Fixing a Victorian

[Woz]

Typical of my shake down rides, it broke three times. I kept tightening the collet, really reefed on it but the seat turned and the post pistons down from bumps. Too worn and the post is smaller with the gone nickel plating. I’m cleaning the grease out with a spray solvent and epoxying it in place. The next guy can use a torch to remove it. The chain is very noisy so I’m going to reverse it, it might be on backwards from original. It’s not unusual for old inch pitch chains to be noisy as they are old and worn and changing rings or cogs seems to make it so things don’t quite fit as they should. After about 6 miles the pedal with the nylon race froze up and the pedal kept coming off. This pedal had no grove cut for a lock ring, instead it had a spindle flat spot and a “D” washer that was missing. I made a“D” washer and that obviously let go at the 6 mile mark. Tiny “D” washers are not available. I’ll put on my new old stock pedals. So, epoxy, new pedals, chain reverse and crank arm tightening and I should be good. Even though the narrow bars were hard on the arms and shoulder and the riding position was pretty bad I did enjoy the ride. I’ll ride it more and keep improving weak spots until I’m happy. It’s actually pretty close.

It's already pretty amazing it's got this far. I would have expected even more issues to be honest.

Think it's time to put them NOS pedals on too and be done with - you tried but without more specialist tools some salvage jobs are just to difficult. For the seat-post I would hold back with the epoxy until you have tried degreasing and roughing the mating surfaces.

The riding position must be so weird compared to modern stuff. From your point of view all you must see is a front wheel in front of you - a road bike today would have the brake levers more-or-less vertically up from the front wheel axel, on this it's more like the rear edge of the front wheel! The bars have a significant drop too; would raising the stem and angling the bars forward help? (like this)

 

[Woz]

 

[Mickeyspinn]

It's already pretty amazing it's got this far. I would have expected even more issues to be honest.

Think it's time to put them NOS pedals on too and be done with - you tried but without more specialist tools some salvage jobs are just to difficult. For the seat-post I would hold back with the epoxy until you have tried degreasing and roughing the mating surfaces.

The riding position must be so weird compared to modern stuff. From your point of view all you must see is a front wheel in front of you - a road bike today would have the brake levers more-or-less vertically up from the front wheel axel, on this it's more like the rear edge of the front wheel! The bars have a significant drop too; would raising the stem and angling the bars forward help? (like this)


View attachment 646336

I agree woz it would be worth a little more headscratching and cunning to try and save the collet system...however I completely understand nabeaquam's desire to just ride the damn thing! It's been a pretty monumental undertaking and the guy deserves the reward maybe a welded up new seatpost to get sizing right?
The ride position is very how can you say...pugilist....upright and take it like a man

 

[Nabeaquam]

Inch pitch block chains were always noisy even when new.

Keith

This one is pretty bad, it doesn’t fit on the chainring well. It’s high, you can see daylight around some places toward the end of the chain on the wheel. It loudly clunks when it decides to bed. It did get a little less noisy the longer I rode it. The blocks have dents worn on one side of the links and I might have the fresh side against the teeth. It works so I can live with it if I can’t fix the racket. This is really just annoying and not as significant as the other issues. Heavy lube helps quiet down my other inch pitch chains. The faster I go the less racket they make. My Gloria and Claud Butler track bikes, with new laminated block chains, are as quiet as any chain. I wonder if the laminations make them quiet? My other ones are noisy.

 

[Nabeaquam]

View attachment 646372

That almost looks like the same bike. The head badge and chain ring are similar. The crank is different. I like the bar tape but I couldn ride it for very long on anything except the drops or the top.

 

[Nabeaquam]

I agree woz it would be worth a little more headscratching and cunning to try and save the collet system...however I completely understand nabeaquam's desire to just ride the damn thing! It's been a pretty monumental undertaking and the guy deserves the reward maybe a welded up new seatpost to get sizing right?
The ride position is very how can you say...pugilist....upright and take it like a man

I had it so it wouldn’t get any tighter and it still moved down, left and right. Removing rust is also removing part of the metal. It must have had tight tolerances when new. I’ll think about this but I don't think anything I’m capable of will fix it right. I had leg cramps, achy arms and shoulders after a 6 mile ride, which reminded me of how bad the riding position was. I still liked it.

 

[Woz]

I reckon getting your position as good as you can is the deal breaker. No point in pushing yourself or the bike too much.

If this was mine it would be used for summer short rides with lots of sight seeing stops, and a few drinking stops in between

 

[Woz]

Back on the collet.

Take a break. Open a can of beer. Drink beer. Cut up can of beer with scissors and make a shim. 0.1 mm thickness if I remember right.

A soft AL or copper shim would be perfect here I think. It's got to be a beer can, not a soda soft drink can.

EDIT: Definitely a diameter issue. I suspect the collet has raised so far up it's hitting the lip of the lock nut. No amount of tightening would solve this problem.

 

[Mickeyspinn]

I had it so it wouldn’t get any tighter and it still moved down, left and right. Removing rust is also removing part of the metal. It must have had tight tolerances when new. I’ll think about this but I don't think anything I’m capable of will fix it right. I had leg cramps, achy arms and shoulders after a 6 mile ride, which reminded me of how bad the riding position was. I still liked it.

Well there's pleasure in pain....so I've heard
Just wondering maybe a few wet flatted coats of a hard epoxy paint on the seatpost might grow the diameter a bit? It sounds close to actually grabbing just needs that few thou more to get it!

And those pedals....offer still stands I'm happy to have a bash at getting them going pay for post only rare things 130 year old pedals be good to save em!

 

[Nabeaquam]

Well there's pleasure in pain....so I've heard
Just wondering maybe a few wet flatted coats of a hard epoxy paint on the seatpost might grow the diameter a bit? It sounds close to actually grabbing just needs that few thou more to get it!

And those pedals....offer still stands I'm happy to have a bash at getting them going pay for post only rare things 130 year old pedals be good to save em!

thanks for the pedal offer. It worked perfectly until the d ring failed. It still might be fixable, but I don’t want unreliability. I’m going to look for something to lock it in place. I’ll use the nos ones until then. I like your idea of enlarging the post. If that doesn’t work I could put on epoxy steel filler and sand it down. I’ll try some 2 part paint first.