Brews you can use

Good week this week, and not just because I’ve been off work:

• I brewed on Monday. This is almost getting to be a regular occurrence. I probably won’t get back to the 10 gallons per month rate I had going a few years back, but the chances of me selling off brewing equipment in disgust have dropped quite sharply. The beer? I don’t know what it will be, other than beer. Something dark, mildly roasty, hopefully hoppy, with a bunch of rye. For the moment, I’ve given up targeting styles/flavors/other beers. It’s my beer — I’ll probably like it.
• We hosted thanksgiving dinner. Jess’s aunt took the kids for an evening and we cleaned. Cleaned like we didn’t have to worry about waking the kids. Cleaned till we dropped. We have a reasonably clean downstairs now, and with 4 cats and two kids, that’s precious and fleeting, but quite satisfying.
• Oh yeah, dinner. Good turkey, excellent stuffing and squash, heavenly desserts (five-spice pumpkin pie, chocolate cranberry hazelnut torte, and the cranberry apple pie Jess’s friend contributed), and lots of family and friends to share with.
• Most of today was spent noshing, vegging, and snoozing. After the kids went to bed, I got the project bike set up so that I can feel safe commuting with it, put on some lights, and took it on a late-night test ride. There’s still a bit of work left, but it’ll get me to work and back, I think. It’s still a new and fun ride, so I’ll enjoy whatever portion of the commute it survives

I re-greased and reassembled the headset last night, and bottom bracket tonight. Both are quite smooth now.

Then, since I was halfway assembled, I put the wheels, seat, and handlebars back on, re-ran the front brake, slapped a headlight on, and took it out for a quick test ride. Everything felt quite good mechanically, and it was very pleasant to ride. I’m hooked.

There’s still some tweaking left to do before it’s ready to ride for real, but I’m quite surprised I was able to get this far so soon.

The project bike is now stripped down to the frame and the bottom bracket and headset bearing cups, for the cleaning of the latter. When I finally got the headset apart last week, the races and bearings were in pretty good condition, although the grease looked like it had been in there since the bike was first built. The bottom bracket was even worse, with chunks of grease and foreign grit tumbling out when I disassembled it. All the bearings looked pretty good after a partial cleaning, though, so they should be fine after a thorough cleaning and regreasing. The cups and cones got a good wipedown with mineral spirits, and the races are soaking in alcohol until/unless I think of a better degreaser for the task…

I also purchased a BMX freewheel and substituted it for the old cog set. That may not have been the smartest thing to do just yet — the chainline is off by about 5-6 mm, which is marginal. The only real fix is to get some axle spacers, move the hub over by 5 mm, and (the fun part) redish the wheel to center the tire again so the bike rides straight and the rear brake works. It’ll probably be a while before I’m riding the bike, hopefully in a reasonably straight line

…

Of course, this is all the more interesting because of the lack of bike-mechanical aptitude I demonstrated today. We pedaled the kids to a playgroup at Como Zoo this morning, and I decided to fix my chain’s routing before I left — it had been running around the outside of part of the derailleur cage since I replaced it a couple weeks ago, making riding it quite noisy among whatever mechanical damage it was doing. The chain has a master link so it can be removed without tools. I couldn’t remove it without tools, so I broke out the chain tool, and re-routed the chain by separating it at a regular link.

Less than a mile into the trip, the link exploded…. I had some spare chain, so I replaced the link a bit more gently, but couldn’t get the links to actually rotate around the rivets smoothly. So, Jess and Arlo went to the playgroup, and I limped up to County Cycles with my skipping chain and Grace in tow (her choice — she really wanted the bike ride, apparently, even at ~8mph with occasional loud popping and cursing noises ). Of course the fix was trivial: flex the frozen links side-to-side after inserting the rivet, using much more force than I had tried. They also noticed and fixed the seriously loose headset I’d been riding on for <mumble> months. It took about five minutes, and was quite educational.

So, I still have a bunch to learn to become novice bike tinkerer, but at least I have something to play with without endangering my primary ride. Again :-/

I bought a new old bike Monday, a 1974 Schwinn Varsity for $30 from the fine folks at Capital Deals, a surplus/bike shop in southern St. Paul.

The previous owner had done a rather crude single-speed conversion. They removed the derailleurs and one of the chain ring, ran the chain around one of the rear cogs, and flipped and chopped the stock drop bars, but didn’t deburr the chop, much less plug and wrap the handlebars. The rest of the bike isn’t so hot — it would have been marginally rideable with a brake adjustment, but to be safe, it needs:

1. headset replacement (it currently exhibits “indexed steering”)
2. bottom bracket overhaul or replacement (it’s an old-school one piece crank, which means it’s one of the rare repairs which doesn’t require special tools…)
3. new rear brake cable
4. smooth and plug/cork the chopped handlebar ends

I took a stab at the headset replacement tonight, trying to get the fork out so I could get a new headset to match but (argh) found that my big crescent wrench was about 1/2 mm too small for the locknut, so tomorrow, I’ll try to get a bigger crescent wrench, as well as some copper pipe to drive out the cups somewhat nicely.

All of these repairs should make a rideable hacked singlespeed. If I get that far, the next plans are:

1. replace the handlebars — the current ones were chopped too short, and barely have room for my hands. I haven’t decided between simple drop bars, or fancier moustache or better bullhorns.
2. replace the rear cassette with a single freewheel or track cog, or buy a new fixed/free rear wheel
3. Accesorize.
4. ?
5. Profit!