Finishing Touches

Hello again, it's been a long time, hasn't it?

This will be the last post on this blog, as I think I've covered everything that I wanted to. Indeed, if it hadn't been for something that happened after I finished the London to Paris ride, I'd be finished already.

Speaking of which, the ride. I was part of a group of 140 cyclists, and we covered the distance over four days. Day 1 was 95 miles; day 2, 75 miles; day 3, 70 miles; with 60 miles on the final day. Day 3 may be the most I've ever enjoyed cycling in my life. I'm also pleased to say that, over the 295 miles, I had not a single problem with the bike at all - no punctures, pinch flats, brake issues or rough shifts. It was truly the dream machine I hoped it would be.

So, 295 miles with not a problem - wonderful. After arriving in Paris, I dropped the bike off for it to be returned to London by truck and ferry, while I soaked my aching legs in a nice hot bath. Sad to say, when I collected the bike in London, it had two dirty big gouges in the paintwork of the head tube:

Now, I'm not one for being overly precious about things, and a bike is a working machine which will pick up the odd scratch and scrape, but these seemed like two fairly hefty chunks, and I was naturally worried I'd end up with a rust problem if I didn't get it seen to.

First stop were all of my trusted local bike shops - I was sure one of them would be able to help me out, but sadly not. The best I got from them was the offer of sending the bike off to a repair shop in Bristol for a couple of weeks. I tried other shops in London, and the story was more or less the same - inconvenient locations and long waiting times.

I tried a few car bodywork repair shops, too, but none of them were interested in taking on a small job like this, and would've charged me car prices for it. Eventually it dawned on me that, if I wanted the scratches repaired, I was going to have to do it myself.

Paintwork was never on my agenda when I started this project. On occasion, I've had to paint the odd wall in my flat, but the outcome has always been a bit like this. Faced with no alternative, however, I went over to Halfords, not quite sure what I needed, and came back with:

• A spray can of red primer
• A spray can of red paint for an Audi
• A spray can of lacquer
• A packet of paint preparation wipes
• Some fine grit wet and dry sandpaper
• Masking tape

Thus equipped, I took the bike outside and set to work. First was the masking tape, masking off as much of the down and top tubes as I thought I'd need to, the crown area of the forks, and the cables. I left the scratched area exposed in a rectangle, to give a nice clean finish.

I then sanded, cleaned and dried the scratched area, and applied a couple of coats of primer, at 15-minute intervals. The nozzles on the spray cans weren't especially ideal for the sort of detailed work I was attempting to do, having been designed for use on larger areas, but it worked pretty well.

Following that, I went to the pub for a bit, and had a cracking Indian lunch at Bangalore Express, while the primer dried. On my return, I sanded and cleaned again, and then put on three or four coats of paint, and left that overnight to dry.

The next morning ... sand, clean, lacquer, repeat. And then ... the moment of truth ...

... peeling off the masking tape ...

Well, it's not exactly a good colour match, but it's covered up the scratches pretty well, which is what I was looking for. The marks you can see above and below the painted area are just the leftovers of the adhesive from the masking tape, but some sugar soap will take care of that.

And so concludes Cycle Maintenance for the Mechanically Gifted. Thank-you for reading!

Stand

As you read the last time around, the bike build is finished, but there are a few things I've forgotten about that I'm going to go back over.

I've found that the fiddliest but most satisfying maintenance job to do is derailleur adjustment. You may have guessed this from the number of times it's figured in my posts here. I've found it to be an inexact science, and I've yet to get it right first time, but when you can change gear instantly and silently, with no clicking or grinding or chain rubbing, cycling becomes a thing of beauty.

It's also impossible to do it properly without a stand:

My bike in the stand, rather mucky after 40 miles in the rain this morning.

Adjusting your derailleurs means constantly changing up and down gears, front and back, up and down, until everything is in sync and running smoothly. It's just impossible to do that with your back wheel on the ground.

I went for a folding bike workstand from Halfords, which cost me a quid short of £100, but it's been worth every penny. It's a fairly heavy piece of kit, with three folding legs which open out and take the weight of the bike. As you can see from the photo, an arm with a clamp grips the bike - generally I clamp the top tube, but if I'm working on the rear brakes I have to clamp it on the down tube or the seat post, to avoid trapping the brake cable.

The top tube clamped in the stand, with the quick release lever visible.

It's a sturdy piece of equipment, ideal for the sort of frequency of use I get out of it. All the angle adjustments of the stand, and the clamping arm, use quick release levers. They're not the tightest when in the tight position, but they don't slide around too much. If I was working on bikes all day every day, I'd probably want something a bit higher-end, but it's ideal for me.

Putting it all together

Poetically enough, the final link in the chain of building the bicycle was fitting the chain. (And slightly less poetically, installing the gear cables, but let's ignore that for the moment.)

I went through quite a faff to get the chain to the right size, but you can save yourself the trouble by watching this handy video:

That describes it far better than I ever could. About the only thing I'd add is that I can't say enough about how useful quick links are. In the past, I've fitted Sram chains that use quick links, and it's a doddle.

