The Litespeed Lives!
It’s been a happy day of wrenching around here today.
I had plans: Laundry, library, groceries, Litespeed. The trip to the library and grocery store fell by the wayside when, just after starting the laundry, I pulled Blue Steel down off its hook and began to take it apart.
Everything went really well.. As I took parts off, I cleaned everything up and let them dry in the dish rack. Only one part gave me trouble—the left (non-drive side) crank arm. The self-extractor bulged, bent and cracked as I cranked the bolt out.
I took Blue across the street to Towner’s and they were able to get the crank arm off. The threads in the crank arm are kinda iffy, but it was agreed it would be fine to ride, just difficult to remove again, with the possibility of stripping out the threads completely.
That’s fine. I bought new self-extracting crank bolts so I could mount this one on the Litespeed, and I ordered a new crank arm which I’ll put back on Blue when I switch components back to it from the Litespeed in a month or two.
I left Blue at Towner’s to have a new headset installed. It felt okay all put together, but with the wheel and the bars off, it felt crunchy. I’m not surprised it needs a headset, since it’s the original that’s in there.
First photo of the Litespeed, built up with Blue Steel’s components
Blue Steel, wearing its components. They look a lot alike, don’t they?
By lunchtime, I had everything bolted on with only the cables remaining. I was able to re-use two, and I used two new ones.
Other than the two cables, only the FD, (where the Litespeed uses a braze-on and Blue uses a clamp-on), and the cyclometer pick-up/sending unit, (where the Litespeed gets the second-bike kit) didn’t come over from Blue. Everything else did, which explains why they look so much alike.
I put 1.28 miles on the Litespeed in the parking lot while doing some final tuning on the drivetrain and brakes. My first impression is that it rides a little harder than Blue, but it seems to have a little more snap in acceleration.
It’s going in for a bath now—there’s anti-seize everywhere—and after a shower for me and dinner, we’ll go out on a for-real shakedown ride after dinner.
Bonus: After several weeks of milling and other fussing about, they repaved East Ave into downtown yesterday. My favorite route to and from downtown has been restored. New bike, new pavement, I expect it’ll be grand.
June 18th, 2010 at 5:03 pm EST
The bike looks amazing!