One of my semi-regular cycling companions brought
his cyclocross frameset and a bunch of parts over to my shop last week for some
instruction on how to put it all together. Matt has a decent bicycle knowledge
base and is very capable mechanically, but I suspect he also gained a good deal
of information during his search for the parts needed for assembly. In
hindsight, I would say his main reason for needing help was my large collection
of specific tools for the job, as I found out my directions were mostly of the occasional
“trick of the trade” variety.
I discovered quickly how great it would be
to have an extra set of hands, as the whole bike came together in just a few
hours, as opposed to usually finding it necessary to put in a complete bike
build over a couple of days by myself. Awkward operations like holding brake
pads in place or calipers closed while tightening a cable became much simpler.
Of course, doing the work with someone who
shares your enthusiasm is always more fun, and we even fell into a friendly
competition of “who can drop fewer small parts and tools”. I was narrowly
leading the competition 3 to 5 until I accidentally let go of the rear
derailleur housing loop, and it uncoiled, knocking down five of the seven Allen
wrenches I had lined up neatly on my workbench.
Here are the final results of our All-City “Macho
Man” crossbike project:
I was planning to ride with Matt and his
brother Ryan that weekend and received a message a few days earlier that his
bike had a couple issues during a brake-in ride he had taken. He had found that
the cable housing to the rear derailleur didn’t provide enough slack during
hard turns, so I brought along my tools before our planned journey off into the
woods of the Perkiomen Trail.
I had assured him the job would only take
twenty minutes or so, but we kind of teamed up to make a mess of things. Since
adding length to the housing would shorten the amount of cable left to cinch
into the derailleur, I knew that we would probably need a new cable and brought
one of those along. We undid the wonderful bar tape job on the righthand side,
just down to the shifter hood, pulled out the cable and removed the short
section of housing from there to the top tube.
By looking at my Bianchi we realized that
the mistake was made choosing the wrong position of three sets of cable stops
that run along the top side of the top tube. Matt was using a SRAM 1x10 group, which
does not use a front derailleur, so we had just used the stops on opposite
sides of the tube – rear brake on the left and the rear derailleur on the
right.
What we should have done was route the
housing around the left side of the stem/steerer tube and looped it back to the
middle cable stops, which we found
didn’t interfere at all with aggressively turning the front wheel. Matt was
pulling the cable back through and I noticed that during our testing we had
pulled the housing a centimeter or so out of the shifter, so I nudged it back
into the little cutout in the hood.
He tightened the cable while I re-wrapped
the bar -I don’t know why I did that before we tested the shifting. Maybe
trying to save time in order to get out on the trail?
Unfortunately, we didn’t have the shifter
down in its lowest gear when Matt had pulled the cable through, and when I
pushed the housing, I had actually bumped the metal nib on the end of the cable
out of the notch in the spool/reel (whatever you want to call it) inside the shifter.
Needless to say, nothing worked during our test, and I almost immediately knew
what I had done.
Freeing the metal nub from the reel through
this tiny hole in the side of the hood was a bit of a challenge, but I had a
small tool (actually one of those nutcracker picks) that works well in such
occasions. I can’t remember who did it or why – perhaps in the excitement of
actually getting the nub loose – but we pulled the cable out completely, which
was another mistake.
SRAM shifters have a cable routing which
might be advantageous somehow mechanically in that they go in through the side
and are channeled up through the top, but it doesn’t work well with a cable
that has been cut. The individual strands of the cable get caught easily when
you are trying to insert it through the hood, and after a couple of fruitless
attempts, Matt headed to the local shop (just down the hill from his place in
Schwenksville) for a new cable, which has the convenience of an end that is
soldered together.
It was simple process from there, and I
enjoyed wrapping the handlebar for the third time, feeling much like an amateur
mechanic, but I suppose it was a good lesson. We had a very enjoyable ride
together, despite the cable adventure cutting a chunk out of our schedule, and
the fact that Ryan and I both developed slow leaks in our front tires.
Brendan also stopped by last weekend to talk pro racing and build projects, and to pick up his De Rosa. I was
finally able to find a Campagnolo C-Record rear derailleur for which he wouldn’t
have to take out a mortgage, although it was missing its limiting bolts.
After an unsuccessful search through all the
small bolt boxes at the local hardware store, I heading over to the “old
reliable” Bikesport, where my pal James handed me a box of miscellaneous junk
(as he called it), and I came away with not only a broken Campy rear derailleur
for the bolts, but a nice set of MKS pedals, which are a Campagnolo clone! They
will look great on the Basso when it is complete.
The best part of the deal, since a set of
Campagnolo limiting bolts cost about twenty-five bucks (OUCH!) online, is that
James let everything go for only five dollars. YES!
So I’ve now installed both C-Record derailleurs
to go with the Delta brakes of the same group. I matched up Brendan’s 3T stem
with a set of handlebars of the same brand and gunmetal finish, then wrapped
them in some cool De Rosa embossed cork tape.
While I can’t really take credit for the complete bike build, I feel that I’ve
done a decent amount of upgrades to the De Rosa and wanted to share some pics. It
is certainly a beautiful machine to look at, in any case!
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