Keri's Motobecane, Part 3

     It is funny how the world works sometimes.  One of the bigger projects looming in my mind for the past year has been outfitting my fiancee Keri's vintage Motobecane with shifters and derailleurs, as we bought it as an improvised single speed.  Actually installing the components wouldn't be that big of a deal, mostly because it involves pretty routine procedures; the real pain would come from tracking down somewhat appropriate components.  The bike is old but I'm not entirely sure what originally came on it.  Information on Motobecanes from the early seventies is difficult to find, and honestly the scans I have found are hard to read.  Accumulating all of the parts could take some time, some money, and it eventually got shifted onto our backburner.

Keri's bike prior to operation.
Taken on June 26, 2013

     Then, cosmic energies aligned and some good fortune came our way.  One of our managers at work was given an old Schwinn World bike.  Unfortunately, the bike was in really rough shape, needing at least new tubes and tires to be rideable.  In addition to that, the bike was too tall for her.  Deciding to donate it to a local non-profit bicycle program, she brought it into work thinking it needed to be in working order to donate.  After seeing it initially, I didn't think much of it.  The frame's paint job was a bit scuffed in parts, and most of the bike's componentry weren't anything to write home about.  But something did catch my eye:  the shifters.  They were exactly the kind I needed for Keri's bike, and they were actually in pretty good shape too!
     I mentioned to my manager that bikes actually don't need to be in working order to be donated, and that I was actually interested in the shifters.  We quickly worked out an agreement where the whole bike was mine, and I would donate what I didn't use.  Sweet!  After looking over the bike some more, I soon realized that not only were the shifters useful to me, but the rear and front derailleurs were actually perfect for Keri's bike!  In one fell swoop, I had acquired nearly everything I needed to turn Keri's bike back into a multiple speed vehicle.
     After stripping the necessary parts off of the Schwinn I hung the bike up for me to deal with later.  The components are all Suntour, and I can now guess the Schwinn is from some time between 1982 and 1984.  The online scans of the Schwinn catalogs did not make it extremely clear which year the bike was from, but I am confident it lies between those years.  All of the parts were destined for a bath in the parts cleaner we have at work, for although they were in good shape they still had some dirt and grime on them.
     First I disassembled the shifters.  They are simply called Suntour stem shifters, I could find no model name for them, neither on the actual shifters themselves nor online.  This style of shifter mounts, you guessed it, directly onto the quill stem of a bicycle.  They are usually not the highest quality parts out there, because the stem shifters were considered a more comfortable version of the downtube shifters typically found on more serious road bikes.  Despite this, the nicer ones are still of more-than-adequate quality, and I got lucky here:  these are of the all-metal variety.  A lot of the stem shifters that are still around have plastic levers, or at least partly plastic levers.  Besides looking nasty, they of course are not as sturdy as the ones made completely out of aluminum.

Top:  Shots of the shifters before disassembly and going into the parts cleaner.
Bottom:  After reassembly and a bath in the parts cleaner.  Not a ton
of difference, but quite a bit of shine in the mounting bracket is noticeable in person.
Taken on June 25, 2013

     I disassembled these shifters before putting them into the parts cleaner because they function entirely on friction.  The technology behind these levers is incredibly simple and in my opinion brilliant.  In essence you have four parts, in this order:  a bolt, a plate, the lever, and another plate.  When the bolt is tightened down adequately, these two plates sandwich the lever and physics keeps the lever where you put it.  The spring-tensioned derailleur can't overpower an adequately tightened friction shifter.  There's no ratcheting, no mechanisms, no springs and tiny parts.  They're incredibly low maintenance, and you really can't go wrong with them.  But because they rely on friction, I can't afford any sort of lubricant to get onto the lever and plate surfaces.  This would of course greatly reduce the friction and I'd have to carefully and thoroughly clean the surfaces before I could expect them to work again.  So only the mounting bracket, between the levers, would go into the parts cleaner.

Top:  A couple angles of the rear derailleur, prior to being cleaned.
Bottom:  Same angles, after the parts cleaner.  Besides really shining up,
a lot of the grime was removed.
Taken on June 25, 2013

     The rear derailleur is a Suntour Honor 1100, otherwise known as the fourth style of the Honor series which began in 1968.  According to the date code on the back of the parallelogram, this particular derailleur was made in June of 1981.  Aren't date codes neat?  According to the wealth of knowledge found on the Disraeli Gears website, the Honor series was renowned for not be extraordinarily beautiful or light, but for being a durable workhorse.  Sounds like my kind of part!  It has a lot in common with my Suntour Fuji Vx S rear derailleur on my Fuji S12-S, in particular the open cage--which I love--and the styling of the logo.  This really made me excited to clean it up!

