Thursday, May 12, 2016

AGGRAVATION
Thursday, May 12, 2016

Ann typically rides her decades-old Fuji 10 speed back and forth to work, rather than one of her newer bikes, because the Fuji is a nearly indestructible tank of a bike that she feels comfortable locking up on the bike rack outside. I say nearly indestructible because a little over a month ago some asshole deliberately clipped her rear wheel while she was riding to work. She avoided crashing but in the process there was some pretty significant damage done to one of the cranks, the rear derailleur, and the rear wheel.

 I've had the bike for a couple of weeks now, working on bringing it back to life with a mixture of parts that I already have and a few parts I've needed to order - in addition to some tools I needed to order just to get the cranks off and the bottom bracket opened up. In the process of figuring out what the Fuji needs, I also figured out that years ago when I replaced the bottom bracket on my Kent Denali I used a spindle that's about 5 mm too short - which may explain why I've had a lot of trouble adjusting the front derailleur to consistently shift into the granny gear.

 The new cartridge BB came today, and I was all set to swap it in... pulled the chainring crank no problem, but when I tried to pull the other one the puller kept stripping free instead of levering the crank off the taper. So it's looking like I'm going to have to get that one off using brute force, which will likely damage it - so I put everything back together until a new crankset arrives.

 And now I have to make sure I test it out tomorrow, since I'll likely be using the bike this weekend (the Billy Grey ride on Sunday, and possible a duathlon on Saturday.) Hopefully it won't be raining too hard when I get out of work tomorrow.
 
Why is it that things which should be easy never are?

 JMH
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