This time, though, I had a Shimano chain and connector pin. The connector pin has a "leader" part which you push right the way through the link, and the theory is that you use a chain tool to do that, then cut the leader bit off with bolt cutters or somesuch. This was, indeed, a faff, and I ended up using a hacksaw to cut the leader off. I'm sure you're not supposed to do that.

With the chain at the correct length and fitted to the bike, it's time for the last bit - fitting the gear cables and tightening them to give you nice, smooth shifts. For this, I'm again going to refer you to a video that explains things much more clearly than I ever could.

This actually covers removing old cables before fitting new ones, but the same principle applies. Personally, I found that fishing the cables through the shifters was a bit tricky, but a little bit of perseverance got the job done.

And that's it!

On training

Over the weekend, I realised that I hadn't yet made any mention of the training I've been doing for my ride to Paris. When I started writing here, it was with the express intention of it not becoming a training diary - to my mind, there's little duller than blow-by-blow accounts of the daily activities of someone else's life. Nonetheless, there are some things regarding my training which it would be remiss not to mention. Maybe some of you have even been wondering about it! (Unlikely, I know.)

First, the goals of my training: to get myself in condition to complete the ride from London to Paris, and beyond that, enjoy it. The ride is over four days, with the mileage covered per day being 95, 75, 70 and 60 respectively.

Second, my training so far: I did a 60-miler along with Nick at the beginning of May, which went reasonably well. Before and after that, I've been packing my training mainly into the weekends, on rides varying in length from 20 to 40 miles. The abundance of bank holidays in April and May has been immensely helpful in this respect.

Third, my target: I'm aiming for an average speed of 15 mph across the four days of the ride. This would work out at about six hours riding on the first day, and four on the last day. I managed to maintain 15 mph reasonably comfortably on the 60-miler, and I've been able to hit that consistently on my other training rides too.

Fourth, other training: I haven't exactly been going out of my way to get punctures, but I've been trying to view them as good practice for doing quick changes on the ride itself. The best I've done so far is 10 minutes to change the inner tube on the back wheel and get it back on, but I'm sure I can do it more quickly than that.

Lastly, where I've been training: I'm lucky enough to live close to Richmond Park. London's biggest park, it's a haven for cyclists at the weekend, for obvious reasons - little traffic, good roads, lovely scenery, and a few little uphills and downhills too. I can't say enough good things about the setting. Sometimes the only colour you can see is green, and you forget you're on the edge of one of the world's largest cities, then you turn a corner, the trees part, and you see the towers and wheels of London's famous skyline.


View Larger Map

Roads run  around the perimiter of the park, in a more-or-less square shape, forming a route which is roughly six miles long. I live just under three miles from Richmond Gate, so once around the park and getting to and from it is 12 miles. I've tended to think about my rides as much in terms of number of times round the park as in absolute distances - twice round is 18 miles, five times round is 36 miles, and so on.

The park is at its busiest with cyclists early in the morning, but I actually prefer late afternoon and early evening rides. Part of that's no doubt because I'm not much of a morning person, but later in the day you also tend to get far fewer wankers riding three-abreast, pretending they're in the Tour de France peloton and unnecessarily holding up cars.

Here ends everything you'll ever hear from me about training. The rest of it's just about keeping the pedals turning ...

R: Tape Loading Error

Like many boys of my generation, I spent a large proportion of my youth fiddling with cassettes.

Image courtesy of Wikimedia Commons

Building the bike has required fiddling with cassettes of a different kind:

Image courtesy of Wikimedia Commons

The cassette above is a Shimano Dura ace, whereas I fitted a Shimano Tiagra cassette to my bike. It fits onto your back wheel, and is the part that your chain hooks on to, providing the "drive" that moves you forward. My cassette has 9 rings - the largest ring is the lowest gear, the smallest ring is the highest gear.

Here's my back wheel, before fitting the cassette:

The rings of the cassette slip over the larger grey spindle on the right-hand side. As with all cleverly-designed things, there are different-size notches on the inside of the rings, which correspond to matching notches on the spindle. That means you can't put the rings on in the wrong alignment.

Once all the rings are on, it's secured with a "cap" that requires a special cassette tool to tighten:

Image courtesy of Wikimedia Commons

The narrow end fits onto the cap, and you can use a normal spanner to do the tightening.

With the cassette fitted, you're now ready to fit the wheels and put everything together!

Right Round Baby, Right Round ...

One of the most interesting things for me about building the bike has been how quite a few of my assumptions on how a bike works and what it's made up of have been challenged or shown to be complete nonsense. So it is with wheels.

For example, I'd always assumed that front and rear wheels were more or less identical.

Not so, as these photographs of my Mavic Aksium wheels show.

This is my rear wheel:

And this is my front wheel (the one on the right):

Spotted the difference? 

That's right - the spokes on one side of the rear wheel are "flat", so to speak - they stay within the plane of the rim. That's the side which the cassette (more on that later) attaches to. The amount by which the spokes come out of the plane of the rim is known as the "dish".

In all the years I've ridden bikes, and all the times I've taken back wheels off to mend punctures, I'd never noticed that, up until I saw those two wheels.

The finished article

I think I've probably mentioned it already, but in case I hadn't, the bike build finished about a month ago. A combination of determination, plentiful supplies of grease, and the Manowar back catalogue pushed me over the hump and I got it finished in time to make the best of the great weather we had here in April.

