Marin Eldridge Grade - choice of new tyres, chain, general advice?

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lettersquash
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Re: Marin Eldridge Grade - choice of new tyres, chain, general advice?

Post by lettersquash »

531colin wrote: 5 Jul 2022, 9:38pm try this;
Stand up straight, one foot slightly in front of the other.
Lean forward from the waist/hips to grasp imaginary handlebars.....at first your weight will come onto your front foot, lean further and you will topple forwards.
Now bend your knees, stick your bum out the back and lean forward again. the further back you stick your bum out, the further forward you can reach.
That's not a valid experiment. All you're doing there is counterbalancing your rear end against your upper body with respect to your support point and C of G over it (your feet). You don't ride a bike like that, balancing on your feet. Yes, part of your weight is on your feet, part on your butt and part on your hands, but sticking your backside further back doesn't make it easier and more comfortable to reach handlebars that are too far away (the problem: my bike is a bit big for me with a straight bar and longish stem). To some extent it might if I was hammering along at full power, or trying to lower my body for aerodynamics - it might be of some use to do that for a racer in competitions. But to have control and comfort on the bar, I need a little more bend at the elbow than I have, and I can't see how that's going to be achieved by putting my saddle further back, sorry. Maybe someone else can weigh in here.
On your other bike, the bottom bracket bearing cup is bound to be hard.....its a bearing!
The good thing is if its really stuck you don't have to cut it out, you can crack it out.....really hard steel is brittle enough to crack.
Lie the frame on the ground, with the stuck bearing cup supported by a good big bit of wood. Put a cold chisel through the bottom bracket shell onto the stuck cup, and give it a good crack with a one pound hammer (to start with!)
I expect that will be enough to crack the cup, specially as you have already started cutting it. If not, give it another crack.
Pick the broken bits out of the bracket shell.
Thanks. I think I'm near enough through two opposite sides that some whacking might do it. I'll need knocking inwards though, as far as I can see, not through the shell - that would tend to bend the softer steel of the threads in the frame. It needs to be persuaded to peel away from them towards the middle, which is why I'm cutting two slots - it'll break one of them and fold round the other, is how the theory goes.
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lettersquash
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Re: Marin Eldridge Grade - choice of new tyres, chain, general advice?

Post by lettersquash »

There's a sticker on my front fork, saying not to remove or install the wheel before reading the user guide on the quick release skewer, and not to remove the sticker either! It looks a bit full on: "WARNING....!" Do you think it's just that in the '80s QRs were relatively new? It's not some weird rocket science, is it? Sorry, I've not got the hub data, but it's obviously the original (Shimano) on the Eldridge Grade 1985.
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531colin
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Re: Marin Eldridge Grade - choice of new tyres, chain, general advice?

Post by 531colin »

I don't even know why I posted on this thread yesterday, I wasn't in the right frame of mind.
From my DIY bike fit piece, a couple of photos...

Hoods position

Imagefoot level on bottom pedal by 531colin, on Flickr

Hoods position "hands off"

ImageBalanced position by 531colin, on Flickr

Now, I rather doubt that on a flat bar bike you are leaning further forward than I am on the hoods?
So, you should be able to hold your position without propping your torso up on your arms, like I can.
If you can't, then you have too much weight on your hands, and your saddle needs to go BACK in order to be in balance.
Why not try it, what have you got to lose?
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531colin
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Re: Marin Eldridge Grade - choice of new tyres, chain, general advice?

Post by 531colin »

On the bottom bracket, is this an old-fashioned one with loose ball-bearings?
If it is, the cups are hard, you can't "fold" them. Give it a crack with a cold chisel and a hammer, and it will shatter....the steel is almost glass hard. It will shatter if you hit it from either side, but if you support the cup on a lump of wood on the ground and put the chisel through the bottom bracket, then there is no load on the bracket threads at all.

I have done all this stuff, you know, its not just idle speculation.
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531colin
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Re: Marin Eldridge Grade - choice of new tyres, chain, general advice?

Post by 531colin »

lettersquash wrote: 6 Jul 2022, 12:28am There's a sticker on my front fork, saying not to remove or install the wheel before reading the user guide on the quick release skewer, and not to remove the sticker either! It looks a bit full on: "WARNING....!" Do you think it's just that in the '80s QRs were relatively new? It's not some weird rocket science, is it? Sorry, I've not got the hub data, but it's obviously the original (Shimano) on the Eldridge Grade 1985.
Its just like Macdonalds putting "caution...contents may be hot" on their coffee cups
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Re: Marin Eldridge Grade - choice of new tyres, chain, general advice?

Post by 531colin »

Cantilever brake setup.....viewtopic.php?t=57410
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Re: Marin Eldridge Grade - choice of new tyres, chain, general advice?

