Chains and pains



Wow! When you've spent time on such a wreck, and think you're getting somewhere, then you find more stuff that needs to be fixed, it's too late to stop. You've got to keep going or you've wasted the time you already put in.
That's the thing, it wasn't a wreck.
All it "really" needed in parts was a few feet of cable housing and some electrical wire.
Those were the obvious issues. Had I rolled it into a shop and said "the lights don't go on and I've lost one gear", that's probably what it would have gotten, and been back on the streets within 30 minutes.
But with algae growing on the grips, an easy point of entry for water into the cable housing, lights not att full strength, a semi-seized, gouged seat post and an overall matted appearence.

One of my neighbors left a bike outside with a "Free" sign on it, so I took it home. Cleaned it up, trued the wheels, inflated the tires, and found the hub gear was shot. The bike was the cheapest of the cheap when it was new, so hardly worth the expense of putting another hub gear in. Got my Sawzall out, put a metal blade in it, and chopped the bike up and recycled the metal.
I guess that depends on the amount of storage space you've got.
Around here, I come across bikes with bent forks every now and then. Front wheels generally also damaged. Maybe even a suspect down tube. Makes good donor bikes for cranks, saddles/seat posts, racks rear wheels....
Then you break out the Sawzall...
 
I guess that depends on the amount of storage space you've got.
Around here, I come across bikes with bent forks every now and then. Front wheels generally also damaged. Maybe even a suspect down tube. Makes good donor bikes for cranks, saddles/seat posts, racks rear wheels....
Then you break out the Sawzall...
In this case, the frame was made of very thin, soft steel. The back wheel was not pointing north and south; it was several degrees out, causing the front of it to be close to one chainstay and far from the other one. I was able to easily bend the chainstays with my hands, so the wheel was aligned properly. That's when I realized that it was a piece of junk. The back wheel also had a kink in it that truing would not straighten out.

The saddle was missing because somebody had been trying to remove the seat stem. They had been hammering it down into the seat tube and had mushroomed the end of it. I guess they were trying to break it loose to get it out. The seat stem had a very narrow diameter at the top, about two inches long. With the aid of two vise grips I was able to keep twisting it each way, back and forth and pulling up on it until it eventually came out. I'd never seen such a seat stem as that, and I guess it must have had a saddle specially made to fit it. I reversed it and put the narrow end down, which then enabled me to fit a saddle that I already had. And even with that I had to tighten the clamp beyond what was intended because the stem was so small.

I searched the internet for bike parts, hoping to find a wheel with a hub gear; no luck. Even used hubs were expensive, and I didn't consider it worth getting one to put into a kinked wheel. So it became a question of how much did I want to spend fixing up a piece of junk? A bike is only as good as its frame, and this one was lousy, a waste of good steel. Oh, apart from that, it needed tires and tubes. I removed the tires so I could true the wheels. As I deflated them, the rubber had turned brittle and stuck to the rims, and the beads broke off. Altogether a waste of time, and I don't think any of it was good for donor parts. Even Walmart doesn't sell bikes of an inferior quality such as I was working on. :)