Bike project 2012 from Hell!

I've heard of the book "Zen and the art of motorcycle maintenance". Until recently I never bothered to do the search on Google of what it actually was. I imagined it was about being Zen when actually doing motorbike repair. Turns out I know as much about that book as I do about motorcycle insurance!

If my original understanding was true that the book was about being Zen when working on a bike, I could say that I've hit a massive wall. Talk about the Universe turning on its ass to tell you, you are waisting your time!

In the beginning the idea was to get a decent City bike together in order to have a ride to take me around town during my first vacation week in May. I needed something to carry my photo gear, my new found passion. As some of you know, it was going pretty well until this happened:

Don't let the image fool you, the streets are not ablaze every night, in fact this was a rare occasion and I was lucky to be at the right place, at the right time.

Daily protest in Montreal, my hometown, that started out for student tuition hikes and then rallied the rest of the population against a corrupt government. When you dream of someday being a photojournalist and this type of thing is right at your doorstep, you just have to be there.

The one thing that is present every night is the no quarters given to media people from the Police on the streets. A camera is not a get out of jail or all access pass. This factor is important because when people get arrested, that's a risk present every evening, when they have a bike, it just gets tossed in a pile by Police on the side of the street. The owner is lucky if the bike is still there when released 10 hours later.

Carrying a bike also slows you down and that's not a good thing when riot geared cops are running around. Walking and the subway in this case is the best way to get around town. So that kinda killed the motivation behind the project.

Whenever I actually had time to work on the bike, tools magically vanished, parts disappeared and things that usually mesh together started to get out of whack and refused to work in unison. I mean fenders are pretty straight forward and on this set up I might have to go with a full homebuilt custom job. But the cherry on the sunday is the rear tire.

After finishing the paint and installing the fork, I decided to put on the wheels and tires in order to see how this was coming along. Slapped my white Fat Franks on the rims, pumped the air up and installed the wheels on the bike. BOOM! That's what happened 30 minutes later while the damn thing was on the work rack in the Sun. Left it like that until I worked on the bike the following week. Check the tube, found a hole that indicated shavings on the inside of the rim. Fixed the rim, changed the tube, put in some air with 10 psi of loose just in case.

That was in the morning, in the late afternoon...POOF! AGAIN! Took it apart again, looked like I didn't do a proper job on the rim, fixed it, changed the tube, pumped it, left 10 psi loose and parked it. Guess what I found when I went back to work on it a week later? You guessed it, the rear tire flat as a pancake. So I just closed the door to the shed and decided to give it a rest.

The project is not dead. At some point in time the feel for it will come back and you will be the first ones to hear about it. This is not the first project I've tackled that came to a screeching halt before the finish and it won't be the last. Funny thing is when I do get back to it, it might get done in a day or two. Hey, a guy can dream right?


Don't forget to check out the how-to articles.

Ride safe and free.

Gerry :)

Murphy's Law and Bicycle Repair

Let me share with you here 18 years of mishaps and battle with Murphy. This being a bike repair blog, I will go one up and recommend the preventive measures to avoid dealing with the Murph man.

1- If you leave your pump or spare tube behind, you will get a flat. The risk grows with the potential distance you will have to walk if stranded. Darkness, rain, hurricanes, squadrons of biting mosquitoes will also contribute to the odds of you being stuck with a dangling tire from your rim.

Solution: Always have some kind of working tire pump with you and a spare tube of the proper size.

2- Your crank arm will fall off in the middle of nowhere. If Murphy is really into you, it will happen in a desert and you'll risk dying from the ensuing ordeal.

Solution: Check your crank arm bolts for tightness every so often, especially before a big ride. To eliminate all risk, carry a crank wrench.

3- Even though you come across it all the time when looking for something else, you will not find the 13mm socket when you absolutely need it. This applies to any other tool that is always in your way but magically vanishes when you somehow desperately need it.

Solution: Be tidy and always put your tools away in their proper place right after you are done with them.

4- That air bubble squeezing itself out between the tire and the rim will explode milliseconds before you reach the air valve to let the air out.

Solution: Put in only 10 pounds of air in the tube and stop. Check the tire on both sides to see if it's properly seated in the rim. Make corrections if necessary and resume inflation without fear of going deaf or making your spouse think you just fired the shotgun in the garage for fun.

5- If you know how to use a chaintool, your chain will break if you don't carry one. The longer the chain, the bigger the risk.

Solution: Always carry a chain tool even if it's a cheap one.

6- The spare tube you bought has a Presta valve, you don't have an adapter because you didn't know it had a Presta valve. You now curse the very existence of Presta valves and who ever came up with that bright idea to the 8th degree.

Solution: Always check tubes out of the box before you just toss them in your bike bag. Make sure you got the right thing before you need it in an emergency, then store it away.

7- You willingly use inner tubes with a Presta valve (curse them %$#&*@ things) but you do not have an adapter when your only source of air is a service station pump.

Solution: Always have an adapter already screwed on one of your tires air valve.

8- A simple repair job will always take up a lot more time than you thought it would.

Solution: Plan for twice the amount of time you think it will take. Be proactive and actually triple it.

9- When installing or repairing an expensive derailleur you will be stomped by a missing or broken $0.25 doodad that you can't find or buy just about now.

Solution: Keep on hand a few nuts and bolts, cable stoppers or any other small thingamajig that gets overlooked on any repair job until you absolutely need it. Trash bikes are great for those.

10- The cheap brake pads that were everywhere growing like weeds are nowhere to be found now that you need to replace a set.

Solution: You see a good deal on brake pads, cables or any other stuff that your bike goes through anyways? Buy them now, you'll use them eventually at some point in time. Don't hoard, just buy what you'll need.

I'm sure there are a tons of others, so feel free to leave them in the comments.

Until next time, ride safe and Godspeed.

Gerry :)

HOW TO REMOVE THE STEM AND FORK, A VIDEO

Some months ago me and my buddies improvised ourselves into a film crew and tried to put together a how-to video to show you how to the stem and fork on a threaded fork equipped bicycle. I taught the result was disastrous, but my friend Bob managed to work some magic with his video editor and here it is. The sound is not wonderful and we have yet to figure that bug out.



Until next time, ride safe and Godspeed.

Gerry :)