I was planning to leave posting photographs until I'd finished describing every stage of the build, but I've had some requests for pictures, so here goes:

DSC_2717.JPG, a photo by alan_gibson01 on Flickr.

You can see more in this Flickr album.

Catch it while you can!

If you skip back through this blog a few months, you may remember I mentioned a book called "It's All About The Bike" by Robert Penn. It was an engaging mix of the author's own personal cycling history, the history of the bicycle itself, and the story of the building of his dream bike. It was a large influence on my choice of frame and handlebars, too.

Well, the good news is that he also made TV programme on the same theme, and it's on iPlayer until this Thursday. I recommend you watch it while you can - it's an enjoyable way to spend an hour, it's educational without being dull, and it's impossible not to be affected by Robert Penn's enthusiasm for the bicycle.

http://www.bbc.co.uk/iplayer/episode/b00t6ylx/Ride_of_My_Life_The_Story_of_the_Bicycle/

I can ride my bike with no handlebars

Actually, I can't. But it's a really catchy handlebar-related tune, and I couldn't let the opportunity to mention it pass.

As well as being the bit of the bike that you hold onto, the handlebars in many ways also hold the rest of the bike together. Without the handlebars, you've got nothing to put the brake and shift levers on, and without them you'll have trouble both moving and stopping.

I've got black Cinelli Vai XL shallow drop handlebars. For those of you who have only ever ridden hybrids or mountain bikes, they're the loopy-type bars which are often the most recognisable feature of a road bike. The fact they're shallow drop bars means they're not quite as loopy as some, while the XL indicates that the centre of the bar, which is clamped by the stem, has a larger circumference than the standard Cinelli Vai handlebars. In fact, it perfectly fits my Cinelli Vai XL stem!

Following the instructions which came with the stem and the bars, I whipped out my torque wrench and tightened the bars in the stem to the recommended level.

All good, part one done. Now, for the levers. I've got Shimano Tiagra STI levers. Operating them is simple enough, but fitting them was slightly tricky.

You can't see it on the picture I linked to there, but the black covering for the "body" of the levers is actually rubber, and when you pull it back you see a metal ring. The idea is that you slip the ring onto the end of your handlebar, and slide it up the curvy bit of the bar until it reaches the top.

In theory it's very simple, but in practice it took me a little while. There's a little screw hidden under another part of the rubber cover, which loosens and tightens the ring. Obviously, to slide the lever into position without scratching the bar, the ring has to be sufficiently loose to move freely. Once it's in the correct position (find what's most comfortable for you by sitting on the bike and adjusting) you then need to tighten it nice and firmly in order to make sure the lever doesn't move around when you're riding.

(Side note: Naturally, I didn't tighten one of the rings enough, so one of my levers does slide around a bit. But not much. And it just all adds to the charm of the machine, I think. Why don't I just tighten it up now? I'll deal with that another day.)

With the levers in place, you're now all nice and ready to feed the cables into them, but before that you need to fit the bits that the other ends of the cable attach to ...

Let's Torque about it

OK, let's start with a quick bit of word association.

If I say "IKEA", what do you think of first?

• Self-assembly furniture.
• The letter Ø or Ö.
• Vikings.
• Meatballs.
• Queueing.
• Mitch Benn's fantastic song.
• The futility of life on Earth.

Personally, I think of these:

Aside from their furniture assembly uses, I was surprised to find that the Allen key is also a staple of bicycle building. In actual fact, some of the keys I used in assembling my bike were actually ones left over from furniture I've assembled in the past. They do the job perfectly.

Most of the time, anyway.

For tasks which aren't part of the standard cable-loosening-or-tightening maintenance routine, you sometimes have to take more care. Attaching your handlebars to the stem, for example - another occasion where I read my least favourite of all phrases, "catastrophic failure", a few times.

This was with reference to the over-tightening of the bolts on the clamp which grips the handlebars firmly in the stem:

As you can see from the picture, there are four of these on my stem, and from the manufacturer's instructions (Cinelli in this case), it arises that it's important these are tightened equally and, most importantly, not over-tightened, lest the bar become over-stressed and break. The equal tightening bit is easy, just give each bolt a turn or two, then move on to the next one, turn it the same number of times, wash, rinse, repeat. Simple.

But what about not over-tightening them? Other than just guessing based on how tight the bolt "feels" when you turn it (which on my scale ranges from "single finger whee" through "twiddle" to "whole body nggggghhhh"), how do you actually adhere to the manufacturer's tightening instructions?

The answer is with a torque wrench, my new favourite piece of kit:

It consists of a long "body" (the handle end is the black rubber bit), and a number of Allen key heads of different sizes. Simplistically, just attach the right size of key to the body, and it works just like a standard Allen key, but crucially prevents you from over-tightening bolts.

Through some combination of magic and engineering, you can twist the handle of the body to set a "maximum torque" (measured in Newton metres, abbreviated to Nm). Manufacturers are usually kind enough to mark on the things to be bolted together the maximum torque which should be used. Alternatively, you'll find it in the manual that came with the parts in question.

When you're tightening the relevant bolts, the wrench will make a little "click" sound to indicate that you've reached the tightening limit. It really is that simple.

