Handlebars

Scorcher today, but we were lucky enough to have a cool night last night and a passing thundershower this morning, so A and I took advantage and did a bit of work on the bike until it got too hot.

A finished up the rear wheel while I tackled the handlebars. 

Started by removing the break handles and shifter and loosening the handlebars from the stem by removing the bolt there (I could have gotten it all off, I suppose, if I removed the handle grips, but they were stuck well, which is how we want them, and really I just needed to be able to twist the handlebars and slide enough to get around them all the way).

They were looking kind of old and rusty, which am mounts to a whole lot of "no kidding" since the whole bike is old, and also kind of rusty:

See the small spot to the left of the stem--that's the shine of progress you see there!

But with our usual blend of aluminum foil and white vinegar, with a whole lot of rubbing, we ended up with finger ruining black sludge but also some better looking handlebars.

Right handlebar pretty much done:

 

Followed by left handlebar, also pretty much done:

There's still a little bit of rust on the left handlebar, but the sun is beating down now and, remembering that this is supposed to be a fun mom-and-daughter project not a chain gang, we called it done for today.

The whole thing is a bit cloudy, not cleaning up quite as shiny as the wheels did.  I may try the tinfoil a bit more or pick up some polishing compound and see if that helps, but either way at least it doesn't scream out "BEATER" the way the it used to--so it's unmelting next to the AC for now and shiny brite happiness just around the corner.  

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!