New Parts (or thanks, Mom and Dad!)

We have a running joke in our home that every time my parents give A a present it ends up costing us money--it isn't Grammy and Grampy's fault at all, if anything they're just too good at picking things A likes.

When she was little, they gave her a 6-week dance class--turns out she loved it and we ended up sending her to dance class for several more years.  Later she had swim lessons--yep, loved it, and so on, and so on.

So, when we were checking out the bike and the tires were flat enough to be falling off the wheels, Grammy and Grampy offered to get those wheels fixed (a little preemptive action on their part).

But, once I'd pushed them back on the rims and filled them with air, they looked to me like they might do ok for a while. 

But then I read Lovely Bicycle! Blog's review of her 3-speed Raleigh Sports and (in addition to feeling considerable envy) I also read this:

As a rule, you should always get new tires after purchasing a vintage bike with original tires....The reason for this, is that vintage tires have a tendency to explode after their second decade of life, even if they appear "fine". You don't want this to happen while you are cycling in traffic.

And, as much as I don't want this to happen when I'm cycling in traffic, I absolutely and totally don't what it to happen to A when she's cycling in traffic.

Ok, new tires it is.

Thanks, Mom and Dad! (and I bought some new tubes, too, since the rear one is leaky and it only made sense to me to take care of the other 38 year old tube while I already had the wheel and tire off).

And, since the break pad felt like stale bread and, even with pressure, slid across Formica like it was made of Teflon, Mom and Dad were kind enough to spring for 2 sets of those, too (one might almost get to think they like that girl):

Now to get the rest of the bike to a place where it's time to put all of this stuff on and go for a ride...but now, back to scrubbing chrome with wads of vinegar dipped foil.

Removing the Rear Wheel and: It's a Date!

Yesterday, armed with better Googling and after taking a nice good look at the bike itself, I took off the rear wheel with it's Strumey Archer 3-speed hub.

With actual information on my side, it was really fairly easy.

Looking at the wheel, it's fairly obvious that the geared hub is a real and true hub (with spokes attached), not something that attached to the hub--my choices were to either remove the spokes and later rebuild the wheel (not what I had in mind) or find out how the cable detaches from the hub, preferably without having to reassemble or recalibrate the hub mechanism.

And since this is a bike we're talking about here, and especially since removing the rear wheel is something that has to be done to, say, fix a flat tire and other basics like that, there must be a fairly sensible way, right?

The key for me was finding this sentence on this site, "If you have a Sturmey-Archer, put the shifter in high (3) gear position. Unscrew the cable from the tiny chain. Ignoring the little chain, you now loosen the axle nuts and remove the wheel."  Ok, I have the cable attached to a small chain, complete with what looks like grips to unscrew:

Took me a bit to figure out that the larger and smaller gripped pieces weren't one piece that unscrewed from the threaded part, but actually the larger one is a counter nut that holds the thinner piece where it's calibrated and it's the thinner piece that unscrews:

So, after that was taken care of, it was easy enough to remove the wheel with a wrench and get to work cleaning it.

The hub was not really tarnished, just completely covered with oil and/or grease and grit: 

Used some soapy water and a toothbrush for most of it (hub, nearby spokes, and external gear), which worked nicely, and followed up with a rag and again the toothbrush moistened with some degreaser (I was wary about the degreaser finding its way into the hub and messing everything up)--came out nice and shiny, really pretty!  Behold:

And, finally, I have a more solid date for this bike.  The hub is stamped 73 for 1973--and there we have it, a 1973 Columbia Sports III.

(yes, this 1973:

From Mr. Columbia's site

pretty cute in an early 1970's kind of way)

And while I was working on the hub, A was finishing up the front wheel:

which is now completely shiny and beautiful--still lots to do on the bike, but all and all a good day.

Step 1

Yesterday we began the process of fixing up the bike.

We figured starting with something we knew how to do would be an excellent beginning--I know how to remove bike wheels, I have a ratchet set (thank you, father-in-law!) and know how to use it, and I've googled enough to know that tinfoil, possibly dipped in a touch of vinegar, is a good tool to polish chrome (e.g. here).  Plus, we do have some experience scrubbing things in general, living in the world without Rosie the Robot as we do.

So, off came the front wheel and away we went.

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As you can see, it started off looking pretty grungy--remarkably true (in the tire shape-wonkiness way of meaning) but still exceedingly grungy:

A little close-up of the grunge (try to ignore the knobby knees):

Started by putting the kid to work with a toothbrush and some sudsy water (we rinsed well after--I'd read somewhere that dish detergent can leave corrosive salts if you don't--not sure if that's really true since my sink and dishes look pretty fine, but why take the chance?).

When A was little she used to pretend to be Cinderella a lot; the picture kind of makes it look like I'm putting her at it for real, poor dear, but at least she gets a bike out of it:

And, Cinderella does good work (which involved more back end of toothbrush scraping at crud than actual success with the bristles):

But really, the aluminum foil was by far the best tool for this--could be torn into small pieces to get in tight places and really did fast work on the gunk, leaving a lovely shine.  Occasionally we dipped it in vinegar to see if it worked better, but honestly I'm not convinced the vinegar really improved anything beyond plain water or soapy water and the foil (ETA--nope, not really--A was working on it again today and noticed it was much, much easier to get it looking nice with the vinegar--guess I had enough vinegar already on things that I was good to go by the time I tried it without):

And, ta-da--finished product with some grunge for comparison:

Oooooh--shiny!  And I have to say, I think it looks very nice.

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Next step will (most likely) be the rear wheel clean up, which, especially with the hub, can look pretty spectacular all shined up (e.g. here).

But despite Sheldon Brown's fine (and apparently famous in an internet old-bike community kind of way) texts on internal 3-speed hubs (e.g. here), to be honest, I do better seeing things done and I'm still a bit leery about taking off the wheel without having to detach the hub from the cable (i.e. instead separating the wheel from the hub), or however I'll need to get it done.  (ETA: those of you who know anything about them can stop laughing or crying, whichever--after I got another look at it I saw how impossible that really was (or at least how much more work that would have made for me)--no worries, I did discover the right way to do it before I took action!) Can't put it off forever, or can but shouldn't, so I will be biting that particular bullet soon.

Will it be simple and successful or a spectacular fail?  Stay tuned!