on advanced>completed items only revealed that these
come up all the time, from the same seller, who's obviously bought a job lot
of 300, and mostly go for £3.84, tho' silly people who don't use advanced
search sometimes bid against each other and end up paying over the odds. So
that was that: £6.79. Delivered to my door. Perfick.
All I needed now was a clear afternoon and a house empty of kids. Today was
it.
In the event I decided not to bother with cold-setting. 'Springing' the
frame sounded like it might work, and would involve less risk, not to
mention lengths of 4 x 2. The axle turned out to be too short, but luckily I
managed to cannabalise one off an old wheel that was just a few mm longer,
and turned out to be just long enough. I moved the cones about and
experimented with spacers...the first time I put it back on the bike it was
more off-centre than it 'needed to be' (which was a fair bit in any case),
so I moved a 1mm washer from one side to the other and...
It *was* a bugger getting it back into the frame. Took quite a lot of
hauling and thumping and repositioning and trying again, but I never had any
doubt that I'd get the damn thing in in the end. And so it proved.
Getting there. I pulled some more cable thru' to give the rear shifter the
extra reach it needed to reach the now-much-further-away first sprocket, and
fiddled with the 'hi' and 'lo' screws to match the new block. Close. But no
cigar. The wheel was just too far off-centre, rubbing the brake blocks on
one side quite firmly, and tho' I'd been hoping I might get away with it, I
was clearly going to have to take the plunge into redishing after all.
Came back here and found Pete Biggs's message (Thanks Pete!)about how to go
about it, and thought 'yeah, that all makes sense. I can do that.'
Discovered within about ten spokes of course that it was easy peasy lemon
squeezy.. Worked perfectly. Took about fifteen minutes.
There's still a bit of fine-tuning to do. I still get a few spokes 'ticking'
just ever so slightly on the reaer shifter when I'm riding hard up a steep
hill in first. I tried to sort it out, but I think I just ended up making it
marginally worse, so I decided to leave it for another day. It works. It
works really nicely. I'm chuffed as ...um...
So - many thanks to all who responded to my earlier posts. I really couldn't
have done it without you. I've learned new skills and gained new confidence
and above all of course, now have a far better bike.
Re which, and to digress slightly, an earlier thread on brake blocks opened
up a can of worms about ebay: 'how can you risk xx in the new wild west?' v
'get real. Get bargains'. I have to say, ebay has been absolutely central to
my ability to get back into cycling in my mid-40s. I simply could not have
afforded to get a bike remotely as good as the one I now ride without it.
I bought a Benotto Modello 800. Michael Kone/Sheldon Brown say of Benotto:
"Some of the Italian examples are exquisite. Such an N.R. bike should be
worth perhaps $800." And it *is* exquisite. Seriously. I saw it in the
listings - a postage stamp size picture - and just thought instantly: I want
it. And I got it - for £56. (From a guy in Yeovil...and I live in London.
Try that without ebay.) True, it wasn't an N.R. bike. The gears were Sun,
other components from different manufacturers, but all clearly good stuff.
Apart from the saddle, which I couldn't get along with, so swapped for the
Vector from my old bike. True too, the chain was completely rusted up, it
had no handlebar tape, one of the tyres was badly perished, the headset felt
a bit odd, and the bottom braclket felt like it could use a good clear out,
but still...
With the help of people here and others I was encouraged to get stuck in,
and did, doing things I'd never attempted before (tho' of course always
variations on themes...once you've cleaned out and replaced wheel bearings,
a bottom bracket pretty soon looks like fairly familiar territory) using
bits I bought from ebay. Pretty soon the bike was in good nick, and riding
well...so I started some refinements. I added cleat pedals. Cannondales,
brand new, £15. Got some top of the range Shimano shoes to go with them:
£35. (True they'd been worn half a dozen times, but they fitted me perfectly
and I could never have squared new £120 shoes with 'er indores, so....) My
best coup was a super record rear mech, for which I paid something like £12,
including p&p. The Sun unit had been adequate but elderly, a bit inclined to
chatter and nag; with the SR everything suddenly became super-smooth and
positive. And then of course the new freewheel. Which gives me close ratios
where I need them, as against the 'one size fits all' block I had before,
which certainly didn't make best use of my options, given that I spend
relatively little time climbing 1 in 4s or going at 55 mph.
So, discounting the shoes, which can hardly be considered part of the bike,
I have paid in total something like £100 for a thoroughbred Italian racer
that's light, tight, eager and immeasurably faster and more responsive than
anything I've ever ridden before. Especially the old Peugeot piece of crap
for which I paid £62 hard-earned pounds (second hand) back in about 1976,
when £62 really was £62. I think I was getting £7.50 for my Saturday job at
the time, which gives you some idea. And now this! For a hundred quid! The
kind of bike that makes you simply pity anyone on a grand's worth of
mountain bike...but I'm sure that's a whole nother squabble...
ebay rocks!
Thanks again all.
