Nervar Crankset: My French Bike Seems to Want French Parts

As I was riding home from the food bank on Saturday the awkward way that I felt my left crank arm moving told me that I had to get the problem fixed as soon as possible. I took my groceries home, put them away and then finished the coffee I’d started before leaving. I thought about my bike situation and decided that I would take it over to Bike Pirates, wait for them to open and then ask if I could do some repairs but bring a donation later in the week. I wanted to make sure I didn’t have to wait for a stand so I came half an hour early. I was the first one there but a little friendly guy with perhaps a Polish accent came and told me that he’d been there earlier and showed me where he’d parked his bike beside where I was standing. If I come to line up for something I stay where I’m supposed to be, but I didn’t argue with him. He was complaining that he’d just fixed his flat tire on Thursday and now it was flat again. I told him that one summer a few years ago I had a flat tire every three days for about a month. I asked him if he’d inflated the tube and put it in the tank to see where the bubbles were coming from. He answered that he hadn’t. I explained that if he did that he could find out whether the hole was on the inside or the rim side or the tire side of the tube. If it was on the rim side the problem would be the rim and not anything he’d picked up. I also suggested that he check the inside of his tire for glass.

He seemed to really like my bike and was full of compliments about it.

A car pulled up behind me and then the driver and passenger hauled a large suitcase and several garbage bags onto the sidewalk. The Black woman waited by the stuff as the big man of East Indian descent carried the biggest bag down the street and then unlocked the door to my building. He looked familiar. I asked the woman if they were moving in to my place above the donut shop. She seemed uncomfortable talking to me, perhaps because I was a stranger on the street, but she explained that he was moving in and she had driven him here. It started to rain and I stepped as close to the trunk of the tree in front of Bike Pirates as I could. She motioned impatiently for him to hurry up. He made a few trips and when he finally came for the big suitcase I asked him if he was moving in above the Coffee Time. He confirmed that we were neighbours and I remembered that we’d actually said hi in the hall a couple of days before. We shook hands and he told me that his name was Shanka.

When Den opened up the shop I’d thought the Polish guy was going to say his two friends were second and third but they said that I was second. I asked at the desk if I could owe them a donation until Thursday. The guy deferred to Den who said that since I was pretty regular at Bike Pirates I was good for it.

I clamped my velo to stand number two. When Den came around I told him my problem. Just like last time I was sure that the problem would be my bottom bracket, but I was relieved to be told once again that it wasn’t. This time the outer chain ring of my crank set was bent. He got a big set of pliers and showed me how to bend out the sections that were too close to the chain. The problem though was that one part that was close to the chain had the crank arm on the other side and so it was hard to get any leverage. Den advised me to remove the crank set and then bend it in the vice. That’s what I did, with help to find out where to clamp it. It was a tedious process. Den suggested that they had lots of used crank rings if I just wanted to find another one. Tom came to help me and after I bent one section too far with a hammer he repeated Den’s suggestion. I took their collective advice and started looking for a chain ring with a crank arm that was similar to the one I’d had. Three bins later I found one that looked very close. Tom checked put loosely in place and spun it around, then confirmed that it was straight.
            I see now that wha I’d picked was a Nervar crankset, which turns out to be French. It’s an obsolete brand and the company went out of business in the 70s, but it was considered a to be a good crankset. Since it’s so similar to the other one with similar bolt holes in the chainring, I figure that was French too, as must be the left crank arm. My bike seems to want to stay French.

I mentioned to Tom that I’d found out that he knows my daughter and he knew right away that I was talking about Astrid, so I guess he’d known that I was her father all along. I thanked him for putting her up the last few times that she visited Toronto. I explained that I’d had a problem with bugs until a couple of years ago. He asked if I still had my cats. I let him know that the three siblings all died of old age last year at the age of seventeen.
            The only problem with the crank set I’d chosen was that one of the bolts that held the two rings together was missing a nut. Thus began the most time consuming part of any visit to Bike Pirates, which was to look through bins for matching nuts or bolts. I realized after a few minutes that the bolt was far too short so I had to find another bolt that would fit the hole and then a nut that would fit that bolt. I dumped the bin of bolts onto my table and started sorting through them. After several minutes the guy at the stand next to mine was reaching near me for a tool and he commented, “I know you are going to find just the right one you are looking for! It’s there!” I don’t think he was being facetious.  Think he really believed, I guess based on his own past experience that one finds what one is looking for eventually in the chaos of Bike Pirates.
            After several more minutes I finally found a bolt, then I went to get the bin of nuts, put all the bolts back into their bin, returned it to the shelf, then dumped the nuts on my table. At least ten minutes later I chanced on a nut that fit but when I tried to tighten it the thing reached a point of resistance and then kept turning. It was stripped. I had to start again. More minutes passed during which I found nuts that seemed like they were a match and yet they would not thread. Finally I took the bolt to one of the volunteers and asked if he though the bolt was stripped. He confirmed that it looked like it was to him, so I had to clean up the nuts, put them away and then bring back the bolt bin to dump the bolts on my table and to sift through them again. It didn’t take too long to find another similar bolt, then I put the bolts back in the bin and returned it to the shelf, dumped the nuts back on the table until fifteen minutes later I lucked out with a matching nut that threaded this time.

Next I had to put the crank set back on my bike but the cotter pin wouldn’t go in so I had to get another one. Then, just like last time, with a new cotter pin in one crank arm, it wouldn’t line up with the crank arm on the other side unless a new cotter pin was put in that one as well.

Next I had to remove my pedal from the old crank arm, which is surprisingly hard to do when it’s not attached to the bicycle. Tom advised me to put it in the vice first to get it started, and then I could do it by hand. That worked and I got it off the old crank arm but when I tried to screw it onto the replacement crank arm it would only thread so far. Tom cam with a die tool and rethreaded the crank arm but it still would only go about ten threads in. Tom tried rethreading it again but it still wouldn’t work. He told me to get another pedal and try it. I did that but when I tried to screw it in, that one stopped turning at the same point. Tom tried one more time but when that didn’t work he just decided we were going to force it, so with a lot of effort he finally got my pedal wrenched onto the new crank arm.

I took my bike for a test drive and the shifting feeling was gone. I rode up the alley and then across to O’Hara, which was packed with cars heading down to Queen Street either on their way from, on their way to, or in between Caribana parties. At the corner there were was a bit of a happy traffic jam as some autos with top windows had passengers sitting on their roofs, while others that didn’t have sunroofs had them sitting on the open windowed doors with their legs inside as they rocked to the music and waved to each other.

Back at Bike Pirates I filled out a project sheet as a reminder for myself of what I owed them and took it home with me.