Part 1 can be found
HereBut, before I attack the bike with a hacksaw, I had better get a replacement.
Step in Simonius_Titius and his man cave of many vintage spare parts. I stepped away with a near immaculate new stem. I couldn’t get it home fast enough and throw it on the polishing wheel. I wish the paint on the frame polished up as easily, most of the last month was spent scrubbing, rubbing and buffing cutting compound into the various crevices of the frame to banish the rust spots and bring some shine back to the paint surface.
Frame done, time to sort out the forks, fingering through my selection of hacksaw blades I plucked out a new blade of the correct TPI for ali and set to chopping the head off the stem. It is a very satisfying feeling hacking through aluminium. A mix of naughty boy feeling you get destroying something and satisfaction at the easy with which a new blade cuts through soft metal.
The new fork slotted straight in with the extra bonus that all the bearing fitted in nice and snuggly. The steerer tube was a bit too long for the frame setup, and although I was initially reticent to shorten it I rationalised that the forks had been sat on a shelf and had not been used for years. So they could either go back on the shelf unused for another five years or get shortened and put to a good use.
The original plan was to get them resprayed blue to match the Panasonic colours on the frame. but once I married them up with the budget wheels (reviewed here) I picked up, the almost identical colour match made it fate that they should remain.
If you examine the photo closely, you’ll also see that I spent another few hours chipping the rust off the headset housings. Luckily it was mostly surface rust that I could chip off. It hadn’t eaten into the chrome too much. They don’t look concourse, but they keep the bike looking tidy and in as near original as possible. Which is in direct conflict with the decision to replace the wheels with modern track specific ones, I know, I know.
Fitting the wheels wasn’t the just slot them in task I had hoped. Yes they slotted in, but the diameter of the new wheels axle was fractionally larger, meaning that the rear wheel had to be hammer helped into position. So against the better judgement of the frames anti corrosive treatment I had to file the paint off the inside tracks of the dropout to facilitate easier wheel fitting and alignment. While I was there there was a fair bit of monkey wrenching to be done on the rear drop outs to get them back to being close to parallel and 120mm apart.
The handlebar had not fared well over this bike life. Peeling back the old tape revealed the effect of years of being left outside wrapped in a moisture absorbing cocoon of bar tape. Critically the integrity of the tube was in tact, but the chrome finish was long gone. I wanted to re-use the original bar tape, but the grotesqueness of the bars mean’t I wasn’t going to get away with a track style wrapping of just the lowers. I had to snip out a couple of mankey bits of tape (mostly where if navigated around the levers). Anyone got any good ideas for resplicing bar tape?
Last mission was winding in an external bottom bracket (again an item bought years ago and never used.) neither cup would wind all the way in. But it was only a case of cleaning out the threads in the frame with a wire brush. Then repeatedly winding each cup in a bit then back out until it was all the way home.
I’m not sure what to do with the mudguard/stand mount, chop it out or leave it?
That’s it for this month’s effort, it leaves me perilously close to a first ride.