Top:  Shots of the pre-cleaned front derailleur.  Note the grime around the clamp bracket.
Bottom:  Shots of the post-cleaned front derailleur.  What a shine!  But I did
have to put some elbow grease in to break up the grime.
Taken on June 25, 2013

     The front derailleur is a Suntour Spirit, and other than the fact that this particular derailleur was made in April of 1981, there isn't much else I could find out about it.  From a few catalog scans I've figured it was a rather low end component, not to mention front derailleurs tend to be a step or two below the rear derailleur on a bike.  Regardless it feels sturdy and actually has pretty good action.  It is neat, however, in that its default position is actually opposite that of most front derailleurs.  Typically, the spring in a front derailleur causes the cage to return to a default position close to the frame, over the inner, smaller chainrings.  As you pull cable, the derailleur moves out away from the frame, towards the higher gears.  For this derailleur, however, the default position is away from the frame, over the high gears, and moves towards the inner low gears as you pull cable.  This has no substantial value to me other than being an oddity:  it simply means it will be easier on the shifter staying in the high gear.

     The front derailleur was not absolutely necessary on Keri's bike, however, because somewhere along the line someone removed the inner chain ring, leaving only the larger "main" chain ring.  I'm not entirely sure what would have prompted this, but it is definitely something I find more than a little irritating.  Tracking down an age-appropriate and correctly sized chain ring could truly be difficult.  But in the meantime, I decided to install the front derailleur so that it can act as a chain guide.  With the chain moving between the gears on the freewheel in the rear, the chain can sometimes want to jump off of the front chain ring.  This is somewhat common, although it doesn't always happen.  It does tend to happen more with reckless shifting, such as "dumping" the chain from the lowest gear to the highest in one motion.  The chains spends more time "in the air" in a shift like this and so is more likely to come off.  Part of what a front derailleur does anyways is keep the chain on the chain rings, so I figured this would be a good idea for Keri's bike.

     Finally, with all of the parts clean, I drove Keri's bike into work on one of my day's off to install everything.  I could have probably done it at home, but it is always such a hassle to pull out my folding stand and do bike maintenance in my living room, between my computer desk and our chairs.  It's worth it to do it in a real shop.  The whole operation went without much of a hitch.  In addition to the obvious expense of cables and housing, I bought a new chain for the her bike.  Her old chain was, well, old, being what I'm pretty sure was the original chain.  But more importantly, it was shortened to work for a single speed drivetrain.  Deciding it was time for a new one, I threw on a SRAM PG-850 8-speed chain that we keep in bulk in the shop.

Various shots of the finished installation.  Everything looks great.
Taken on June 27, 2013

     When everything was said and done, the bike actually came out looking a heck of a lot sharper than it did originally.  I know we are in the middle of a single speed craze, but I will always drift toward a geared drivetrain, if not for practical reasons then for aesthetic reasons.  The much more important satisfaction, however, came from taking Keri out for a test ride shortly after I finished everything.  She was very excited to finally "getting gears," as it has been something she's wanted for well over a year now.  With a yelp of unexpected nimbleness, she took off and had a smile on her face the whole time.  I was a little worried.  She had never used a bike with friction shifting, and although fundamentally it is simple, it is something that can give people trouble at first.  But she caught on like a champ, and after her ten minute ride she exclaimed how much she loved it.  Nothing really beats that feeling of a job well done, especially when that confirmation comes from a loved one.  At the end of the day, this is the kind of mechanic I am.  I just want to make people happy about their bike.

The completed bike, with a 5-speed drivetrain.
Taken on June 27, 2013

     All that is left on Keri's bike is for me to rebuild her rear wheel, as I did with her front.  With the finish line so near I think I'll prioritize this last project for her bike, so that she is completely equipped to get out and have some fun.  I've been partly putting it off because her bike will be out of commission while I am building the wheel, so I want to have all of the funds ready right off the bat.

The bare frame of the Schwinn World that yielded the parts so that Keri's bike could live.
I have plans for it...
Taken on June 27, 2013

     But, more relevant to myself personally, is the now completely stripped Schwinn World frame sitting behind me.  At first I was resolved to quickly donate it, but I've had a change of heart, and I believe I can use it in a project I've been very anxious to make a reality.  There will be more on that to come.

