Maintenance day
First off, I took a look at the mountain bike. It turned out that some much grit had accumulated around the release spring on the brake arm that it was stopping the arm from releasing. I stripped the brake apart, cleaned it, and regreased it all, and that seems to have done the trick.
Next up was assessing the damage on the Nishiki to see if it was rideable. The forks don't look too bad, and I think they can be cold set without a problem. The wheel didn't spin very well, though, and it felt really rough. I took the wheel out and stripped it down and found that the thread on the left-hand side of the axle bolt was stripped in two places opposite each other, and the dust cap had a similar dent. I cleaned out the hub, regreased it and reassembled it and now it spins for longer, but it still feels really rough. I have a suspicion that hitting the car whacked something out of alignment in the hub.
I checked the lateral true of the wheel against the brakes and there's a massive bump about 20cm long where I hit the car. I think I'm going to need a new wheel, and since they're 27" wheels which are exceedingly difficult to find, I'm probably going to have to go with 700c wheels, which means I will need a new rear wheel as well, and quite possibly new brakes if the calipers aren't long enough. All this is really more hassle than I need, my son is going into hospital for surgery tomorrow so this is going on the back burner for a while... Just as well I have a few other bikes, really.
Next up was assessing the damage on the Nishiki to see if it was rideable. The forks don't look too bad, and I think they can be cold set without a problem. The wheel didn't spin very well, though, and it felt really rough. I took the wheel out and stripped it down and found that the thread on the left-hand side of the axle bolt was stripped in two places opposite each other, and the dust cap had a similar dent. I cleaned out the hub, regreased it and reassembled it and now it spins for longer, but it still feels really rough. I have a suspicion that hitting the car whacked something out of alignment in the hub.
I checked the lateral true of the wheel against the brakes and there's a massive bump about 20cm long where I hit the car. I think I'm going to need a new wheel, and since they're 27" wheels which are exceedingly difficult to find, I'm probably going to have to go with 700c wheels, which means I will need a new rear wheel as well, and quite possibly new brakes if the calipers aren't long enough. All this is really more hassle than I need, my son is going into hospital for surgery tomorrow so this is going on the back burner for a while... Just as well I have a few other bikes, really.
posted by steve at 6/11/2006 10:13:00 pm
6 Comments:
Hey Steve,
Sorry to hear about your accident. I think the good news here is that you are OK and the right thing happened. I don't know why you are worrying about fixing your fork. Get your bike checked out by a mechanic and get a list of everything that can be attributed to the accident, and have it REPLACED!!
There is no sense on you risking further injury because of defect from the accident. Maybe there is a carbon fork in your future. heh. Just Kidding. I like chomo-alloy better.
Oh yeah,
I was cleaning my brakes yesterday too.I can't believe how dirty the Doktor (my bike) gets with commuting. That reminds me, I need lock-tite for those bolts.
One more thing. Peter White in NH has everything. I am sure he can build a 27" wheel for you. I have never bought anything from him, but I will probably order some studded tires later this year.
http://www.peterwhitecycles.com/
Well, the bike is something of an antique; it's a Nishiki that was released to celebrate the 1980 Olympics, hence the difficulty in finding parts due to the joys of planned obsolesence. Since it's a steel frame it can be cold set, and I really don't want to have a mismatching frame and fork, so it's effectively irreplaceable. I'm looking at going 700C because they're so common and I can get reasonably strong wheels fairly cheaply. The steel wheels on the Nishiki are pretty bulletproof, but the stopping ability isn't as good as aluminium, which is all you can get these days at the level I'm looking at. Since I'm someone who is, at 6 foot 4, easily able to snap spokes on a standard bike, this is an issue for me - on my hybrid I had to get specially lowered gearing to force me to spin faster to save on spokes!
If your bike's getting dirty, it's probably a hint you need to bite the bullet and get those fenders ;-)
Glad the collision wasn't too bad and you weren't hurt seriously. Although the impact must have been pretty painful.
I don't know how many times I see cars do the half-withdrawal from the driveway. I feel like drivers are always saying: "Don't worry. Trust me."
If your fork got damaged from the impact, isn't it possible your headset is damaged too? Today you say your headset doesn't click, but I guess you're talking about your mountain bike, not the nishiki.
By the way, I'd go for the 700c wheels too. The tire selection is much better.
It's the hybrid that had the clicking headset - I took it in to get checked out as I'm planning a ride to Cape Breton and back next month. The fork ended up being fine. Injuries were mostly bruising, with the worst being on my right thigh where the handlebar went in. Oddest injury was a tiny cut on my toe that ended up soaking the end of my sock with blood, which was a rather unpleasant surprise.
The other thing I hate for drivers that are trying to be "helpful" is when they stop, and because the sun's reflecting on their window you can't see what they're doing, if they're waving you on or not. Colour me paranoid, but I'd rather wait until they either wind their window down and wave me on, or go themselves - there's too many space cadets driving for me to want to risk it, and even then I still managed to get hit...
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