Cranky

I’ve already had a few issues to contend with this year. One of the first to hit me was wearing out my chainset on the Vitus bike (see Totally Worn Out). It’s hard to believe that this happened way back on the 14th of Jan! Anyway, I have been running with a chainset borrowed from a friend ever since. At the weekend I finally managed to get it replaced!

I actually ordered and received the new cranks at the end of Jan (Cable Disaster (Nearly)). However, for various reasons (mainly my friend ending up with his arm in a cast for 6 weeks!) I was not able to get them fitted before now. The main problem was that my pedals had become completely stuck in the cranks and no matter how hard we tried could not get them to budge. Our only solution was to try and remove the pedals by cutting through the old cranks with an angle grinder. With his arm in a cast (and I don’t think he trusted me with his power tools…) it took until this weekend to attempt this job.

I was a bit nervous when I saw him attack the cranks with the angle grinder (nervous for his fingers, the cranks were dead after all). Thankfully, he made short work of them and in less than 5 minutes the pedals were released with barely any damage on them. A quick rub down with wire wool and they were ready to be attached to the new chainset. This time we made sure to apply copious amounts of grease on the threads before attaching!

Lesson to self: grease, grease, grease!

Gear Trouble

With the new crank installed and it being the same size as the borrowed one I thought we were finished and was looking forward to a nice cup of coffee. Sadly these jobs often have a habit of taking much longer than anticipated and this was no different. On a quick test spin round the block I realised that the front gears would not move from the small to the large ring. There must have been a marginal difference between the 2 chainsets and it meant that the front mech needed adjusting.

Normally this is a fairly simple job: you just need to adjust the tension of the cable to either tighten or loosen the derailleur. However, when trying to release the bolt holding the front cable in place it also appeared to be seized in place. It was not long before the head started to get shredded and before I knew it there was a nice rounded bolt stuck in the derailleur 🙁

Grabbing the head with pliers or mole grips just would not help as the bike kept on moving too much when applying any kind of force. My last resort was to remove the front mech and somehow try to get the bolt out that way. I opened the chain, removed the front mech and screwed it into a shelf post in my garage. This gave a more stable base to try and attack the bolt with.

Grabbing the outside of the bolt with a monkey wrench I was relieved to finally feel it turn. Having got it removed I then found a replacement bolt in my drawer of spare screws (Where do they all come from? Almost always have one that fits the job).

Reattaching the mech, chain, installing a new gear cable and adjusting the tension was then relatively straight forward.

I did make sure to apply lots and lots of grease to the bolt as well!

First Ride

Taking the new equipment on the commute today I was slightly nervous that it would all work properly. Thankfully it was fine and the bike rode nice and quietly and felt lovely and solid. Although the new chainset is silver instead of the previous black one (it was almost half the price…), I’m quite happy with how it looks on the Vitus. I wonder if it will give me 10,000 miles of service like the last one.