A frustrating day

Frustrating day! Building a bicycle is a lesson in patience. This weekend, I'd hoped to assemble the skeleton of the bike, with the new fork, headset, and wheels on, even though I don't have tires, tubes or any of the other necessities such as brakes, pedals, chain, or settled decisions on gearing.

I've stripped off almost all the moveable parts from my bicycle frame. There's a cap that covers the left side of the bottom bracket (that'll come off easily when I'm ready to rebuild the bottom bracket), and then there are the lower head cup and the top headrace or upper cone.

I've been fighting with the old headset parts all week. Originally, I thought these parts of the headset were an aesthetic problem. They were chromed, and the chrome has corroded, so they look ugly. When I got around to tackling them, though, I found that they were a practical and a possible project-stopping problem. I couldn't get them off. First, I took a set of adjustable jaw pliers, gripped the outside firmly, and twisted. No movement, but the pliers slid along the races and stripped chrome. Now they were really ugly. Then I took a long piece of metal, put it down the inside of the head tube, and tried to bash them off. No movement. Then I tried tapping on the lip from the outside. Again no movement. I got a file and tried to cut them, but the file wouldn't cut.

Finally, I started to wonder if they were brazed in place. This didn't seem likely, but I was having to open myself to new possibilities. I thought perhaps I could use the existing races, even though they were ugly, corroded and now gouged and scraped by the pliers. I realised, though, that I would have to take the adjustable race from the old (bent) front fork. That didn't work either.

Then I went back to the books that I'd been following. The books are primarily for repairing and upgrading bikes, not building from a standing start. For example, at the very end of the discussion on maintaining headsets, Todd Downs (Illustrated bicycle maintenance) says, "special tools are required to remove the old fork crown race, the lower head cup or the top headrace without damaging the frame or fork." My other guide, Fred Milson's The Bike Book said, "A special headset press is needed to remove and refit any type of headset." Great. This is particularly annoying, because many shops won't work on bikes that they didn't sell. It's kind of understandable, but that policy doesn't allow for people moving or the range of odd problems that people have.

I did make some progress today though. My loving and patient wife (she's having to learn patience in this project too) had me go back to a local shop (Hawk Cycles, on Foleshill Road) to get some tyres for the wheels that I have. We saw some handsome Schwalbe tyres there and she thought they might go quickly. The helpful clerk there said, yes, that was likely; they'd sold most that they had received in the week after they received them. He also said they could remove the old headset bits and install the new headset.

Maybe I'll learn patience.

How I got into this.

I know how I got into this. I’d been riding a bit, on and off, for exercise; then, one summer I started biking to work, using the mountain bike that my brother-in-law had given me. It wasn’t far, about 3 miles, and, by mounting the pavement at a few key points, I could get in to work faster than my wife could drive me. Faster, environmentally sensible, and in control: no waiting to be picked up, no problem if plans or schedules changed.

Then, in the fall, I kept on riding. I learned about rain, snow, and particularly the dark. Here in Coventry in the winter, the sun doesn’t come up till after 8:00 in the morning and it sets before 4:00. That means I’m cycling in in the dark, and, worst of all, getting off work without ever seeing daylight. That’s at the very bottom of the year, just as the academic term is ending, but from November to February it’s gloomy and miserable. I’ve decided I dislike rain more than cold. Snow, which is rare here compared with Vermont, is difficult. Drivers are utterly unprepared for snow, and there’s no system for cleaning the roads. While the councils “plough” the largest roads, snow only really goes when drivers gradually stomp it into mucky slush.

This doesn’t sound to me like much of a recommendation, but I liked it and kept on riding. I found out about the UK government’s bicycle scheme (http://www.cyclescheme.co.uk/) and decided to upgrade my bike. The ten-speed mountain bike is ok, but it’s heavy and sluggish. The cycle scheme is great—you buy the bike with pre-tax income; you don’t have to pay VAT—though it does favour new over used bikes, which is great for the shops and the few British manufacturers, but you can’t buy through eBay.

I went for a folder. We had moved offices so that I could no longer bring my bike into the office, and outdoor parking isn’t brilliant. My light was nicked, and the bike gets rained on. Nobody really wants to begin a commute with their bottom on a wet saddle. Yes, you can carry along a shopping bag to cover the seat, but that just adds to the faff. I got a Brompton (http://www.brompton.co.uk/) that I just love. It’s the bike I’m riding in the picture at the head of this blog. I got it from Jonathan Atkins Cycles in Leamington Spa, a good shop that handled all the paperwork (there isn’t much) for the scheme. Now, when I get to work I just fold up the bike, stow it in a corner of my office and it sits there waiting for me. I’ll write more later about this lovely bike.

While I was waiting for the paperwork for the cycle scheme to come through and my Brompton to be built for me (so, all in all, about four months), my wife urged me to get another bike. It wasn’t like twisting my arm, but I ended up with a second-hand Diamondback through eBay. It’s a good bike, but it doesn’t have space for splashguards, so it’s my summer-dry-weather bike.

Then, early this spring, my wife, who’s very fond of eBay, said, “Why don’t you build a bike?” We got an old Raleigh frame with a lovely Nottingham shield on the headpost, and I’ve been fussing with it slowly ever since.

This blog is the record of that fussing.