2020/09/25 - Bike Restorations, Episode #1 A while back, I wrote a gopher post about a pair of free junk bikes I picked up off Craigslist, and I joked that readers should "tune in next time for another episode of 'I Found It On Craigslist'". Well, since then, I have found a few more bikes and, combined with a little extra free time courtesy of the SARS-CoV-2 quarantine, my old bike tinkering hobby is back in full swing. I haven't been gophering much recently, largely because I've been spending so much time offline. But I know there are a lot of bicycle enthusiasts out there in pubnix-space, so I decided it might be fun to make some quick posts about some of these bike restorations I've been working on. So here's post #1, which may be a little different than you would expect from a bike "restoration" post. This is not about a vintage bike but a 2016 Fuji Crosstown Two.1 hybrid. (The frame says "Two.1", but most often it is written "2.1" on internet references.) This was another find from the Craigslist "Free" section. The previous owner apparently failed to keep their rear derailleur in shape and, as derailleurs are wont to do, it ended up snagging the chain and knocking out a few spokes. Evidently the rider was going at a pretty high speed when it happened too because the chain was also tangled and absolutely wrenched around the rear freewheel. Somehow the derailleur hanger managed to survive this incident though. But don't worry, that poor hanger won't survive the story I'm going to tell you. It took me a good 30 minutes to pick and pry the chain off the freewheel. Luckily the wheel and freewheel weren't badly damaged, other than a few bent and missing spokes. The derailleur, on the other hand, was looking pretty mangled. It was missing the pulley cage and both pulleys, and the derailleur itself was highly contorted. So I ordered some spokes and sourced both a cage and a jockey and idler (the two pulley wheels) and got to work putting it all back together. With the bent and missing spokes replaced, the wheel was easy to true. I don't have a truing stand, so I just eyeballed it. Good enough is good enough. I could have replaced the derailleur, but I wanted to take on the challenge of bringing this one back to life. With the derailleur itself apparently bent back into shape, and the cage and pulleys re-installed, it "looked" ok. This is where I got a little overconfident. Surprised at how easily this restoration was finished, I hopped on for a quick test ride. About 20 meters from my house, however, I found out the hard way that the derailleur was "not" ok. The chain snagged again, the wheel froze, and the derailleur hanger that survived the first crash did not survive this one. Welp, that's what derailleur hangers are for, right? So I had to wait another week or so while I ordered a replacement derailleur hanger and waited for it to ship. When this arrived and was installed, I proceeded much more cautiously to get the drivetrain in working order. I kept it on the repair stand much longer and tested gear changes for much more time. Doing this, I did end up noticing that the chain would snag in the pulley cage occasionally. Exactly what happened to me on the test ride. After a frustratingly long time of adjusting the derailleur further, playing with the limit screws and the barrel adjuster, and even attempting to bend the derailleur into the right alignment, I finally concluded that the issue must be with the frame and not the derailleur. Upon closer inspection, it appeared that the new derailleur hanger wasn't in alignment. I don't have a derailleur hanger alignment tool, and I wasn't about to fork over the $50 - $150 to buy one just for this. Luckily, I did find a great "hack" which relies on the fact that many bicycle axle bolts are 10 mm with 1 mm threads, exactly the same size as the derailleur hanger bolt. This allows you to effectively screw another wheel onto your derailleur hanger bolt so that you have two wheels more or less in parallel with each other. Where they aren't in parallel, i.e. not spinning on the same plane, your hanger is out of alignment. You can simply push or pull on the add-on wheel to bend the hanger back into alignment. Again, I eyeballed the distance. Good enough is good enough. And this trick worked great! The derailleur is now perfectly aligned with the freewheel. After re-indexing the gears, the bike rides like new. So now I have a working Fuji hybrid bike in the garage. It has front suspension and even a suspension seat post, so the ride is really cushy. I prefer rigid bikes though, where my elbows and knees are the suspension. But still, it was a fun challenge getting it back into working order. Next up, a mid-1980's Bridgestone 400. This was another bike discarded onto Craigslist's "Free" section, but hadn't been subject to any catastrophic crashes. It just had some rust and a bald tire (you can still ride on subtread, you know). So tune in next time for I Found it On Craigslist, when I write about the Bridgestone.