Is there anything more painful for a bike wrencher than installing full guards?
The answer is "yes" - trying to make a French headset work!
Good news:
Narrow-wide chainring delivered from China in 10 days! Wow. Don't always get that even when the sender is in the UK. I've swapped the XD2s for a new set, as the 170 one is yet to be liberated from the stuck pedal.
The guards are going on, and the brakes will probably be fine...
My "spare parts" rear mech fits very well by the looks of it.
I've sorted the seatpost clamping issue by applying a bit of carbon gripper paste - the post is now rock solid even at 6nm torque.
Bad news:
Setback 1: I thought I had red anodized alloy bolts for the rear guard, but I couldn't find them, so I'll have to use golden ones. Hopefully, they'll get covered by mud soon enough so I won't be stopped by the fashion police.
Setback 2: I've tightened the headset, put on an old chain and took Frannie out for a short test ride down my street. Sans brakes, but when has that ever stopped people from riding bikes, right?
On hitting a road bump (at slow speed obviously!) the headset clicked and skipped up a thread! This has happened to me once while working on the bike, but I re-tightened the nuts with a headset wrench and concluded that it was just me forgetting to tighten it.
Nope - the headset is skipping up the threads. Feck.
The washers are a bit loose on the threads, but not nearly as loose as when I tried putting on a spare campy ISO headset.
So what the hell is wrong with Tange?
Thankfully, I've ordered M25 die and tap from China (Couldn't resist the temptation at about £15 delivered!). The die went on the fork with finger pressure, but was very tight - the steerer threads are definitely M25 and are in good enough condition.
The nuts went onto the M25 tap, but were a bit loose on it.
Just to give it a try, I've tried screwing the nuts onto an iso steerer...and with a bit of persuasion they went on!
So it's an ISO thread after all on the headset, albeit, it seems to be tighter than standard ISO. I was even able to torque these buggers up to preload the bearings. WTF!
The best news is that the steerer is not damaged and I am back to my plan of installing a threadless set-up. But it will take more time and frannying.
The answer is "yes" - trying to make a French headset work!
Good news:
Narrow-wide chainring delivered from China in 10 days! Wow. Don't always get that even when the sender is in the UK. I've swapped the XD2s for a new set, as the 170 one is yet to be liberated from the stuck pedal.
The guards are going on, and the brakes will probably be fine...
My "spare parts" rear mech fits very well by the looks of it.
I've sorted the seatpost clamping issue by applying a bit of carbon gripper paste - the post is now rock solid even at 6nm torque.
Bad news:
Setback 1: I thought I had red anodized alloy bolts for the rear guard, but I couldn't find them, so I'll have to use golden ones. Hopefully, they'll get covered by mud soon enough so I won't be stopped by the fashion police.
Setback 2: I've tightened the headset, put on an old chain and took Frannie out for a short test ride down my street. Sans brakes, but when has that ever stopped people from riding bikes, right?
On hitting a road bump (at slow speed obviously!) the headset clicked and skipped up a thread! This has happened to me once while working on the bike, but I re-tightened the nuts with a headset wrench and concluded that it was just me forgetting to tighten it.
Nope - the headset is skipping up the threads. Feck.
The washers are a bit loose on the threads, but not nearly as loose as when I tried putting on a spare campy ISO headset.
So what the hell is wrong with Tange?
Thankfully, I've ordered M25 die and tap from China (Couldn't resist the temptation at about £15 delivered!). The die went on the fork with finger pressure, but was very tight - the steerer threads are definitely M25 and are in good enough condition.
The nuts went onto the M25 tap, but were a bit loose on it.
Just to give it a try, I've tried screwing the nuts onto an iso steerer...and with a bit of persuasion they went on!
So it's an ISO thread after all on the headset, albeit, it seems to be tighter than standard ISO. I was even able to torque these buggers up to preload the bearings. WTF!
The best news is that the steerer is not damaged and I am back to my plan of installing a threadless set-up. But it will take more time and frannying.