I Built My Bike

            On Tuesday afternoon I took my cycle building project to Bike Pirates with not too much more to do before it would be finished. There were three people ahead of me at ten minutes to opening time. Derek opened up and sent me back to a workstation. There were already a few volunteers in the shop working on their own bikes. Once I’d clamped my velo to a stand I went quickly home, five doors away to get my old Phoenix for the only parts that it potentially had left for me to transfer to its successor.

            I showed the pedals to Dennis and asked if they would be compatible with the crank arms on my mostly French Frankenbike’s monster on the slab. He had a look and said they would work fine. I commented that I much preferred the metal pedals to the plastic because the plastic ones break so easily. Dennis agreed, and declared that plastic pedals crack at 40 below.

            A customer arriving at the stand next to mine was there for the first time and didn’t know how to put his bike on the clamps, so I told him. I was trying to tell him to turn it around with the chain out, but then Derek came around and testily told me that he would help him.

            I had very little problem removing the pedals from the Phoenix and installing them on the cranks that came with the vintage French frame, and I was able to do it pretty much all by myself.

            I had also brought with me the tire that Nick Cushing had given to me and which I had carried along the last few sessions just in case by some miracle my project would have been ready for it sooner. A couple of times I had asked volunteers if the tire would be the right size and they had expressed doubt.

            Most of the volunteers that had been there when I came in were gone by the time I was ready to try the tire. The only one around was this guy who looked like a young Steven Stills. He was riding a little mountain bike up and down the length of the shop and sometimes outside to the street. Frankly I think he’d been smoking up before he started because he seemed like he was on a very positive high. Whenever he approached someone that looked like they needed help he’d call out, “What’s the P?” because “problem” is such a hard word to say.

            I showed him my tire and asked if it would fit and he looked at it, then answered that it might but there was only one way to find out and that was to try to put it on the back rim. I got a new tube from the front desk, but then remembered that I needed rim tape. My young volunteer got me a ready-made strip that was already hanging with some others at the end of a worktable. I needed help getting the tape around the rim evenly. Then I partially inflated the tube, put the tire around the rim so that it overlapped to allow the tube to be slipped inside and then struggled to gradually stuff the tube inside. I still haven’t gotten the hang of doing that task smoothly, so my young helper came along and assisted me with something that I would have managed eventually. After I’d inflated the tube it was clear that the tire did fit my rim after all and I put it on the bike.

            The problem now though was that the wheel wasn’t moving freely because the rim was rubbing against one side of the frame. I unscrewed the locknuts and had to keep holding the wheel centred while tightening them but for some reason on the final tightening of the left locknut the wheel would edge to the left. Eventually I was able to centre it by leaning the balance to the right and then in the end it moved to the centre.

            I had no problem adjusting the seat height by myself. I raised it a bit and then measured how far I’d raised it, which was to 70 millimetres from the seat to the seat tube. Then I took the machine off the stand, stood it beside my table and got on. My left knee was too bent when it was on the pedal o the downturn, so I raised it by ten mm and tried it again. Finally it looked like 90 mm was the right height for me with this bike.

            For some reason though, the back wheel was dragging again because the brakes needed to be adjusted. Then it was pointed out to me that my tire was on the wrong way. That puzzled me, since I’d never heard of a tire not being able to fit on the rim whether it was turned one way or the other. There were three volunteers, Alain, Derek and Amenamon (if that’s his name) standing there looking at my tire and it was explained tome that my tire had a directional tread with arrows that were supposed to be pointing the way the wheel would be turning. I hadn’t known that such a thing existed. So I removed the tire and turned it around. I looked this up though and the general view is that treads of any sort are useless on road bikes and that a smooth tire is best, except in a lot of snow and ice and even then it’s studded tires rather than treads that one needs.

            I was ready for my first exciting test drive to find out if what has been a project for the last three weeks (for the last month if I count the time that I spent looking for a frame to start from). First of all I was surprised at how easy it was to mount. On the Phoenix, in order to ride at the proper height I’d had to extend the seat to a bizarre height and therefore had to swing my leg way up just to get on. Because I’d become so used to that my first impression was that the bike must be too short. But my knee was only bent very slightly on the down pedal just the way I like it. It was also weird to have the handlebars so high. I have been riding the Phoenix while bent forward for the last twenty years, but now I was upright and I was finding the ride quite comfortable. Steering the new bike was a little lurchy but I think that was because I wasn’t used to the taller frame yet.

I rode west to Lansdowne and then headed north. I noticed at the next lights that the breaks were squeaky. I was able to easily take the hill up to Dundas, especially compared to the little mountain bike that I’d been riding for the last few months for which hills had been a major chore. My first impression was that it also took the hill better than the old Phoenix. I rolled east to Brock and then south again. I noticed that when I pulled the right shifter back to the high gear that it made a “chachick-chachick” noise as if it was trying to derail to the next level but couldn’t. I thought that might have been just because I’d had the left shifter in between gears or something so when I got back I just told Alain about the squeaky brakes.

He got a special tool that gripped the brake arms and tilted them slightly against the direction that the rim turns. Then he had me do the same thing on the front brakes.

I went for my second test drive but found the squeaking was still a problem, so when I got back Alain suggested I could try new brake pads. I figured I might as well have new ones for my virtually new vintage bike, so I agreed.

In the process of helping me with the brakes, Alain noticed that the front brakes hadn’t been properly set up. He got me a new saddle for the cross cable, but when I tried to run the cable through its hole it wouldn’t fit because the end was frayed, so he told me we’d change the cable. That still seems like a big job to me but it’s getting easier. I still fumble though on trying to get the little drum-like end of the cable inside where it starts from the lever.

Once that was done I went for my third test drive. I just rode up to Seaforth and then across to O’Hara and south again. This time the squeaking wasn’t as noticeable as the “chachick-chachick” sound of the gears. Alain concluded that the problem was my freewheel having dull teeth. I’d though that was the only freewheel that would fit my bike, but Alain found a new one that he thought would work better with the new chain.

So I spent the next little while changing the freewheel. It was already after closing time, but Alain seemed dedicated to helping me get the velo working properly. Following his precise instructions I made some adjustments on the derailleur screws and then the chain was dancing happily over the freewheel to the call of the shifter. He suggested that I take another test drive, even though it was almost half an hour after closing. Since it was after dark and I didn’t have any flashers for the road, I went out the back and up the alley to the end and back down. The “chachick-chachick” sound was gone.

When I came back, Alain took an Allen key and tightened the screw that firms my handlebars into the headset.

I cleaned up my table and settled up at the front and since the freewheel, and the pads were new and I still needed to add a donation, I put in $40.00 this time.

Melissa was hanging out near the kitchen and when she asked I told her that I’d finished building my bike. She offered to do a little safety check and discovered that my headset was a little loose down where it meets the frame. She soothed my concern by assuring me that it wasn’t an urgent problem, but that it would be if I rode it like that for a month. Though she’d put a bit of a damper on my leaving Bike Pirates that night with a flawless machine, I could definitely say that my project was finished and that I had finally finished building a bicycle.