Yellow Hobbs winter beater of distinction (WBOD)

[PhillB]

Mock-up build from last night. It now has the Reynolds Hiduminium seatpost that should be on my Parkes and the Unicanitor off my Parkes. Stronglight 49D. I need to unwrap the bars and fit the brake levers which are roughly era-correct Mafacs. I've hung the Huret Jubilee derailleurs in place but I'm still not sure if I'm going to use them long-term.

View attachment 922181

Lookin' good!

 

[Jonny69]

Rear axle re-spaced. You can see I’ve got a nice gap now. The derailleur is right at the far end of its stop though, so I’m hoping it’s going to reach the small cog. I can probably space the derailleur out by 1mm-1.5mm if I need to, but any further than that and the B screw won’t have enough contact with the tang on the dropout.

 

[Jonny69]

I've roughly cabled up the brakes. Front works well but the rear has a bit of a torturous path around the seat cluster that I need to re-do because it's got too much friction. Also I couldn't work out why it was very lopsided, but then I remembered I haven't re-centred the wheel after I re-spaced the axle. Duh!

 

[sunympholepsy]

I've roughly cabled up the brakes. Front works well but the rear has a bit of a torturous path around the seat cluster that I need to re-do because it's got too much friction. Also I couldn't work out why it was very lopsided, but then I remembered I haven't re-centred the wheel after I re-spaced the axle. Duh!

A step-down ferrule might help with the rear brake cable routing?

 

[Jonny69]

A step-down ferrule might help with the rear brake cable routing?View attachment 925259

I tried those but the stops on the frame seem to be the same size as the cable outer on one side and the cable inner on the other. The shape and position of the cable hanger I've got on the seat bolt isn't ideal either. It could do with being a bit longer so I don't have to bend the cable into such an awkward shape to get it round the seat cluster.

 

[Jonny69]

This has been fighting me. I have the rear mech cabled up. It *just* pulls across the full range:



However, I’d heard the Jubilee mech needed a lot of cable pull and even with the big pull diameter on the Huret shifters I’m using it needs nearly 180° of lever pull to move the mech from one end to another. At that end of the travel, the friction in the shifter can’t overcome the pull from the derailleur spring. That won’t make for good riding.

Add to that there’s a lot of play in the mech as it’s quite worn, so I don’t think it’s going to work well. Then add to that I found the top jockey wheel is seized when I went to put the chain on. So I think I might be changing my plans.

Then the brakes. I shortened the link over the seat cluster which reduced the cable friction but it’s still too high for the cantis to return cleanly. I also wasn’t completely happy with having no inline adjusters and the alloy ferrules I used kept jumping out the left-hand lever where the rear cantis aren’t pulling the cable all the way back. The Mafac adjusters are long things and, I can’t fully work this out because these are a bit before my time, but it looks like it’s the hood that holds them in place. Mafac adjusters are £££ and original hoods are ££££££. I’d have to get some aftermarket hoods realistically, but I had concerns about the fit. So, instead, I fitted a threaded inline adjuster by tapping the top of the lever with an M6 tap:



This holds the cable nicely, but now the lever doesn’t fully return because the levers only have very weak springs and the cable run inside the lever is now shorter. You can see the gap in the image above. Sigh.

So what next? I think I can reduce the cable friction by running the cable along the top of the tube and I think I’ve got some metal cable clips. Gears, as disappointing as it will be, I think I’ll be abandoning the Huret Jubilee.

While I’ve got it back apart I’m also tempted to swap the ratios so that the cassette has the 28T cog on the back. The 12-28 ratios are 12-13-14-15-17-19-21-23-25-28, so I’d have a 13-28 instead of 12-25. I’m unlikely to use the smaller end of that cassette with a 54/46 up front and the whole point of this bike was to have gears!

 

[sjcprojects]

I tried those but the stops on the frame seem to be the same size as the cable outer on one side and the cable inner on the other. The shape and position of the cable hanger I've got on the seat bolt isn't ideal either. It could do with being a bit longer so I don't have to bend the cable into such an awkward shape to get it round the seat cluster.

I had a similar issue recently - I actually found that counter-intuitively, using a smaller piece of outer cable so that the routing was straighter rather than curving upwards helped. It doesn't quite look right, but I found I couldn’t get rid of the friction any other way. The routing on these old bikes is not always exactly optimal . Of course having said that, all bikes vary so I can't say for sure that will work, but it could be worth a try.

 

[Jonny69]

I had a similar issue recently - I actually found that counter-intuitively, using a smaller piece of outer cable so that the routing was straighter rather than curving upwards helped. It doesn't quite look right, but I found I couldn’t get rid of the friction any other way. The routing on these old bikes is not always exactly optimal . Of course having said that, all bikes vary so I can't say for sure that will work, but it could be worth a try.

Yeah that’s not a bad idea. I don’t know for sure, but I wonder if the canti mounts have been added later, because where the cable stops are positioned would work perfectly well with calliper brakes.