Maintenance day

(Actually spread out over two days)

The salt, dirt and grime are really starting to take a toll on the bike. I'm having problems with brakes sticking, which (as far as I can tell) are a combination of salt in the cables causing friction, and gunked up brake assemblies. I disassembled the rear U brakes completely, there was rusting in the works which probably didn't help. I cleaned it all out with degreaser, rinsed it all off, then greased everything up and reassembled the assembly. I also had to flush out the cable housing (I used White Lightning for that, then dribbled some Tenacious Oil in) and move the brake pivot assembly around to use different parts of the cable. I rinsed and reoiled the front brake pivot, which seemed to do the trick. I'm going to have to replace all the cables come spring, though.

It looks like the thinline brakes are wearing extremely quickly; they're almost halfway worm already. Hopefully the non-thinline Koolstop pads will come back in at MEC soon.

The jockey wheels in the derailleur seemed a little stiff, too, so I disassembled them and found the reason was all the grease inside had magically turned into near-solid black gunk. Again, there was some rusting starting, so a full cleanup and regrease was necessary.

I also did the regular maintenance - clean and relube the chain, clean off the rims, clean the brake pads, etc.

More snow and rain is forecast for this week; I suspect the maintenance I've done today has prevented either brake lockup or deraillleur failure later in the week...