Project Yellow Bike: First evaluation
See also: Meet Yellow Bike
Updated Thursday morning. See underlined sections.
Bike was still on its back on the coffee table this morning. Before I put its chain back on I brought Yellow Bike out in inverted it on the floor next to bike.
On closer examination, Yellow Bike has probably not seen the inside of a bike shop since the day its first owner bought it. Nor, has is seen anything remotely resembling lubrication since gas was under $1.50. Maintenance? It may have heard the word.
The cassette is completely shot. The spaces between the teeth are oval and the teeth sharp and pointy. Sort of like fangs. The chain? Well, lets just say I’ve seen (and heard) better on the beater bikes ridden by the homeless. Gunky dirt is layered on the side plates. Only the cassette’s fangs keep the holes in the links open.
It was the chainrings I wanted a good gander at. Comparing Bike’s chainrings to Yellow Bike’s, I think I can get a season out of Yellow Bike’s chainrings. They are worn. Very worn. Just not quite worn out. I’m going to try to get by without replacing them.
The bottom bracket is another story. While there’s no play in it side-to-side (remember, I checked that before buying Yellow Bike), turning the cranks by hand with the chain set off to the side, well, there’s a lot of squeaking and grinding going on. It sort of feels like a walnut grinder.
The rear wheel bearings and freehub also squeak and grind. The rear brakes are so far out of adjustment that the wheel spins only when the brakes are opened to the wheel-removal position. (On second examination, either the return spring is shot or the rusty old cable is binding. After application, the caliper must be opened by hand. Nice feature as a parking brake though.)
The wheels are so slighty out-of-true, that only a perfectionist would notice. The braking surfaces of both wheels are scored. As with the chainrings, I think they’ll be fine for a year. The brake calipers seem okay, but they need pads, of course.
I’d checked the right brifter before, but hadn’t paid attention to the left. Well, the left brifter is kinda funky. I’ve never used STI before, so I’m not quite sure what the matter could be. Adjustment, I hope? It seems to shift and brake okay, it just feels loose. There’s a lot of play in it. The front dérailleur works okay, it’s just corroded is all. If I can clean it up, fine, otherwise, they’re pretty cheap.
Oh, and yesterday morning, I heard a loud hissing coming from the bedroom. At first I thought there was a problem with the steam heat. No, I arrived to find the last of the air pressure escaping from Yellow Bike’s rear tire. The tires are all hard and plastic feeling, rather than being soft and grippy like those on Bike, so I planned on be replacing them partway into the season. I’ve advanced the timing of that purchase.
The poor thing is in sad, sad shape.
So basically, my $100 bought me a frameset, bars, seatpost, and brakes that are in good shape. The brifters, front dérailleur, crankset and wheelset are iffy. I doubt I’ll like the saddle—it seems too squishy—but I’ll give it a whirl. I don’t like the cyclometer that came on it either.
To get Yellow Bike into ridable condition, my shopping list looks like this:
- Chain removal tool
- Chain
- Chainwhip and cassette lockring tool
- Cassette
- Rear Dérailleur
- Tires
- Tubes
- Brake Pads
- All cables and cable housings
- Bar tape
I’ll also need to have the bottom bracket, rear wheel bearings and freehub serviced.
Even so, it’s about what I expected to have to service on darned near any used bike in that price range. I just expected to be able to spread it out a bit. Still, it’s not even February yet. That gives me five paydays before April.
For all that, it’s not really too bad. Fortunately, Yellow Bike has Shimano’s Sora grouppo, which is eight-speed and cheap (relatively). I don’t plan on upgrading that, especially since several of the drivetrain parts—dérailleurs, cassette, chain and crankset—are the same as, or at least swappable with, the parts on Bike.
Yellow Bike has the older ST-3300 Sora grouppo brifters which use a thumb button for upshifts. Unless you’re a gorilla, you can’t reach the button from the drops.
I’ve since learned that there are newer style Sora grouppo brifters, the ST-R500, which have a second lever like the upline models. Then I could upshift from the drops. As a sprinter and climber, and being tortured at all other times by headwinds, this is important to my riding style. I’ll ride the ST-3300s, no matter what their condition, for now and later I’ll drop the $215 on a set of ST-R500s.
From my online shopping, even if I have to go with a set of brifters (I was originally using the $135 replacement cost of the ST-3300s in this calculation), total expense, including the $100 purchase price, restoring Yellow Bike will be less than the original amount I spent on Bike a year ago. And it’s 10%–15% of what I was planning to spend on building a new road bike.
And I’ll need pedals and shoes, but this is not the fault of the bike. It means new pedals for Bike too and possibly two set of shoes—walkable ones for shopping and commuting on Bike and regular road shoes for tooling around on Yellow Bike.