The thing about torque wrenches, though, is that they're precision equipment (mine came with a calibration certificate and everything), and consequently not cheap. Mine cost me £48, and so far I've used it to tighten a grand total of 4 bolts - £12 per bolt, if you look at it that way. But hopefully my handlebars won't fall off, and I value that as worth much, much more.

Stop!

Dear reader,

It was all going so well. The bottom bracket was in, cranks attached, and I fitted the front and rear derailleurs (more on all of that later). I'd bought the wheels (again, more on them later), fitted the tyres (ditto), and the bare frame was gradually beginning to look like a proper bike.

Then I tried to fit the brakes.

First, some background. The brakes I'm fitting to the bike are caliper brakes. If you've previously ridden mountain or hybrid bikes, you may not have seen these - disc or V-brakes tend to be more popular on those. Here's what they look like:

When fitted, a wire runs down the left hand side of the brake, from the bolt on the top to the one on the left. When you pull the brake lever, the arm on the left moves, pulling the brake shoes (the black bits) against the metal rim of your wheel.

Well, that's the theory, anyway. Here's the problems I encountered, in turn:

1. Fitting the right brake at the right end of the bike
Those two brakes above look pretty similar, don't they? So you can fit whatever one you want on the back and the front, right?

Wrong.

Caliper brakes are fitted to your forks (at the front) and frame (at the back) by a single bolt right in the centre, at the highest point of the body of the brake. You can just about see these bolts in the picture above.

There'll be matching holes front and back on your bike. Here's what the one at the front looks like:

Just slip the bolt through the hole, fasten a nut on it at the other side, make sure it's nice and tight, and you're done.

Except you're not. The hole in your fork is going to be deeper than the one at the back of your frame, and caliper brakes come with bolts whose lengths match those depths. This caught me out, and I mistakenly tried to fit the front brake to the back.

No harm done, it didn't fasten properly, so I took it off and fitted them the right way round. Done yet? No.

2. Variations in bolt length
For different combinations of brake and frame, the bolts may or may not be exactly the length you need to get a good, tight fit that keeps the brake nice and steady. As it turns out, for a Genesis Equilibrium frame and Shimano Tiagra brakes, the bolts are slightly too long, which makes it difficult (if not impossible) to tighten them properly.

This problem, too, was easily enough solved. I just got some little washers from Homebase, slipped a couple on the bolts before I put them through the holes, and fastened the nuts. The brakes were fastened nice and tight, but still something didn't look right ...

3. Brake drop
When I pushed the arms of the brakes together, so that they contacted the wheel, I noticed they were hitting more tyre than they were rim. This was rather frustrating.

I noticed a couple of bolts holding the brake shoes tight, so I undid them and tried to fiddle around with the shoe positions to get more contact with the rim. No joy.

It turns out that the Tiagra brakes are just plain incompatible with the Equilibrium frame - which nicely explains why the pre-built Equilibriums don't come with them as standard. The fundamental problem is something known as brake drop.

Brake drop is the distance from the middle of the bolt hole in your fork or frame, to the middle of your wheel's rim. On typical road bikes, the brake drop is around 47mm. This is what the Tiagra brakes are built for. On the Equilibrium, the brake drop is around 57mm, which essentially means that the brake shoes on the Tiagra brakes can't ever reach down far enough to hit enough of the rim.

The solution? Stick the Tiagra brakes on eBay (still to do, I've never sold anything on eBay ... scary!) and buy some deep drop brakes, which do have a brake drop of 57mm. I've gone for Tektro 538 brakes, which should do the trick nicely.

( )

Good evening.

I'm happy to say that, after the false start with the headset and stem, tonight I have eventually broken my putting-things-on-the-bike duck. I got greased up and put the bottom bracket in.

My bottom bracket!

What's a bottom bracket?

From the perspective of this amateur, a bottom bracket is to your cranks (the arms that your pedals attach to) what the headset is to your handlebars, namely a set of bearings that ensure nice, smooth, consistent movement.

The bottom bracket I bought, a Shimano Tiagra model, comes in two parts. One screws into each side of the bottom bracket shell (that's the threaded hole that the bottom bracket goes into). It's an external bottom bracket - never having seen any other kind, I'm not especially able to tell you what other types you can get, or why you'd want them.

Actually, writing this blog took longer than doing the fitting. I'm fairly confident I've done a proper job without damaging the threads in the shell. What bit goes in the right and left side are clearly marked, as are the directions of rotation to fit them. Before I started work, I did my usual scouring of the web for instructional videos, and this one from BikeRadar was about the best I found. (It's the final video on the page, Install An External Bottom Bracket.)

Aside from a little bit of patience, some grease, and the bottom bracket itself, the only other thing you need is a bottom bracket spanner to tighten the two parts up properly. It's probably important to buy the spanner that fits your bracket - I think the Shimano brackets have a standard fitting, so I was able to pick up a spanner from Wiggle pretty easily and cheaply.

The rest of the assembly needs to wait until I get my wheels sorted, which I'll be doing at the weekend.

Stay tuned.

Are you sitting comfortably? I am.

