Cool Old Bikes (that need riders!)

If you're looking for a 70's or 80's steel roadbike to tool around in, check out http://sites.google.com/site/coololdbikesthatneedriders/

When in Minneapolis

In Uptown Minneapolis, on Hennipin, check out Re-Cycle. You'll see a wall of 60's and 70's Schwinns, the occassional Raleigh, Fuji and even a disguised Zeus. All are rideable, some are already converted to fixed but most are still the 3, 5 or 10 speed they were first built to be.
And they show the patina of several previous owners in a worn-in jeans kind of way. As it should be, the repair stand is the first thing you see as you enter and it will make you smile. I saw a WWII era fat tire as I entered. It's the first thing I noticed walking by. The owner is as happy to talk bikes as he must be to sell you one but there is no buy pressure. It's a living bike archive. Check out his site. http://re-cycle.com/city.aspx?city=Minneapolis

The pizza around the corner is great too so this is the perfect $5 night - pizza and a vintage bike shop.

First Ride on the Zeus

Rebuilding a bike from the bearings up as a rookie wrench, new Dad with a new business is a slow process. But that first ride makes the build-up, frustration, humiliating mistakes and lucky breaks worth it all. I finally rode the bike to work. Steel frames are amazingly smooth and this one is no exception. Sewups provide tigher responsiveness to turns, braking and any move, including hopping bumps. Clinchers, by comparison are squishier. However, riding on sew-ups is a non-stop stress fest. If I flat, then what? Will the replacement even stay on the rim when turning? Or do I grab the mobile and call headquarters for a lift? The shame....

Mistakes along the way that taught much:
pedals - I didn't know about pedal threading - French is an outlier in that topic and this bike had a pair of French threaded pedals. So the Zeus pedals I won first on eBay did not fit. Fortunately my Zeus Crit project needed them. I found NIB Zeus French threaded on eBay. So now the pedals are the only new element on a scratched but solid frame. I have to admit, they make you want to paint the frame.

brakes - don't go for the stealth brake look by putting 'cross brakes ONLY on the handlebars. True, the bike looks more fixed gear clean from the side but the lack of the classic hands on hood riding positiion is a problem. I'm putting the original handbrake levers back in version 1.1. The hoods were another education. Mafac racer hoods are required. They are top of the break only rather than wrapping around under the lever. And the Mafac racer hood contains an adjuster - the lever has no cable tension adjuster. My mentor mechanic at Peachtree Bikes filled me in on that vital detail. I would have had a sloppy brake cable installation without his guidance.

chain - had to get a 5 or 6 speed chain (SRAM).

front derailleur - still trying to figure this one out and a picture will be required to explain the problem - new at blogging too so stand by for pic's. The front derailleur lever is in the highest tenstion position for the inner front chainring. That ain't how it's supposed to be! I'm done tinkering with this one. Peachtree Bikes is on the way home from work so I'll find out today how it's supposed to go on. It's likely a cable routing issue but I don't see it.

Zeus Headset

It was stuck. It would not turn. The grease had turned to hardened tar. I'll admit to using 10W40 to degrease it and free the bearings from the grease turned epoxy. Some elbow grease, Park Polylube 1000 and the headset is as smooth as you would expect a 70's bike to be. The next step, after returning from the beach, is to install the '80's campy brake levers, calipers and pedals.

Fix-ing the Zeus

Over a barbecue, an architect friend of mine who's an avid bike commuter offerred an idea. "What if we could make a fixed out of an old 10 speed but keep the front shifter to yield a 2 speed?" Enjoying my instant flash of mechanical insight, I countered with, "nope, you need slack in the chain to stretch over the larger front gear - a sping of some sort." Mike came back a few months later and offerred the 'spring pulley' idea. So I mentioned it to a bike shop guy on a visit to LA and he produced a smile and a Burley sigulator. It's normal use is fixed conversions but it has just enough spring to allow the shift on this old Zeus.

So now I get to build another fixed rear wheel, clean up the headset, replace the lousy old brakes and pedals with some '80's campy gear. Just dusting this thing off made a difference!

Bigger Wrench and a Nice Old Zeus

Rather than drag the fixed to the shop and admit my defeat in the bottom bracket skirmish. I spent the $10 (ok, so it was $14 but I get to keep it!) at Ace for a monster sized wrench that held the bottom bracket tool perfectly. It's length gave me the leverage I needed to unfreeze the bone dry bottom bracket collar/bolt whateveryoucallit. I reassembled the bottom bracket and added grease to all threaded areas. I just tested it on the same driveway hills that give me the screeching before. Silence. Success.

Now the '70's Zeus is in the stand. It's rusted and modified with non-Zeus parts. A little cleaning here, gasoline and reassembly with a touch of eBay NOS and this vintage ride will be smiling once again. It has a Brooks leather saddle with many miles on it but still in solid shape. That stays unless my bottom rejects it.

Batting 500

Despite joyful assistance (and flattery that I know so much about mechanical things), no luck removing the drive side of the bottom bracket. It's cranked - no pun intended - so tight that my 12" channellock wrench and crank tool can't budge it. The non-drive side did come off with the Mrs. admiring my handiwork. It was dry as a bone in there. No grease ever graced the inside of this bottom bracket. The bike, rather the frame, was sitting on the floor of a cool, albeit sloppy intown bike shop in Atlanta. It's an Uno; an entry fixed frame that was perfect for my first project - building wheels - since it had everything else but.

The dry bottom bracket translates to the squeek I hear when pedalling. Back to Peachtree Bikes for advice and a stronger arm to free this sucker.