Coldset Kabuki

I present to you my Kabuki. I pulled this bike out of a dumpster in 2002 with downtube shifters and a 5 speed freewheel. I put around 4000 miles on it in this setup. It was my transportation, recreation and I even toured a little on it. About two years ago when I was waiting for the fork on my track frame, I decided to strip down this bike and make it fixed. I took off the freewheel and threaded a track cog onto the hub secured with the old lockring from my bottom bracket and Locktite. Because of the vertical dropouts I sawed off my axle so the only thing going through the dropouts was my QR skewer and used a ½ link to achieve perfect chain tension. This clever set of hacks came to me courtesy of the late Sheldon Brown. When this setup finally failed during a skid and my cog popped off I destroyed the threading on the rear hub. Fortunately, after I changed to my winter gear ratio, my rear axle was actually centered perfectly in the rear dropout and so I was able to use the wheelset that I had been saving for my track frame. At that time I decided to strip it down and paint it black which it still is. Once I had the fork for my track frame, I put all the parts on that and haven't built up this frame since.

I decided about a year ago that the next life of the Kabuki would be as a touring bike. I currently lack a good touring bike and this would make a very sweet one. It's got perfect geometry and the frame is pretty light. I can't think of a better frame for the job so I've started getting parts and prepping the frame.

The first step in preparing this frame to be built up is to re-space the dropouts. It was 122.5 mm and I need to get it out to 130mm to accommodate a modern 9 speed hub.

 

First I ran a string through the dropouts and up around the head tube to check that the frame was starting aligned symmetric.

 

I accomplished this alignment check by measuring the distance from the seat tube on each side out to the string. Indeed, the frame was in good shape to start out, so all I had to do was bend out each dropout the same 3.75 mm.

 

It looks barbaric but this delicate task is best accomplished by jamming a 2x4 under the drop out and prying up just a little. Then I re-checked the alignment to make sure that I had gotten it symmetric.

Finally I would check to see if I had gotten it out to 130 mm. I was being pretty careful not to over spread the frame, so it took 3 or 4 increments to get it there.

Although my paint job was pretty decent, I decided that I wanted to get a professional job that would last a little better and look a little nicer. The last step in prepping the frame for painting was to pop out the head cups from the headset (which desperately needs to be replaced).

 

And now it's ready to paint. I've already got some of the components and but I still have a bunch of parts to get together. It's going to be very pretty. You'll hear about it when it's done.

Bumper Sticker

This is the back of my bike trailer. I've wanted to put a bumper sticker on it for a long time, but I couldn't find the one I wanted to I decided to make it myself.

I started by tracing the lettering in pencil to make sure that it would be straight and well spaced.

Then I painted in the letters. I used a stencil with a little spray guard I made.

Of course it won't be visible when the trailer is really full and the tailgate is down, but everyone will still be thinking it.

Milk Crate Attachment

I've been doing my groceries on the Cetma rack with a basket for about a year and a half and it has served me very well. My only complaint has been the interface between my basket and the rack. Thus far I've always used bungees. It never comes off, and it's reasonably fast to put on and take off, but I would prefer something that couldn't wiggle. When I've got 40 lbs of groceries up there and I'm trying to hold a track stand, small wiggles make a big difference.I had a number of ideas on this one but the clear material of choice ended up being 16 ga bailing wire.

I started by putting a small bail on the back of the crate to slide over the back of the rack. This will keep the crate from sliding forward once anchored at the bottom but also serves to keep it in place while I'm attaching it at the bottom.

Here you can see the wire bail that neatly fits over the back of the rack.

The attachment device needed to be extremely secure but also able to just snap on and off. For a long time I had been scheming up ways to use standard draw hasps but they would invariably require me to mount some wood to the crate and the rack. The next idea was some type of over-center buckle with a similar type of action but for webbing. I would have a strap that goes from one lip of the basket, under the rack and then back up to the other lip that could be instantly tightened with the flip of a lever. No such piece of hardware was immediately available (I found a place I could order such buckles, but there was a minimum order of 500 pieces), so I came up with a way to manufacture such a buckle. When I was at the hardware store selecting my materials to manufacture my over-center buckle, I came across this spiffy little device. It's intended use is tugging barbed wire fencing tight across the posts. For all the effort I would put into making a buckle that may not work anyways, it seemed that I would be wise to just grab this thing and call it done.

