Fixing a Mixte

 

Mixte as traded

Huashen folding bike as traded

Mixte at home with home-painted handlebars and stem.

Initial weigh in with steel brakes, brake levers, front mudguard, cotter pin cranks and steel 27" wheels, 15.28kg

To accommodate more bikes I disposed of these ones - mixte bottom bracket is from the pink bike, and rack is from the teal bike.

Hi

Bicycles are poetry! Bikes are quite small thing compared to other transporters of goods and people (ships, cars, submarines, trams, trains), and don't even have their own motors, but they can accomplish much. If a car is a novel, then a bike is a poem, it often does the same thing, but just in an abbreviated form. Please excuse the philosophy, but my design blog post has similar themes and got me thinking about all this!

But you know, if you are surrounded by bikes all the time, the fact that they might be poetry wears off, and you just deal with them as highly repairable, highly malleable, enjoyable objects. But every now and then, a nice bike comes along and reminds you of the poetry, which is why I still muck around with them I guess.  I consider Mixtes a great design and have enjoyed resuscitating this one. I like the position of the rear brake in some mixtes. They are just in a direct pull line along the top tubes so there's a bit less fuss there compared to other bikes. Here is a link to another Mixte from a Hobart public bike shed.

A few weeks ago, a friend texted me with a "dead bike alert" including the top 2 pics as follows:  

"Bikes in hard rubbish halfway up my streer" . I'm pretty sure she meant street! Anyway, despite the fact that my house often looks like a hell for bicycles that have misbehaved - with bikes left languishing and half disassembled - I took up her tip and put the bikes in the back of my small Kia on the way to visit my Dad.

The bikes were an old mixte which I thought I could fix up, and a white folding bike. I have been eying off this style of folding bike (on Facebook Marketplace) for a while because it has rear suspension a lot like my Cruzbike Quest, and I thought they could be mined for parts. More on that later...

When I got the bikes home, I weighed and photographed the mixte. It had been partly spray painted grey and looked a bit manky.

Scavenged parts fitted were alu centre - pull brakes, cassette bottom bracket with square taper shaft, alu crankset, steel handlebars, shifters, Alu brake levers, alu 700C wheels, rack and rack adapter for milk crate,

The "after" photos follow, I'm happy with the result but I haven't ridden it yet. Still on the to do list are 

Attach rear reflector

Fit bell

Reattach rear derailleur  by drilling and tapping into frame. This is to move the back wheel further back to fit in with the size of rear brake I've fitted.

 

 

 

New brake position is under top tubes to avoid damage to brake cables when mounting the bike. (Practical but sightly less pretty and poetic) Also, wooden rack adapter is shown

Crate mounting detail.

Bike with crate attached

Woohoo, I have bling! A full set of brake and gear cable outers was gleaned from the white folder.

Just about finished

With rack and crate adapter, the bike weighs just a bit more than the original

 

Racing bike refit

 

Almost there, with new seat.

Some more detail of the

new gearing setup with orange 3d printed cable guide.

The first seat I put on was pretty manky.

Last Saturday during my volunteer work at Wecycle, a gentleman came and donated a small framed racing bike in good condition. The shed was quite full and an executive decision was made to recycle this bike for parts. After the brakes, handlebars, quill stem, seat post, seat and wheels had been removed, I jumped in and asked if I could take the rest home as the frame looked quite good.

As the bike came to me without handlebars, I felt free to change it however I liked, and chose bars from a town bike. These are completely different to race bars with the hand grips at least 20cm above the racing bike drop position. But unlike the racing bike bars which prioritize speed, with these bars the bike could actually be quite comfortable to ride. Along with the wider handlebars came a better brake position, and also the need for a better gear position. There are some bolt on kits available for adapting downtube shifters to shifters on handlebars, and a local shop is selling them for a good price.  

But I realised that adapters weren't necessary, as a gear cable outer can easily start at the top of the existing shift lever. I only modified the right hand shifting mech, as this control is for the rear derailleur, which is activated far more often than the front derailleur. So suffer slightly if you have to change gears at the front with the left hand control!

There's not much of the new gear change cable sticking into the downtube shifter, so to secure it I designed and 3d printed a cable guide which fits neatly into the lugged frame. The cable guide and cable outer are lashed to the frame with cable ties. Although a few cable ties on their own would have done the job, I think this looks a bit more elegant and says "don't touch!".

The bike's finished now, it rides quite nicely, and on Saturday I'll see if it gets the thumbs up from my fellow volunteers. 

Regards Steve Nurse