If my aim was to start the year off as I intend to go on then I’d better start again.
I found myself a little window of opportunity on Sunday the 1st to put my Africa Bike back together. It’s been sitting with its wheels out against the outside wall of the garage for several months now waiting. Waiting for me to order the new axle and brake shoe, then waiting for them to arrive from Holland, then waiting-waiting-waiting for me to get them to the bike shop, and for the bike shop to fit them and for me to pick it up and so on. I eventually found myself in the garage with a cup of tea in one hand and a couple of hours in the other.
When I first put this hub (a SRAM 3 speed coaster) into this bike I didn’t do it right. In my hurry to get it up and running I failed to align the rear drop-outs after spreading the rear triangle to accommodate the wider hub. It’s a Golden Rule of any hub, but particularly for internal geared hubs that the drop-outs be aligned correctly. Ride any distance on a bike with skew-wiff drop-outs and you’ll bend or break your rear axle. It’s an eventuality as predictable as the sunrise. With its cogs and gears the bending of an axle in a geared hub is a potentially catastrophic event.
My Step-dad told me to be very wary of buying a car from a car mechanic. They often don’t attend things when they should, or to the best of their abilities. I guess because they have the skills to re-bodge them if or when they fail. His sage advice certainly applies to this former bike mechanic. When working on other people’s bikes I am meticulous but my own bikes suffer the ignominy of being roughly assembled, chucked together. I can only assume that other tradesfolk behave in a similar way, that chefs, builders and seamstresses do their best work for clients but adopt a more lase-fair approach to their own work. Not bodged exactly, more freestyle.
Anyway. Like the slacker that I am I never did get around to aligning those drop-outs and as sure as night turns to day I bent the damn axle. I did it to myself. And so the long wait I had to endure to get my Number One bike back under my butt seemed like just punishment.
I was determined not to repeat my previous screw-up. Before I installed the wheel this time I made absolutely certain that the drop-outs were perfectly straight and parallel. It went back together beautifully, I bolted it up with a nice new set of track nuts and took it for a spin. Tra le la.
It works, what joy.
Africa Bike in happier times....
I pedalled backwards to slow up but instead I came to a juddering halt. I had made a fatal error, an error so elemental, so profoundly dumb that I am mortified with embarrassment as I type these words.
I had failed to bolt the torque arm to the frame. And, with the mass of my fat ass behind it the torque arm, with nowt to restrain it was sent spinning around the hub until it came to rest hard up against the seat stay. It no longer turns forward or back. I’m no expert on internally geared hubs but I think it’s fair to say that the insides are mush. Like a broom handle in the spokes or a spanner in the works, I fear this is an event which no amount of adjustment or fettling can restore. It’s new internals time.
Which puts me firmly back at square one.
Happy New Year everyone.