Post by 531colin »

531colin wrote: 6 Jul 2022, 9:17am On the bottom bracket, is this an old-fashioned one with loose ball-bearings?
If it is, the cups are hard, you can't "fold" them. Give it a crack with a cold chisel and a hammer, and it will shatter....the steel is almost glass hard. It will shatter if you hit it from either side, but if you support the cup on a lump of wood on the ground and put the chisel through the bottom bracket, then there is no load on the bracket threads at all.

I have done all this stuff, you know, its not just idle speculation.
Random thought....is there any chance its an Italian threaded bottom bracket? ....because they have both cups right hand thread. also different shell width and thread diameter
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Re: Marin Eldridge Grade - choice of new tyres, chain, general advice?

Post by peetee »

lettersquash wrote: 6 Jul 2022, 12:28am "WARNING....!" Do you think it's just that in the '80s QRs were relatively new?
Sort of. The 80’s saw a huge surge in what had become a suppressed market. Lots of people were buying bikes that had not had them for years or were used to bargain-basement road and utility bikes with solid, nutted axles. The quality and tech that was available on reasonably priced mountain bikes made them very appealing and they were predominantly fitted with QR spindles, sometimes just on the front wheels.
What I did used to see frequently in those days was QR’s that were tightened as if they were wing-nuts proudly displaying the word ‘closed’ on the inner face of the lever.
You can lead a horse to water, so they say. :roll:
The older I get the more I’m inclined to act my shoe size, not my age.
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Re: Marin Eldridge Grade - choice of new tyres, chain, general advice?

Post by Biospace »

531colin wrote: 5 Jul 2022, 9:38pm On your other bike, the bottom bracket bearing cup...
I'm a little confused exactly which bike the bb is trying to be extraced from now, but if it is the Marin then it looks to be from around 1994 so will be standard threads (cartridge fitted from new).
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Re: Marin Eldridge Grade - choice of new tyres, chain, general advice?

Post by 531colin »

Biospace wrote: 6 Jul 2022, 2:57pm
531colin wrote: 5 Jul 2022, 9:38pm On your other bike, the bottom bracket bearing cup...
I'm a little confused exactly which bike the bb is trying to be extraced from now, but if it is the Marin then it looks to be from around 1994 so will be standard threads (cartridge fitted from new).
It is confusing.....I'm talking about "Marinoni"....which sounds Italian to me, but when i googled it they were talking about canada....
but Marinoni and Marin?.....who knows!!
the Marin should be a unit jobbie with conventional threads, one left, one right.
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lettersquash
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Re: Marin Eldridge Grade - choice of new tyres, chain, general advice?

Post by lettersquash »

Lots of replies. I'll try to deal with them all in one go...
531colin wrote: 6 Jul 2022, 9:05am I don't even know why I posted on this thread yesterday, I wasn't in the right frame of mind.
From my DIY bike fit piece, a couple of photos...

Hoods position

Imagefoot level on bottom pedal by 531colin, on Flickr

Hoods position "hands off"

ImageBalanced position by 531colin, on Flickr

Now, I rather doubt that on a flat bar bike you are leaning further forward than I am on the hoods?
So, you should be able to hold your position without propping your torso up on your arms, like I can.
If you can't, then you have too much weight on your hands, and your saddle needs to go BACK in order to be in balance.
Why not try it, what have you got to lose?
I'm sorry, who says this, that "you should be able to hold your position without propping your torso up on your arms"?

And you're not holding your position, you're putting your hands behind your back, which reduces the forward mass.

I did experiment with your suggestion, and sure enough, there was less weight on my hands when I slid back on the saddle. However, I still contend that this was at the expense of good control, and involved more extended elbows. This is precisely the problem when the reach is too great.

Forgive me for dismissing your argument, but when I first described the physics that challenges it, your response was to say that your advice was about moving the saddle further back in combination with a shorter stem or other adjustments. I pointed out that this is not what you'd said originally, and you now appear to be reaffirming that this is independent of the stem/bars position.

As the photos demonstrate clearly, when you put your hands behind your back, your C of G changes completely (the weight of your arms isn't forward, it's now backward). A more valid test would surely be to simply move your hands sideways or even just stop holding the bars without moving. But that isn't possible, so the demonstration seems rather arbitrary to me. If, when riding normally, part of your body weight is resting on your hands on the bars, then you have to compensate somehow if you remove that support, or your you'll fall forward and hit your head on the pavement. If there's some rule of thumb that says, "put your hands behind your back - if you can still ride with your body in roughly the same position, your handlebars are in the right place," it seems like nonsense to me. Maybe you can explain the logic.

Re: bottom bracket, yes, it's my Marinoni Special (an Italian, Giuseppe Marinoni, moved to Canada and started the company, after something of a sparkling career as a rider) with an early '80s Campagnolo BB with separate balls - just the single cup remains. I can't remember now if it's an Italian type or British - the latter, I think, which is one of the reasons it becomes so tight - like the fight I had to get the blumin' pedals off! - as bearings get dry and drag, it tightens up those threads that are designed that way so they don't fall off! Anyway, I have been extremely careful which way the thread goes and only ever tried to undo it.

