its a 5 minute job

[CliveyT]

I've mentioned it before but Mrs T has a much loved 80's Raleigh Richmond ladies. She also has a PhD in animal nutrition but the technical aspects to cycling are left to me. A few weeks ago she complained that the pedal was going around without engaging the wheel. I quick spray of GT85 got the freewheel working again, but in my experience it's only a short term fix. Ah well I need to get some things from SJS so I'll add a freewheel to the list, I've got a spare weekend coming up. What could possibly go wrong?

We've just passed the third weekend. Fitting the freewheel was no problem, but whoever did the 5-speed to 6-speed conversion seems to have used whatever nuts he had lying around on the workshop floor to space the hub so I replaced them with something that actually fits the dropouts properly. I've replaced the spokes that got chewed when the chain jumped off the newly spaced large cog and got itself well and truly stuck (only an idiot wouldn't think about that surely). It has new cabling to the rear derailleur. It has a coating of my blood from fitting a new section of outer between the stops under the bottom bracket shell. It even has new brake pads and a new tyre because they were getting worn and I really don't want to look at this bike again for a long time.
I am expecting to get home tonight to be told that the wheel is now shifting under load and I'll have to redo some of it, at which point you will probably see a grown man

[Jdsk]

: - )

Jonathan

[peetee]

I commiserate. And I’ll swap you the job I have just done on the car which was well nigh impossible. Imagine the scenario; join three components, insert screw A to tighten part 1 to part 2 but screw B has to be inserted first or the whole assembly won’t line up with part 3. But you can’t insert screw B first because it then blocks access to screw A. All this was going on at the back of the engine, invisible to the eye and with access for one small hand only - a hand that needs to through 180 degrees to hold, align and tighten (without cross-threading) the components and screws - which if dropped will be lost forever.
My lower back is killing me from leaning over for 4 hours and I bet I haven’t solved the original problem.

[mcshroom]

I had one recently on my touring bike. The rear v-brake wouldn't stop rubbing.

After: -

• Adjusting the brakes
• Changing the cable
• Changing the noodle
• switching the front and rear v-brakes
• trying an old mini-v on the rear
• Replacing the rear wheel rim (which was getting rather concave to be fair)

I discovered there was a small nick in the cable housing from the brake levers where the body had work through (RL-520 lever). It was hidden under the bar tape

It all works now, but I spent ages trying to get things to work

[Brucey]

the cable just behind aero brake levers is 'out of sight out of mind'. It turns out that in a well-arranged cable run, this can be where cable inner strands first start to fatigue and break, and you can lose several of the strands without the brake feeling in any way below par, but being obviously weakened. Not a good idea to leave this part uninspected for more than a year or so, in a well-used bike.

Most jobs are potentially five minute jobs but rarely does it actually work out that way; often they mushroom horribly... 'for want of a nail, the , er, kingdom got a complete rebuild...' or something....

cheers

[rjb]

According to Parkinsons, work expands to fill the time available.