Mid-January Bike Service and Bath Day
It’s not exactly mid-winter yet, so let’s call it a mid-January bike service and bath day.
The shifting on the Portland has been getting wonky again. And I’d been threatening to re-cable the rear brake. And it needed a bath. And it was too cold outside. And I had no place else to be anyway. So it was a fun with bikes indoors day.
I’ve been going through dérailleur cable housing every 1500 miles or so ever since I started riding. Not all of it, mind you. Just the little 180° curl of it back by the RD itself. It does wear out, but I seem to go through it faster than most people. My guess is that my preference for close-ratio cassettes is the culprit. I shift more often than most riders I know.
The brake re-cabling is the ongoing saga of trying to fix the only engineering flaw on the bike. As built, the rear brake cable is routed with an S-bend from the bottom of the chainstay to the top of the disc brake caliper.
Cables 101 tells you the S-bends are a big no-no. The cable housing will accordion instead of letting the cable pull through. I can’t imagine how the Trek engineers missed that one. They fixed it on the 2008 and 2009 models, but I’ve been battling with it ever since I got the bike. Plus, it rubbed against the cyclocross tires. That was annoying.
It’s the only thing that’s bothered me. Especially since the front brake is velvety smooth, positive-feeling, accurate and repeatable in use. It’s the perfect brake. The rear, not so much.
So with a day off in the middle of the week, forecast highs in the single digits, and all my errands for the week already run, I proceeded to disassemble the bike this morning.
Since it’s much more pleasant to work on a clean bike, and the Portland’s last bath was, um… October maybe? I started in the bathroom. It was pretty filthy, despite getting hosed-off in the shower stall after every ride. It just needed some warm suds and laying on of hands, washcloth, and scrub brush.
After drying it and both wheelsets, I checked mail. My new computer glasses were done! And there was a couple hours of client work there too.
So I dragged myself through the shower, dug my “big coat” and snowboarding mittens out of the closet and walked over to One Hip Chic. I figured I’d count it as cross-training. I was envious of the two riders who passed me on the way, and of the bike locked-up outside Parkleigh.
I got my new specs, dropped off my sunglasses for new lenses and trudged back home.
Since I already had the winter walking stuff on, I finished filling out forms and envelopes at home, then walked over to the mailbox to mail off my renewals for the Rochester Bicycling Club, New York Bicycle Coalition and Bicycle Colorado. I also ordered a whole bunch o’ stuff from Bicycle Colorado.
Last year I got along with their free map of the state roads and bike routes. Since I was being escorted almost everywhere, I didn’t need anything else. This summer, I’ll be riding solo through the western part of the state, then cycling back 100 miles up the Colorado River to meet up with the 50+ gang. I bought a bunch of maps and their Road Cycling Colorado book. If nothing else, they’ll help pass the winter nights.
Back home, I put the big coat and mittens away, hopefully for another two years, had lunch and did a couple hours of client work.
The new computer glasses a just marvy. I’d whined to Tamra about the difficulty I’ve had in getting the distance right on my last two pairs. She sent me home with an assortment of lenses to try with my regular glasses. I settled on a “1 add” in the upper, along with my regular reading scrip in the lower. It’s just about perfect.
That done, I got back to bikes.
First, the whole bike and both wheelsets got a liberal coat of Bike Lust. That’ll help it shed the salt and gunk when I hose it down. While it dried, I looked wistfully at my summer wheels, picked some glass out of the tires, and zipped them into their wheel bags until spring.
I’d picked up ten feet of dérailleur cable housing at Towner’s yesterday after discovering on Sunday that all I had left were tiny bits, too small to use. Lambert queried me about the quantity. I explained it’s about a year’s supply between the two bikes, and at $1.35 a foot, cheap enough to keep around the house.
I already had a length of brake cable housing, all the cable ends, ferrules and cables. So it was just a matter of cutting the end off the shift cable, removing the old RD housing, greasing everything up, sliding on the new piece of housing and adjusting the shifting. Easy, peasy.
Switching sides, I removed the old brake cable and housing. Of course, this entails unwrapping the bar on the right side and threading the new housing up under the lever while threading the new cable down through it.
There was bit of trouble here. I had to wrestle with the thingamajig the cable fits through in the lever. I’m getting better at re-wrapping the bar tape, though.
The caliper was the next bit of trouble. The adjuster for the inner brake pad was seized and the cable housing ferrule had corroded to the caliper. I removed the caliper so it would be easier to work on.
Futzing around, I was able to free up the adjuster. I dribbled a little Tri-Flow in there, hoping that will keep it from seizing again this winter.
The ferrule was another story. After futzing for a half-hour, I decided fuck it. It left the old—now damaged—one in there. I’ll drill it out come spring. I remounted the caliper and finished up re-cabling.
It worked out okay. The housing is a little long by a half inch to an inch, but it works. It’s ugly as sin with the housing zip-tied to the frame all the way down from the bars, but the feel is velvety smooth, just like the front one now. Better still, it doesn’t drag when I release it.
So the Portland is set for another few weeks, or maybe even for the rest of the winter. We’ll see.
By then it was getting dark. I can’t get quite enough light in here to work on bikes at night, so Yellow Bike will get its turn some other day. Oh, and I have to tell the story of how it got fenders, at least for the winter.