It is confusing, and a weird coincidence. I've gone from a Marinoni to a Marin, but I don't know of any connection between the companies. https://www.cyclingnews.com/features/gi ... heirlooms/

Thanks for the advice about shattering it - I hadn't thought of it that way, and I see now what you mean about doing that through the frame. God knows I've smacked it with cold chisels and all sorts, but not since I put some decent slots in it. We'll see whether it shatters or folds if I have another go at that. Thanks.

Thanks also for those confirmations that there's nothing special about these skewers. And thanks for the thread on setting up cantis, I'll have a read of that. Incidentally, I think the reason I thought I'd reset my brakes to where they were, but they didn't engage as soon, might be because I'd forgotten I'd raised the stem a bit, and, since I dropped the bracket with the stop below this back down to the crown, maybe this greater brake-lever-to-first-stop distance relaxed the system. I can't quite figure out how that works, but it must presumably give the same effect as winding the adjuster at the brake in!
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Re: Marin Eldridge Grade - choice of new tyres, chain, general advice?

Post by slowster »

lettersquash wrote: 6 Jul 2022, 8:17pm Forgive me for dismissing your argument, but when I first described the physics that challenges it, your response was to say that your advice was about moving the saddle further back in combination with a shorter stem or other adjustments. I pointed out that this is not what you'd said originally, and you now appear to be reaffirming that this is independent of the stem/bars position.
You are confusing the posts of colin54 with those of 531colin.

I suggest you read the link in 531colin's signature, which explains the reasoning behind saddle positioning in a bit more detail. The key thing is that saddle position needs to be determined first, and only after that has been done is the position of the bars determined. If the position of the bars is too far forward to comfortably hold when the saddle has been set in the right position, then a shorter stem is needed.
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Re: Marin Eldridge Grade - choice of new tyres, chain, general advice?

Post by colin54 »

lettersquash wrote: 6 Jul 2022, 8:17pm


I did experiment with your suggestion, and sure enough, there was less weight on my hands when I slid back on the saddle. However, I still contend that this was at the expense of good control, and involved more extended elbows. This is precisely the problem when the reach is too great.

Forgive me for dismissing your argument, but when I first described the physics that challenges it, your response was to say that your advice was about moving the saddle further back in combination with a shorter stem or other adjustments. I pointed out that this is not what you'd said originally, and you now appear to be reaffirming that this is independent of the stem/bars position.

I think the OP, lettersquash may be confusing me with 531colin.

I can't work out how to isolate what I wrote on the subject from my post, but it's here:-
posting.php?mode=quote&p=1704724 The relevant paragraph begins.......''I see up-thread that you are experiencing excess weight on you hands'', and ends with
the words ''above seat height''. I talk about moving the seat back to reduce weight on hands, and then in ...same paragraph... I talk of reducing reach by altering stem length/height & swept back handlebars. Possibly I didn't write it clearly enough, but that's what I meant and still is. Maybe I should have put the phrase 'in conjunction' somewhere.
Why do you think I wrote and linked to all the different ways to move your bars back?
Free advice, take it or leave it, good luck.
Edit; corrected spelling mistake, write for right !
Last edited by colin54 on 6 Jul 2022, 10:36pm, edited 1 time in total.
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531colin
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Re: Marin Eldridge Grade - choice of new tyres, chain, general advice?

Post by 531colin »

I didn't say you have too much weight on your hands, you said that.
I don't have too much weight on my hands, because I know how to fix it.....so I ask again, why don't you try it?

from my DIY bike fit piece, another photo, showing just my thumbs on the hoods.....does this suit you better?

Imageone digit test by 531colin, on Flickr
Biospace
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Re: Marin Eldridge Grade - choice of new tyres, chain, general advice?

Post by Biospace »

531colin wrote: 6 Jul 2022, 7:09pm
Biospace wrote: 6 Jul 2022, 2:57pm
531colin wrote: 5 Jul 2022, 9:38pm On your other bike, the bottom bracket bearing cup...
I'm a little confused exactly which bike the bb is trying to be extraced from now, but if it is the Marin then it looks to be from around 1994 so will be standard threads (cartridge fitted from new).
It is confusing.....I'm talking about "Marinoni"....which sounds Italian to me, but when i googled it they were talking about canada....
but Marinoni and Marin?.....who knows!!
the Marin should be a unit jobbie with conventional threads, one left, one right.

I seem to remember reading the Marinoni had been given up on as too much of a struggle to sort. And that the Marin had a suspected worn bb with out of true chainrings (which of course could be a result of a worn bb), probably why I'm confused that we're now trying to remove the bb on the Marinoni.

I'm wondering whether or not this bike was sold as something safe to use, or for spares/repair. Skittery steering, worn out tyres, a rusty frame and a bent and/or worn bottom bracket doesn't reflect well on the trader, if it was sold to be used in the state it is.

Did cantilever brakes come with 'brifters' or was it just V-brakes? I can't remember a cantilever braked bike with combined brake levers and gear shifters.
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