Note:  As in a previous post, I'd like to recommend the website Disraeli Gears as an incredible wealth of knowledge on rear derailleurs.  In addition, I'd also like to recommend this site for providing information on dating bicycle components.  It can be neat to find out when parts of your bike were made.

Finally, this collection of Schwinn catalog scans between the years 1981 and 1990 were (somewhat) useful in dating the Schwinn World.  You may find it useful as well.

Duality

     At the moment I have a few posts brewing.  I'm not sure if I will continue on the same path that I started for each of them, or even finish and publish any of them.  Right now I am in the middle of a project that has grown quite a bit more intense than I originally speculated:  I'm overhauling my mom's old 1994 ParkPre Team 925R road bike.  That'll warrant a very full post when I'm finished.

A bad photograph of the bike before I started work.  I neglected to take a full side shot of the bike.  Oh well.
Taken on June 18, 2013.

     Instead I'll take this time to share a little half rant, half musing.  Recently I have been experiencing a bit of a minor, not-inherently-bad-for-me identity crisis.  In short, the duality of my interests, which normally coexist in a sort of tag-team tap-out fashion, are butting heads.
     In lamen's terms, my digital, indoor video game side is at odds with my mechanically curious and productive side.  I waste time sitting on my computer, blinking away seconds, minutes, hours and days of video games and mindless web browsing while deep inside of me a greasy fire lusts for actually doing something.  In ideal circumstances, I would just roll my chair from my sweet computer rig over to my fully equipped and expansive work area to start building a bike from nothing, and when I tired of that, I would roll back to my computer to play video games for hours on end.
     Unfortunately, the reality favors one side of that much more than the other.  I have no work area.  Beside my computer I've crammed my tool chest, which is itself crammed with most of my tools.  Beside that is a large tote box filled with my bike part collection.  That's it.  When I rarely do bike work at home, it is usually while sitting in my computer chair, with parts lying on my computer desk--my computer desk with a glass surface!  Boy, it looked cool at Wal-mart but now I am slightly regretting it.  When I need something resembling a work bench I use the linoleum floor of our kitchen.  It gets some of what I need done but it is more than anything frustrating.
     I need a shop.  I need a space, even a somewhat small space, to call my own and to fill with whatever I desire.  Tools, parts, benches, chairs, lighting and of course a decent speaker system.  I need this so bad it drives me insane sometimes.  I would be a much happier and more content person if I had access to this.  But for now, I must endure.

     And so the side of me that needs to work my hands, solve problems and build to create is stifled.  While this never makes me happy, lately it has reached a new level.  It's bothering me.  But it also has me thinking:  "What am I going to do when I do have my dream shop?"
     I definitely want to still try my hand at frame building.  Regardless of how that works out, more than anything I want to tinker.  I want to take apart and rebuild things I normally wouldn't take apart, like shifters.  I want to put parts together to create interesting or useful bikes.  Possibly I could sell these, or I could just do it for the fun and educational value of it.
     One of the big things I have learned from working as a mechanic at a "new" place (that is, a place different from where I learned most of my trade) is that there is more than one way to do something.  There are "proper" ways, "dirty" ways, shortcuts and dumb ways.  I've also begun seeing that there is more than one type of mechanic.  Some people are all about being by the book, following the rules and instructions and seeing the process through in a methodical manner.  Other people are more loose and follow the ebb and flow of the process.  Some people are all about the componentry, how top-of-the-line or new the part is, or how allegedly innovative the company claims the part to be.  Others don't really care, as long as it is functional and gets the job done.  Some people work on bikes because they are serious riders and want every last drop of performance that they can wring out of their machine.  Others, such as myself, find their interest in bicycles in the very nature of it's ingenuity.  It's a machine, that must be manufactured, cared for, and ultimately put to rest.  There is satisfaction in that, otherwise humanity wouldn't be where it is today, regardless of how awesome you may think you are with your iPhone.
     I think I know what kind of mechanic I am.  The trick is staying true to that.  The harder trick still is staying true to that and upholding the tenets of my job.  It's not so difficult that I am strained, just difficult enough to keep me on my toes.
     I just have to keep on trying to grow as a mechanic, to take on new challenges head on, so that I can add "I can't"s to the pile of "I can"s.  It is difficult for me.  I have some serious confidence problems.  My dad always made it look so easy:  nothing ever seemed to make him step away.  He built a whole house seemingly by himself for god's sake!  Sometimes I know I can do it, sometimes I feel I can't.  Duality seems to run deeply in my life.  Prior to very recently I could handle it, if not ignore it.  Nowadays it has been more than I can handle.
     Just got to keep on keeping on.