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!
Tuesday 31 May 2011
Monday 30 May 2011
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 ...
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 ...
Friday 20 May 2011
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 |
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 |
With the cassette fitted, you're now ready to fit the wheels and put everything together!
Thursday 19 May 2011
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.
Saturday 14 May 2011
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.
Wednesday 4 May 2011
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 ...
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 ...
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