When I was building my list of components at the weekend, I almost completely forgot the seatpost and saddle. It's a bit odd, that, given that without those, the bike would literally be unrideable. I guess it's because there are so many more bits that are high-tech and shiny and futuristic-looking, that the thought of how I was going to sit on this bike slipped my mind slightly.

The importance of these can't be overstated, though. There's a very good reason we use the phrase "pain in the arse" to describe something we're not overly pleased with.

First, the seatpost. This is the long post which slides into the seat tube (see the diagram I posted last month) and has the saddle attached to the top. Setting the height of the seatpost correctly is really important. If it's too high, you'll overstretch your feet and legs at the bottom of each revolution, not to mention the problems you'll have getting on the bike in the first place! If it's too low (more common, from what I've seen) you'll find your legs bowing out the way a bit at the bottom of each revolution, and you won't be making most efficient use of your legs either.

The key to setting the right seatpost height is, so I'm told, to have it high enough that your legs are almost completely stretched out at the bottom of a revolution, but not quite. At least, that's how I've got mine set, and it feels good. If you've ridden a bike with its seatpost on the low side, trust me that it'll feel funny the first few times after you adjust it, but it'll be worth it and it's not too hard to get used to.

And so, on to the saddle. I've made a pragmatic but hopefully wise choice - I'm going to use the saddle I've already got on my Ridgeback. The reasons for this are, in order:

1. That saddle fits my bum perfectly (or vice versa). I've had six years of service out of it with a minimum of chafing. Some saddles - particularly leather ones, I'm led to believe - need quite some breaking in. Clearly that's not an option for me, since the bike won't be all built until early May and the ride is in June.
2. The seatpost fits my new bike perfectly. I was rather surprised by this, given there appears to be little crossover in standards between road bikes and other bikes, but it's exactly the right diameter.
3. I'll only ever be riding one bike at a time. Given how easy it is to remove a seatpost, having two seemed a little excessive.
4. The less money I spend on things I don't need, the more I can spend on things I do. That means a better bike!

The gathering begins ...

Good evening, everyone.

As I said last time, having been laid low and kept off my bike by a cold at the weekend, I put my free time to good use by picking out the components for my bike. Excitingly, they've already started arriving. The first part is the stem, which is quite fortunate, as it's the next part which has to be fitted.

When I had to go about choosing a stem, I wasn't quite sure what I was looking for. I've never owned a road bike before, with the loopy handlebars, and the only time I rode one I was aware that the riding position is rather different from the one you have on a hybrid or mountain bike. I was aware of being a lot more horizontal, stretched out along the frame, whereas on my current bike I'm very upright. Upright is probably better that way for negotiating city traffic and cycle lanes, but it's not especially in keeping with what I'm looking for with this new bike.

Fortunately, though, my current Ridgeback hybrid has been able to help me out. You can actually adjust the angle of its stem, so I was able to set it up at a similar angle to what I'd expect of a road bike. I sat on it in the sort of position I expect to on the new bike, judged how it felt, and made my choice from there.

I settled on a Cinelli Vai XL 100mm stem. The stem on the Ridgeback is 80mm, and felt just a little cramped for me, so I thought I should go for something a bit longer. Fit aside, as with all the components I'm putting on this bike (and as I did with the frame), I chose it based on a combination of price and reviews I read. It seemed to hit the sweet spot I'm looking for.

I've ordered the shallow-drop Cinelli Vai XL handlebars to go with it, but unfortunately they're on back order and won't turn up until towards the end of April. That may impact on the rest of the build a bit, as I won't have anything to attach the shifters to, but there's still plenty of time.

In the meantime, I've also got a seatpost and saddle, which I'll tell you about the next time ...

Anatomy of a bicycle, #3: Four candles

Good afternoon, everyone. I've been a little unwell recently, which has impacted my preparations for the ride as much as it has my writing here. But I'm feeling better now, and I've got a confession to make.

I may have slightly overdone it in the bravado department when I set out on this project. With the exception of the wheels, I was planning to put everything together myself. I got my frame, and I got the forks, and the logical next step was to get a headset and a stem, and to attach everything nice and snugly.

Which is where the problems began. There were points in the assembly instructions that required use of a hammer - which in my hands just normally means large lumps being taken out of something (occasionally me). During my background reading, I came across the phrase "catastrophic failure" more than once. Eventually (just about the time I saw the picture of someone sawing a bit off the top of a steerer tube),  I realised this is something you really don't want to go wrong.

Let's start with the forks. The forks on a bike are the steerable bits that attach to the front wheel. Where the two forks join in the middle is called the fork crown, and from there up is the steerer tube. The steerer tube goes through the head tube, with the fork crown nestled snugly against the bottom of the head tube. You attach a stem to the bit that pokes out of the top of the head tube, and you attach your handlebars to the stem.

So far, so good.

But if all you did was slip your fork through the head tube, and slap on a stem and some handlebars, your cycling experience would be jerkier than the chicken in a Caribbean restaurant. Every bump and undulation you went over would send your front wheel hither and thither.

What you need is a headset, to help join everything together nice and smoothly and make your bike rideable. A headset is basically a group of bearings at the top and bottom of the head tube, which allow the forks and steerer tube to turn smoothly and predictably.


