Home with a broken arm - bike resto content
Discussion
Just thought I'd share a photo or two from this little project.
At the beginning of August I managed to have a tumble mountain biking, fracturing my humerus and ending up signed off work. I had a load of ideas for what I might do with my spare time, but it turns out that having a broken arm is more tiring and debilitating than I figured, so I lowered my sights I bit.
First up was online shopping, which led to me buying one of the argos 400 quid full carbon bikes and taking some proper photos so people could judge if it was worth it.
Of course the problem with buying a new bike when you cant ride is that once its together, you can't do anything with it. So on one of my big adventures (walking 3 miles to the local supermarket) I glanced at the for sale board. 'Falcon pro circuit 531 racing bike £85 ono'. So I called the number and walked over to have a look.. it was my size, so obviously I had to have it.
Shabby, but not too bad. So it was mine.
Checking it over revealed good and bad. rims and wheels in good shape with good bearings, likewise the bottom bracket and headset, and no real rust. The downsides were fairly minor - pedals bearings were shot, the hoods were missing off the levers, the saddle ripped, the bar tape awful and the cables rusty.
A trip to bristol bike jumble yielded some good finds - a set of exage cranks to replace the original sugino ones - nothing wrong with the originals but I wanted all silver. Still a 42/52 so I'll need new legs as I thought my old 39/53 ribble was tough. I also picked up an unused chrome seatpost and saddle clamp for £1.50, although my old post didn't have markings and I guessed wrong at the size - the frame is 26.8 so no use in the end although the clamp helped tidy things up.
I also picked up some silver spds for £3 - not exactly period but hey ho. My search for replacement exage hoods proved fruitless, but I did get some 105 levers complete with hoods for a tenner on ebay so job done there.
I stripped the frame and forks back to bare metal before painting it - in my garden using rattle cans, so hardly a professional job! it ended up ok, really good in some places, really bad in others..
I left the paint to harden for a few days and got in the rest of the bits needed - chain, bar tape, saddle, cables, brake pads, pinch bolts and took a bit of metal polish to see how the rest of the original parts would clean up.
With that done it was time for reassembly. I wanted to use the levers off the exage gears as they are silver and look smarter than the original plastic huret ones, however this ended up causing me a load of problems as the bosses on the frame weren't compatible, and the friction adjuster bolts were too short to accommodate the wider levers, so I ended up making a mishmash of huret / shimano levers which seems to have worked out ok in the end although it was frustrating to discover that having loads of competing standards is not a new thing in bicycle land.
It was a great little cheap project and I'm happy with the result, although of course there are things I'd like to improve - my bar tape wrapping isn't great and I'd still like to find some smarter gear levers, not to mention the paint finish - I can foresee me getting it powder coated eventually rather than faff through stripping it by hand again, which was very time consuming.
Hope you've found it interesting!
At the beginning of August I managed to have a tumble mountain biking, fracturing my humerus and ending up signed off work. I had a load of ideas for what I might do with my spare time, but it turns out that having a broken arm is more tiring and debilitating than I figured, so I lowered my sights I bit.
First up was online shopping, which led to me buying one of the argos 400 quid full carbon bikes and taking some proper photos so people could judge if it was worth it.
Of course the problem with buying a new bike when you cant ride is that once its together, you can't do anything with it. So on one of my big adventures (walking 3 miles to the local supermarket) I glanced at the for sale board. 'Falcon pro circuit 531 racing bike £85 ono'. So I called the number and walked over to have a look.. it was my size, so obviously I had to have it.
Shabby, but not too bad. So it was mine.
Checking it over revealed good and bad. rims and wheels in good shape with good bearings, likewise the bottom bracket and headset, and no real rust. The downsides were fairly minor - pedals bearings were shot, the hoods were missing off the levers, the saddle ripped, the bar tape awful and the cables rusty.
A trip to bristol bike jumble yielded some good finds - a set of exage cranks to replace the original sugino ones - nothing wrong with the originals but I wanted all silver. Still a 42/52 so I'll need new legs as I thought my old 39/53 ribble was tough. I also picked up an unused chrome seatpost and saddle clamp for £1.50, although my old post didn't have markings and I guessed wrong at the size - the frame is 26.8 so no use in the end although the clamp helped tidy things up.
I also picked up some silver spds for £3 - not exactly period but hey ho. My search for replacement exage hoods proved fruitless, but I did get some 105 levers complete with hoods for a tenner on ebay so job done there.
I stripped the frame and forks back to bare metal before painting it - in my garden using rattle cans, so hardly a professional job! it ended up ok, really good in some places, really bad in others..
I left the paint to harden for a few days and got in the rest of the bits needed - chain, bar tape, saddle, cables, brake pads, pinch bolts and took a bit of metal polish to see how the rest of the original parts would clean up.
With that done it was time for reassembly. I wanted to use the levers off the exage gears as they are silver and look smarter than the original plastic huret ones, however this ended up causing me a load of problems as the bosses on the frame weren't compatible, and the friction adjuster bolts were too short to accommodate the wider levers, so I ended up making a mishmash of huret / shimano levers which seems to have worked out ok in the end although it was frustrating to discover that having loads of competing standards is not a new thing in bicycle land.
It was a great little cheap project and I'm happy with the result, although of course there are things I'd like to improve - my bar tape wrapping isn't great and I'd still like to find some smarter gear levers, not to mention the paint finish - I can foresee me getting it powder coated eventually rather than faff through stripping it by hand again, which was very time consuming.
Hope you've found it interesting!
pembo said:
May I ask what you used to strip the paint off of the frame? I've just started stripping one and have had a go with both sandpaper and nitromors, it's coming off but slowly!!
The bike looks great though I wish I could find a bike jumble near me to pick up some bits.
I used a product called paint panther - basically I just went to the local hardware store and picked the cheapest / ml. In the end I didnt need to worry, barely used a quarter of it id guess. It had a good consistency for the job, kinda like pva glue. The bike looks great though I wish I could find a bike jumble near me to pick up some bits.
It took a good few rounds - typically one coat to remove one paint layer ie once for lacquer, once for topcoat, once for primer. I shouldve removed the stickers first as they were tough to shift, the paint itself came off in huge strips with the product on. Still a time consuming process though especially around the lugs.
gazza285 said:
Are your gear levers on upside down?
Nope, however they are meant to have the cable with the end on the reverse of the lever, but this caused the cable to rub slightly against the tab used to secure the friction adjusters to the bit that goes round the boss, so I am running the cables through the levers in the wrong direction - why they aren't omnidirectional like shimano I don't know.I can't remember if downtube shifters are supposed to be push away to upshift or pull towards.. but mine are pull towards at the moment :P this along with my bar tape wrapping is filed under 'things for improvement'
Gassing Station | Pedal Powered | Top of Page | What's New | My Stuff