The next piece I added to the basket was a pair of small loops that hung off the bottom. The wire tightener would grab the two loops and draw the basket tight to the rack. When the loops are being used, they need to hang down, but once I take the basket off the rack, I need them to stay tucked flat against the bottom of the crate to avoid getting bent. I glued small magnets to the bottom of the milk crate to keep the wire loops out of the way when they weren't needed.

Here you're looking up at the crate sitting on the rack with the two loops being pulled tight across the bottom of the rack.

I also found a very convenient place to store the wire tug when I wasn't using it.

Here's the first load of groceries I did with the new set up. The on/off was as smooth and quick as I could ask, but while riding, the basket didn't budge, sucess!

Earphone Repair

Here's a quick one... well actually two. The first problem was that the little rubber ear cups would fall off of my headphones and risk being lost. To address this problem I flipped them up (that's why they look goofy in the picture) and glued them to the rest of the earbud. Problem two was the difficulty involved in distinguishing the right from the left earbud. They are labeled with R and L respectively, but the lettering is microscopic. I wanted to be able to tell at a glance which one went in which ear, so I took a black marker and colored the right ear bud black. Ahhhh... much better. Sometimes it's the small things in life.

Retrodirect II

Finally, I bring you the long over due entry on my second attempt at the retrodirect. You may recall that I had this up and running for a bit but it didn't last for long. It is for that reason the this post is labeled 'Retrodirect II'.

Since I had destroyed my larger inner freewheel on attempt I, I needed to replace that. Since the ACS freewheels were the only ones I could find >21 teeth (and we learned last time that those don't work for this purpose) I decided to get a small freewheel that would work for my purposes and just add some teeth. On the right is an 18t Dicta freewheel that has no lip and can therefore have a BB cup threaded through the back of it (without modification). On the left is a 24t sprocket from a multi-speed freewheel. My plan here is to mount the 24t sprocket onto the smaller freewheel so that I end up with a 24t freewheel. The inner diameter of the 24t sprocket is almost perfect to fit over the body of the 18t freewheel with the exception of those four little nubs.

My first step was to grind off the nubs so that the 24t sprocket would fit over the freewheel body.

Now that the sprocket would fit over the freewheel, I lined them up and drilled holes so I could use small bolts to attach them.

To make sure that the sprocket stayed on the freewheel, I laid on a thick application of JB Weld before sliding on the sprocket to bolt it.

Then I tightened down the bolts (with high strength thread locker) and threw it in the vice to cure. Note that I put a sheet of newspaper in the vice to prevent any leakage from welding my new 24t freewheel to the vice.

As you may recall, I need to put a spacer on the hub before I thread on the first freewheel. I chose to use a track cog instead of the typical bottom bracket lock ring so that I would also have a fixed cog on the same wheel to give me even more versatility. I put on high strength thread locker to help it stay put.

I next threaded on my modified 24t freewheel.

Then I threaded the bottom bracket cup into the remaining threads of the first freewheel.

The last piece is the small, outer freewheel which threads onto the bottom bracket cup.

That's what the wheel looks like in the frame. Note that the rim is intentionally not centered between the axle nuts. I had to use an extra long axle to accommodate the freewheels, so I had to re-space the dropouts by asymmetrically coldsetting the frame. I could have re-dished the wheel and done a symmetric coldset, but this was less work, so there it is.

The next thing I needed was a floating pulley so the chain could run directly from one freewheel to the other. For this, I sawed off the cage and jockey pulley from an old rear derailleur, and bolted it to a stiff steel spring. On the other end of the spring I had an aluminum bar liberated from a broken rear bike rack. The bar holding the floating pulley assembly went up between the chain stays and was fastened to the seat tube with a hose clamp. Notice that I put a short section of old inner tube down first to protect the frame. There's a little chainstay bridge that used to have a kickstand attached. This piece of the frame keeps the aluminum rod from getting pulled back towards the rear hub.

Here's the final setup. I posted a teaser of this a while back that shows it in action.

It's a pretty convoluted chainline, but it works.