"Fantastic", I hear you ask, "so what's so hard about slapping on a couple of bearings?"


What's so hard about is that a badly installed headset is almost as bad as no headset at all. Having previously ridden a very cheap bike with a very cheap headset installed very shoddily (I won't tell you where I bought the bike), I can vouch for this. It was completely unrideable. The various bearings have to be exactly aligned, at exactly the correct position relative to the head tube, with exactly the right load placed on them, in order to achieve smooth rotation.

That seemed like a big ask for a first-time bike assembler. The headset and stem are equally crucial to the structure of the bike as the wheels and the frame itself, so I figured it was best to treat them as such and leave that to the professionals. If I fit the drivetrain myself and I get a click-ick-ick-ick-ick sound rather than the smooth click I should when I change gears, that's too bad, but it's not going to result in the crunch-splat that a headset failure could.

In other news, I have picked out and ordered various of the other components I'm going to be putting on the bike, but I'll leave the details of that for another time ...

Anatomy of a bicycle, #2

Good afternoon.

Returning to the cycling theme, the bike-building will be starting soon, as I've just ordered my frame! After reading Robert Penn's "It's All About The Bike", I opted to go for a steel frame. A custom-fitted, hand-built Rourke frame is (ahem) slightly outside my budget, so instead I'm going for a Genesis Equilibrium 56cm frame. It's within my budget, I've read some rave reviews of it, and it's the bike of choice for the mechanics at a couple of local bike shops, so I think it'll be a good starting point.

[Aside: This will be the first time in about 20 years that I've had a steel-frame bike. The last one was a wonderful chromoly Peugeot BMX that I had up until I was about 13. After that, I went without a bike at all for the best part of 10 years. I often wonder what I could have done in that 10 years I was lost to cycling.]

So, that's the frame - a series of tubes welded together, in a roughly diamond shape. The best diagram I've found to explain the geometry of a frame is this one, which just happens to be annotated in Japanese:

• Top tube (トップチューブ): The topmost, horizontal tube, which runs from where the saddle would be to where the handlebars go.
• Seat tube (シートチューブ): The tube which goes down from where the saddle would be to where the pedals are.
• Head tube (ヘッドチューブ): The small tube at the front.
• Down tube (ダウンチューブ): The tube which runs diagonally from the bottom of the head tube to where the pedals are.
• Seat stays (シートステイ): The two tubes which run diagonally from where the saddle would be to where the back wheel is attached.
• Chain stays (チェーンステイ): The two tubes which run (almost) horizontally from where the pedals are to where the back wheel is attached.

Also annotated on this diagram is the fork, the steerable bit at the front which runs through the head tube and to which the front wheel is attached.

My first assembly job is coming up soon ... fitting the fork and the frame together, which requires me to read up on and familiarise myself with headsets. Expect to read something about them in the near future!

Off-topic: Mental health and debt

Although the subject matter of this blog is primarily bikes and cycling, tonight I discovered something which ties together a few disparate but related threads so beautifully, that I couldn't help but remark on it.

When I first thought about taking on this challenge, I was conscious that the money-raising aspect of it would be as difficult, if not more difficult, than the cycling part or the building-my-own-bike part. With the onset of crunchy credit and recessions and increasing unemployment and the like, I was well aware that a lot of people have a lot less money going spare for contributions to charities. I'm delighted to say that, in spite of this, my friends and colleagues have proved fantastically generous so far, as the totaliser at uk.virginmoneygiving.com/AlanGibson attests. You'll also hopefully be aware that all of the money I raise will be going to Mind, charity which provides help to the 1 in 4 people who experience mental distress each year.

However, I think we're probably all looking for ways to save money to a certain extent. One source I regularly use, whether it's finding the best insurance prices, cheap flights, voucher codes, you name it, is moneysavingexpert.com, and if you aren't already a subscriber to their weekly newsletter, I recommend that you sign up for it here.

Surveys have indicated that, of those who do suffer mental distress, almost half also have severe or crisis-level debts. For this reason, Money Saving Expert has teamed up with a number of organisations (including Mind) to produce a guide to mental health and debt, which can be found at:

http://www.moneysavingexpert.com/cards/mental-health-guide

Revelation!

Of course, it's not necessary to understand how something works in order to enjoy it. I myself was a frequent and satisfied user of such popular products as gravity, photosynthesis and electromagnetic radiation for many years without the slightest idea how they worked. But if there is one thing I learned from my good old granddad, it's that knowledge opens the gateway to even more exciting discoveries ahead.

And so it is with the derailleur gears on my bike. I've used them every day for years and years, and although I always knew there were cables and cogs and clicky sounds, and that the cables had to be tight and the cogs free of gunk and the clicky sound just a "click" and not a "click-ick-ick-ick-ick-ick", I didn't really know how they did what they did.

All that changed when I watched this video:

  

There's little more explanation required, but I'm going to anyway. To my mind, it is actually much like gravity. The lowest gears, both front and back, are the ones where the chain is closest to the frame (the "ground"). A spring in the mechanism ("gravity") exerts a force to keep the chain at this level.

Then, when you change up a gear, the cable pulls on the mechanism, slightly overcoming its force,  guiding the chain out to the next highest gear, with the tension in the cable keeping it there. When you change down a gear, you're letting some of the tension out of the cable, and the mechanism's tendency to drag the chain inwards will take effect.

