Repairing a Steel Frame Bike

Original haul of parts was written up here.

Barrel bolts / cable tie / drink bottle boss gearcable hack.

Barrel bolts from brakes from shed. I shaped them a bit before installing.

Transmission with biopace chainring.

Top cable tie on downtube shifter bosses

Done.....

and done.

With faux (not locked) lock at Fairfield shops.

Haul of books from op shop.

Haul of plate from op shop.

Hi

This post was going to be called fixing a fixie but the bike I'm working on isn't a fixie now so I just couldn't do it. You know, integrity.  And stuff.

So the frame I picked up a few months and several posts ago is now assembled into quite a reasonable 7 speed bike weighing in at 10.8kg.   The first bits of the repopulating of the frame were easy, the front wheel and brake levers came from my original haul, I had a compatible rear wheel and tyre, and I found a seat, seatpost,  crank, pedals and handlebars in the shed.  But the gearchanger proved to be a problem.  The frame was set up for downtube shifters but I couldn't get them to work properly. Somehow the screw didn't tighten down on the lever right and so the lever would move giving spontaneous unwanted gear changes.  Downtube shifters are way out of the way of the normal position of the hands anyway.

Eventually I worked out something.  The frame has 2 sets of water bottle bosses and I borrowed the ones on the down tube to mount a couple of slightly hacked bike cable barrel bolts from the shed to make bolt on cable bosses. Then I rigged up a stem shifter and after a bit of fiddling, woohoo it all works!  I tried a few things to keep the gear cable off the frame near the crank, but good old cable ties did the trick. After a bit more thinking, the old downtube lever bosses have become an anchor point for another cable tie which prevents the gearcable from going too far astray. The pics probably tell the story better.

Anyway, today a cheque (what's that, I know) came in the post (what's that, I know) and I thought that a trip to deposit (yes, I know, what's that) the cheque would be a good way to test out the bike. The trip went well, and on this rainy day I managed to get only slightly wet. After depositing the cheque at the bank I went to a nearby op shop and bought some 50c books and a nice old plate. The books are all quite old with 3 of them predating decimal currency (1966) and even me (1960).

PS, just after posting I found there are some proper doo - dahs that do the down-tube to stem shifter conversion and don't look the slightest bit hackish. There you go!

Best wishes

Steve  (bike hack) Nurse