Once everyone's advice had calmed me down and undauntificated me, I thought
'I can do this'. Found an ideal freewheel on ebay -
Shimano,14,16,18,20,22,24,28 - brand new, with a starting price of £3.84 +
£2.95 p&p. Searching on advanced>completed items only revealed that these
come up all the time, from the same seller, who's obviously bought a job lot
of 300, and mostly go for £3.84, tho' silly people who don't use advanced
search sometimes bid against each other and end up paying over the odds. So
that was that: £6.79. Delivered to my door. Perfick.
All I needed now was a clear afternoon and a house empty of kids. Today was
it.
In the event I decided not to bother with cold-setting. 'Springing' the
frame sounded like it might work, and would involve less risk, not to
mention lengths of 4 x 2. The axle turned out to be too short, but luckily I
managed to cannabalise one off an old wheel that was just a few mm longer,
and turned out to be just long enough. I moved the cones about and
experimented with spacers...the first time I put it back on the bike it was
more off-centre than it 'needed to be' (which was a fair bit in any case),
so I moved a 1mm washer from one side to the other and...
It *was* a bugger getting it back into the frame. Took quite a lot of
hauling and thumping and repositioning and trying again, but I never had any
doubt that I'd get the damn thing in in the end. And so it proved.
Getting there. I pulled some more cable thru' to give the rear shifter the
extra reach it needed to reach the now-much-further-away first sprocket, and
fiddled with the 'hi' and 'lo' screws to match the new block. Close. But no
cigar. The wheel was just too far off-centre, rubbing the brake blocks on
one side quite firmly, and tho' I'd been hoping I might get away with it, I
was clearly going to have to take the plunge into redishing after all.
Came back here and found Pete Biggs's message (Thanks Pete!)about how to go
about it, and thought 'yeah, that all makes sense. I can do that.'
Discovered within about ten spokes of course that it was easy peasy lemon
squeezy.. Worked perfectly. Took about fifteen minutes.
There's still a bit of fine-tuning to do. I still get a few spokes 'ticking'
just ever so slightly on the reaer shifter when I'm riding hard up a steep
hill in first. I tried to sort it out, but I think I just ended up making it
marginally worse, so I decided to leave it for another day. It works. It
works really nicely. I'm chuffed as ...um...
So - many thanks to all who responded to my earlier posts. I really couldn't
have done it without you. I've learned new skills and gained new confidence
and above all of course, now have a far better bike.
Re which, and to digress slightly, an earlier thread on brake blocks opened
up a can of worms about ebay: 'how can you risk xx in the new wild west?' v
'get real. Get bargains'. I have to say, ebay has been absolutely central to
my ability to get back into cycling in my mid-40s. I simply could not have
afforded to get a bike remotely as good as the one I now ride without it.
I bought a Benotto Modello 800. Michael Kone/Sheldon Brown say of Benotto:
"Some of the Italian examples are exquisite. Such an N.R. bike should be
worth perhaps $800." And it *is* exquisite. Seriously. I saw it in the
listings - a postage stamp size picture - and just thought instantly: I want
it. And I got it - for £56. (From a guy in Yeovil...and I live in London.
Try that without ebay.) True, it wasn't an N.R. bike. The gears were Sun,
other components from different manufacturers, but all clearly good stuff.
Apart from the saddle, which I couldn't get along with, so swapped for the
Vector from my old bike. True too, the chain was completely rusted up, it
had no handlebar tape, one of the tyres was badly perished, the headset felt
a bit odd, and the bottom braclket felt like it could use a good clear out,
but still...
With the help of people here and others I was encouraged to get stuck in,
and did, doing things I'd never attempted before (tho' of course always
variations on themes...once you've cleaned out and replaced wheel bearings,
a bottom bracket pretty soon looks like fairly familiar territory) using
bits I bought from ebay. Pretty soon the bike was in good nick, and riding
well...so I started some refinements. I added cleat pedals. Cannondales,
brand new, £15. Got some top of the range Shimano shoes to go with them:
£35. (True they'd been worn half a dozen times, but they fitted me perfectly
and I could never have squared new £120 shoes with 'er indores, so....) My
best coup was a super record rear mech, for which I paid something like £12,
including p&p. The Sun unit had been adequate but elderly, a bit inclined to
chatter and nag; with the SR everything suddenly became super-smooth and
positive. And then of course the new freewheel. Which gives me close ratios
where I need them, as against the 'one size fits all' block I had before,
which certainly didn't make best use of my options, given that I spend
relatively little time climbing 1 in 4s or going at 55 mph.
So, discounting the shoes, which can hardly be considered part of the bike,
I have paid in total something like £100 for a thoroughbred Italian racer
that's light, tight, eager and immeasurably faster and more responsive than
anything I've ever ridden before. Especially the old Peugeot piece of crap
for which I paid £62 hard-earned pounds (second hand) back in about 1976,
when £62 really was £62. I think I was getting £7.50 for my Saturday job at
the time, which gives you some idea. And now this! For a hundred quid! The
kind of bike that makes you simply pity anyone on a grand's worth of
mountain bike...but I'm sure that's a whole nother squabble...
ebay rocks!
Thanks again all.