The key, therefore, to getting nice, smooth changes up and down is to ensure the tension in the cable increases and decreases enough to allow the mechanism to move just enough to go up or down a single gear. The people who make these gear mechanisms are (thankfully) very clever, and build them so that if you adjust the cable tension to get a smooth shift from the lowest gear to the second-lowest, it'll all just magically work for all of the other gears too.

Anatomy of a bicycle, #1

Good evening.

One of the things I've always found most confusing when learning about bikes are the terms used for the various different bits and pieces. Even when I've read fairly detailed descriptions or watched tutorials that go into some depth, there's usually some fundamental unexplained term that throws me.

And I figure that if I've been thrown, then maybe so have you. Hence this series of articles, starting with something fairly simple but very fundamental indeed - the wheel.

Picture courtesy of Herr Kriss

The wheel is made up of the following parts, starting with (hopefully) the most obvious first:

• Tyre: That hard black rubbery thing that goes all the way around the outside.
• Rim: The round metal bit that the tyre is tucked into.
• Inner tube: The inflatable bit of the tyre, which sits between the tyre and the rim. The only bit of it you can see is the valve, more on which later.
• Hub: The bit in the middle, which attaches to the rest of the bike, and hopefully stays there.
• Spokes: The long metal rods which attach the rim and the hub.
• Rim tape: This sits between the rim and the inner tube, to protect the tube from any spiky or sharp bits on the rim.

One of the things I'm planning not to do in my project to build a bike is to build the wheels up from all the individual bits - I think they're just a bit too important for an amateur to have a go at. In all likelihood, you'll generally always buy or replace a wheel in its entirety, which will reduce your relationship with the wheel to the following:

• Inner tube valves: There are two different types of valves in common use: Presta and Schrader. Presta valves are longer, thinner and pointier (the valve in the picture above is a Presta); Schrader valves are more squat and wider. The only reason I mention this is that one time I bought an inner tube with a Schrader valve, and tried to use it as a replacement for a Presta one. It should have been obvious to me at the time, but the Schrader wouldn't go through the narrower hole in the rim. (Thankfully the other wheel of this particular bike did have a hole big enough for a Schrader valve, so the inner tube wasn't so much a waste of money as it was a prudent investment.)
• Broken spokes: This is pretty terminal. If one spoke breaks, it puts more stress on the others and you're likely to end up with the wheel collapsing. If you break a spoke, get off and push it home. Even if it is tipping it down and you're late for tea.
• Loose hub: The whole wheel should be held in place so that it doesn't "jiggle" to either side of the centre when you're cycling. I have on occasion had it happen that the hub's come a bit loose - you can feel and hear it, especially when you go round corners - the bike doesn't feel quite "with" you any more. You may need a new hub, or it may be possible to get your existing one tightened up, it all depends on how severe the problem is.

That's all for tonight!

Handy Things: A correction

Well, I've been writing this blog for just over a week now, and it's already time to issue a correction.

When I said that tyre levers were the handiest bike tool you could possibly buy, I wasn't so much putting the cart before the horse, or the egg before the chicken, or the chicken before the egg, as putting the Spicy Family Megabucket Meal before the egg and the chicken.

How so?

I completely forgot about pumps.

Even if you manage to spend your whole life cycling and never ever ever get a puncture, your tyres will still go flat at some point. It's as inevitable as the universe ending in megagalactic heat death, but slightly easier to recover from.

To my knowledge, there are two main types of pump you can buy - hand pumps and track pumps.

You'll almost certainly need a hand pump. These are the cylindrical ones that fit easily in a backpack or which can be fixed to the frame of your bike. If you're smart, you'll carry one of these with you any time you're doing a ride of any distance. (I don't, but this is another instance of "do what I say, not what I do".) If it's raining, you're still a distance from home, and you get a slow puncture, you may be able to get enough air back in your tyre to nurse your bike back home.

I got by absolutely fine for years just with one of these, but I treated myself to a little toy a year or so back ... a track pump. These are bigger jobs, with a footplate either side of a large barrel, and a handle on top which you push up and down. It's absolutely no bother to get your tyres up to exactly the right pressure in next to no time.

One word of warning when buying a pump ... make sure you get a good one. In my experience, cheap and nasty ones tend not to fit tightly onto tyre valves, and a lot of the air you're pumping in comes out again pretty rapidly.

Knowing the difference between shiny things and handy things, #1

Hello again!

If you know me at all, you'll know that I can be rather easily distracted. I drift off somewhere else in the middle of a conversation. I go to a rugby match, and forget the score before I've left the stadium. I interrupt a meeting with "ooh, look ... a squirrel". It then follows fairly naturally that I'm distracted by shiny things too, including bike maintenance shiny things.

Over time, I've collected one or two bits and bobs which should have helped with maintenance, but I haven't actually used that much. Tonight (and for the next couple of months, provided I don't get distracted), I'm here to help stop you doing the same with my own thoughts on the absolutely most invaluable, useful things you can buy if you're starting from nothing.

