bike job

BIKE JOB: WHAT I PLANNED

• Break chain, release rear derailleur, remove brakes, pedals, shifters, crankset, cogs (keep in tub @BRW).
• Strip bike of paint: "Circa 1850" Heavy Body paint & varnish remover (spray & gel).
• Clear-coat or otherwise seal frame with lube/grease to keep rust out.
• Re-install fork/headset/crankset/handlebars.
• Re-install brakes.
• Assemble wheelset, including tubes & tires. (Does it come with lockring/cog?) (No.)
• Remove extra chain links.
• Roll.



BIKE JOB: WHAT I DID

20090604, BRW:
Remove all parts (brakes, wheels, handlebars, crankset, sprockets, chainrings).
Strip paint on fork, begin stripping paint on frame.
Break chain, remove chain & rear derailleur

20090617, BRW
Keep stripping paint. (Halfway done.)
Buy lockring & cog.

20090625, BRW:
Keep stripping paint. (DONE!)

20090711, BRW:
Polish, finish up final paint strip.
Re-thread bottom bracket.
Clean & re-pack bottom bracket, headset.
Replace spindle.
Remove smaller chainring.
· 46/15t may be too gnarly a gear ratio. Kwan (BRW) suggests using smaller chainring & machining down larger chaining, turning it into a chainguard.
Install lockring & cog.
Install crankset.

200907__, BRW:
Patch busted tube.
Install brakes.
Swap out pedal straps, dark brown leather for black nylon.

2009____, Ongoing
Research saddles, bartape, toestraps (dark brown leather).

nevermind about acceptance

I want what I want, & I'm going to work towards what I want until I get it. And what I want is the paint off. If I have to sand- or ball-blast the frame to make that happen, then that is what I will do.

That is all. Everything else shall remain as I wrote it. Um. With edits.

Love,
Katie

puch it up!

I've been slowly working on a "new" bike, in the background, when I'm not at the shop. It's made by Puch, an Austrian manufacturing company that once made cars, bikes, mopeds, and motorcycles. (I also heard they made lawn mowers & chainsaws, but that has not been verified.) Now, they just make bikes. Estimates by those who purport to know put this bike as manufactured in the early '80s.

The bike was a gift from Tony Sem, back when the eponymous Nishiki was stolen off the front of a bus. Grateful as I am, and love it as I do, the bike is pretty hard to describe as anything but a beater. A cerulean-blue paint job, chipped, revealed a lighter, aqua-blue underneath. The seat stays had broken at some point & been welded back together. Mysteriously, every element of the frame (top tube, bottom tube, seat tube, rear stays, even the fork) had scotch tape on it, somewhere. As though scotch tape would do ... something.

What the.

Now, I like bikes. I like fixing them up to my specs, & I like the challenge of turning something modest into something interesting. So I was looking into ways to make this bike something other than a beater. Then I ran into Ephraim at LA Brakeless while I was shopping for parts. He & I chatted about wheelsets & cogs, what gear ratio I hoped to run, & the not-particularly-to-my-liking paint job. He mentioned stripping & powdercoating it. Stripping a bike of paint is either cheap (if you sand- or ball-blast it) or very cheap (if you use harsh chemicals & fervor). Something about taking off the paint myself appealed to me. I don't know. I can be stubborn & foolish. Ask anyone I've ever dated, ever, and they will tell you this is true.

Three rounds of scrubbing the thing with incredibly harsh chemicals later, and the frame is finally, mostly, clean of the blues. Interesting: It's a gun-metal-grey steel frame under all that. The lugged frame was brazed together using a brass-colored metal that fades & streaks nicely into the gun-metal. And then there's the issue of the paint. I will never get absolutely all that paint off. Currently, it's flecked with the cerulean blue, a detail I'm not really all that sad about. While the idea of not painting the bike a different color had come up once I discovered the lovely gun-metal-grey beneath, I've since decided to clear-coat it as is, flecks & all. [NB: Fuck the paint. I had an idea for this bike, & it didn't involve flecks of cerulean blue, I'll tell you what. I gave up too easily on that one.] Unexpectedly, it's going to be a pretty nice-looking bike, indeed. Pictures to come after my next trip to BikeRoWave, assuming I remember to take them.

Serendipity. Acceptance. Hard work & mirth. Something. I just get the feeling I'm going to like the hell outta this bike, especially after I kit it up with the components I want: Brooks honey saddle with matching bartape & toe straps, or Brooks dark brown saddle with matching toe straps & shellacked brown cloth bartape.

That's it, pals. See you on the road.

Love,
Katie