Except when it doesn't. I learned my lesson from the last build and planned to do small rides around town for a while before trusting this thing on a longer trip. This turned out to be a very good idea. It was perfect for a day or two but then disaster struck. I was going along on a particularly bumpy section of multi-use path and hit a seam in the concrete surface. This seems to have derailed the chain from the floating pulley. The chain then got lodged between the pulley and the sides of the derailleur cage. As I pedaled forward, unaware of this event, the chain pulled the floating pulley assembly back towards the rear hub and then proceeded to wrap it around the hub a few times before totally binding up. It completely stretched out the spring, bent the aluminum rod, and ripped a few teeth off of the idler pulley. I was able to drop down to single speed so that I could make it home, but once again I my new retrodirect had failed me. Not to despair, this means only that I will have yet another opportunity to perfect this all but simple drivetrain. Stay tuned for RDIII coming soon!

Tool Roll

Encouraged by my success on the apron, I embarked upon another sewing project that I've wanted to do for a long time: a tool roll for the bike tools I carry with me every day.

I started with a big flat sheet of mid-weight nylon. This was nice because it would be a fairly durable material, but also because I didn't have to worry about how to finish the edges. I could just singe them with a candle and they would stay together.

Next, I cut out rectangles of fabric a little larger than the tool they would become the pocket for. I folded and sewed the top edge to finish it and then sewed the pocket onto the backing.

Here's the finished product with each tool on it's respective pocket. The pockets are open on top because I have a flap that folds over before I roll it up which keeps everything inside. One thing I found I needed to do to get the flap to stay down was to sew the corners of fold down.

For my spare tube (and a short section of tire to make a patch in case I skid through a tire) I put a little strap with a ladder lock buckle because. As a closure mechanism I found a Velcro wrap that is hook on one side and loop on the other. It's of a very fancy low profile design that doesn't snag or get burred but still sticks very well.

The final touch on the Velcro strap was to sew a little tab of the nylon material to make it easier to peel up.

Brake Mod

I had this handbrake on the 'Evermate' which is my retrodirect/SS/Fixed bad weather grocery bike. It usually features my front rack for groceries and hauling, but sometimes I do throw other bars on. Swapping the brake from one set of bars to the next became a pain pretty quickly, so I decided to modify the way the lever attaches to the bars to make it easily removable.

This is the original setup. The brake lever has a metal loop that slides over the bars and threads onto a screw which can be tightened from the front of the lever and thus pulls the loop into the body of the lever and tightens it to the bars. I wanted to move to something that would separate at the back. I am aware that such levers are available for purchase, but that is not what this is about... at all.

The first thing I did was to remove the loop so I could replace it with something that could separate.

The obvious replacement for the loop was a small hose clamp. I bent it to match the shape of the loop with a protrusion that would insert into the body of the brake lever. At the end of this protrusion, I drilled a hole to accomidate the tightening screw and rectangular nut that would serve to draw the hose clamp into the body of the lever and thus tighten against the bars.

This view shows the hose clamp installed into the brake lever. I got this part tightened all the way down until the protrusion was totally inserted into the complementary shape in the lever body and what remained was rounded to contour the bars.

The final step is to wrap it around whatever bars (or top tube) I choose and snug down the hose clamp. This makes it much easier to swap out the handlebars (one of my favorite pastimes).

B-icicle

We finally got a little bit of winter. I had a blast riding around in all that snow, but it was so deep that I seriously considered skiing to work. It was the first time I encountered conditions where I actually would have been more efficient on skis than a bike.

The problem with all that snow is that the bike gets all caked up with snow and frozen slush. I bring the bike into the garage at night but on nights like this, it doesn't get above freezing in there so I need to find some way to melt off the snow.

I used to use a hair dryer, but that was awkward and inefficient. I needed something that would melt down the whole bike and not require me to be there to reposition it and turn it off. I got a cheap little space heater with a fan for about $20 and found a timer switch for it (pictured below).

Now I just throw the bike up on the stand and set up the heater blowing warm air onto the bike for 2 or 4 hours (I left it for 4 in this case). In the morning all the snow is gone. All that remains is a little sandy residue from the salt and dirt in the slush. I just wash that off with a little cleaner and a rag and the bike is happy as a clam!