There's no better place to start than tyre levers. As far as I'm concerned, you should be compelled by law to buy a set of these when you take ownership of a bike. Everyone gets punctures, and there is no other way to remove a tyre.

Well ... that's not quite true. In the misty past of my youth, I somehow managed to change a couple of tyres using only screwdrivers (and, I presume, an immense amount of perseverence), but I do also remember gouging a chunk out of my hand when one of them slipped. I've also heard people claim you can do it with a couple of spoons, but I suspect they're probably just a bit confused, and stir their tea and eat cornflakes with tyre levers.

I have two sets of tyre levers, which you can see in the photo here:

They both work, but my personal preference is for the red ones. Because they're a bit wider at the non-hook end (aren't I great with technical terms - I'll do a post on that some other time), they give a bit more purchase, which is especially useful if you're struggling to get a tyre back on. (Despite everything you read to the contrary, if you're anything like me, you probably will.)

I'll be back soon with my #2 in the list of handy things to have around. And don't think I've completely forgotten about shiny things, either.

Step 0. Oil

Before we begin on any of the maintenance itself, it's worth spending a little time talking about oil.

Image courtesy of FreeDigitalPhotos.net, photographer m_bartosch

Clearly, the oil used on bikes isn't the delicious treat above, but nor is it oil in the form we probably think of it as ... a dark, gloopy substance. Indeed, I think I'm probably the only person who still calls it oil. It's actually lube, and there are a variety of different types for different bits of your bike. I'd list some of them here, but I don't actually know what they all are yet, let alone explain the differences.

The one thing they all have in common is that they get everywhere. If ever you're doing any work on your bike, assume that anything you touch other than the handlebars, saddle and levers will have some form of lube on them. It seems to me that the attitude towards lube of people who service bikes is very similar to that of the people who make sandwiches for supermarkets towards mayonnaise - if in doubt, slap in a good helping of it. (The difference of course being that bike lube is much more appetising than mayonnaise.)

All that said, specific points to note are:

1. Whenever you're doing work on your bike, make sure you're wearing clothes that it won't matter if they get dirty. Overalls you've used for decorating would be a good choice.
2. All the grimy dirty stuff that sticks to the lube also has an affinity for sticking under your fingernails far more strongly than you'd expect. Save yourself a lot of scrubbing by buying a pack of disposable latex or vinyl gloves. They're not expensive and you should be able to get them in a nearby supermarket without too much difficulty.
3. Remember what side your chain is on! If you're lifting your bike, or reaching around it, you want to avoid coming into contact with your chain. It's the most lubed and grubbiest bit of the bike.
4. If you've got a shed or an area outside to work on your bike, that's the best bet. If you do have to bring it inside, be very very careful what it touches! Specifically, if you have to push it up stairs (which I did for many, many years) check that the bottom of the chain doesn't rub against the floor when you take it up or down the last step.

Alan.

Why "Cycle Maintenance for the Mechanically Gifted"?

I'm glad you asked.

First, some background. When it comes to doing any minor work on my bike - changing tyres, fitting cables, fixing punctures - I have (up until very recently) been a disaster area. One notable (and unsuccessful) attempt to fit a new tyre took me the best part of three hours and left me with two lovely blisters, one on each thumb, which effectively reduced my standing in the tree of life from ape to monkey until they healed.

The title of my blog is therefore very much tongue-in-cheek, and is a homage to the Gary Larson cartoon "Midvale School for the Gifted". (Licensing restrictions prevent me from including it here, but I'm sure you're clever enough to find it for yourself. It's rather funny, don't you think?)

So, I think we've established that, at present, I'm a bit useless when it comes to actually doing work on bikes. I do have a goal, though, and I've got bags of motivation, so I'm determined to learn how to do all of this.

I also hope to be able to help out anyone who happens to be in the same situation of wanting to do their own bike maintenance, but not having the skills to do it. You see, I've found that a lot of the instructions in books, on the web, and even in instructional videos, assume slightly more knowledge of how a bike and its parts work than I actually possess. At times, I need things explained in very short words.

For anyone else in this position, here's the good news ... I'm going to do the hard work for you. I'm going to figure out everything that you're not told, and going to put it into as short words as I can manage. When I remember, I'll include photos, too.

Now won't that be lovely?

Some background

Good evening everybody,

This summer, I'm going to be cycling from London to Paris over the course of four days in aid of Mind, which (for those of you who don't know) is a mental health charity operating in England and Wales. The longest distance I've cycled thus far is the 54 miles from London to Brighton, so clearly there's some work to be done to get ready for this.

And, to those of you who have asked ... no, we don't have to go across the Channel by pedalo.

To add to the training which I'm going to have to do in order to make it all the way there, I'm also planning to do it on a bike I've assembled myself, especially for this event. There are a couple of reasons for this:

• My day-to-day bike, while not too heavy, is a hybrid rather than a proper road bike, and I figure I'll enjoy a long road ride better on a bike suited for the purpose.
• I want to learn how to maintain my own bike, and learning the hard way and making my mistakes on a new bike means I should be able to keep my day-to-day bike on the road!

In a happy coincidence, this side-project also gives me the opportunity to have a blog with a purpose, something I've wanted to do for quite some time now.

I'd be very happy if you joined me for the journey.

Alan.