I realized last Thursday that Wester Ross #015 would not be ready for the Somerville Bike Pageant. It was 8:45p, Somerville Bike Kitchen was closing at 9p, and I could not get a tire seated on my wheel. Without the tire seated, I couldn’t use the chain tool to close up the new Izumi chain I purchased. Even if I had finished those 2 things, I still hadn’t attached and adjusted my downtube shifters.
Wanting other anxieties than my bike, I decided not to continue with the Mad Dash to a pageant-ready bike. Instead, I took the weekend off:
- walking(!) around town
- perusing bike pageant entries (shout out to the pennyfarthing with the handlebar iPhone mount)
- searching for the right commuter bike for Claire, who hauls a bunch of shit every time she goes to work, and wears flowy pants with abandon
The Mad Dash did grant me some perspective on the work still to-do, however. For starters, I learned that you should not apply decals after powdercoating. This was unfortunate news, as I had paid international shipping for H Lloyd decals of the Wester Ross logos and Reynolds 531 tubing for maximum period correctness. On the plus side, I learned that my 50 year-old pedals are easier to service than a headset. I was wary to submerge the pedals entirely into degreaser or Evaporust because I assumed—from what I read online about old bikes generally—that these pedals had effectively single-use bearings.
However, after feeling the bearings since my conservative cleaning approach, I decided to look into the issue. Some nut online has compiled an overly thorough guide to servicing these very pedals and, with no deadlines still looming, I decided that I’ll extend my restoration by taking these apart and fixing them up proper.
On a similar note, I’ve taken another look at my wheels. They somehow survived living on my balcony unmoved for the winter with no loss in mobility but acquired a nice stubble of rust that I’d like to remove. The aforementioned nut also has a guide to these hubs, so I’m more serious about removing the rust than I previously was.
I mentioned my tire seating plight to a reader who suggested, more out of a reflexive admiration for retro mods than relevance, to keep the hubs but convert the (non-Campy) rims from 27” (630mm) to 700c (622mm). This thought has caught my eye too: losing 4mm under the brake bridge might make uncut fenders a possibility (even with 30mm+ tires!). Of course, according to my foolish interest in keeping original parts, such a conversion hinges on the brake pads being able to move 4mm down in their current housing, something in which I’m not at all confident.