No news is good news
Not much to report recently. Been a busy transition for the kids going back to school, soccer season starting up and a general mad rush to take advantage of the nice weather before it’s surreptitiously replaced by water-bearing clouds for the next nine months. I do have a few quick bullet points, however: On Thursday evening, I dropped the Bianchi off to David Feldman of Feldman’s Bicycle Repair, right out here in Vancouver, WA. David is a member of the Classic Rendezvous list and is probably the only vintage-schooled bike mechanic in the Vancouver area. As it happened, he saw my post asking some advice on the CR list and responded, noting that he has the coveted and nearly impossible to find VAR tool needed for removing the headset on my Bianchi. I...
Bianchi Teardown: Phase 1
With my DIY bike stand completed and a couple hours of free time on my hands this morning, I donned my best grease outfit and braved the garage to begin the disassembly of the vintage bike project. I got most everything stripped off the bike and sorted into ziploc bags, with the exception of the headset, forks, cranks and bottom bracket. I decided to save those for another day, as I have a feeling they’ll take a little while, what with it being my first time assaulting a bottom bracket and headset in such a manner. Things went pretty smoothly. Really, the only difficult part was removing the original Campagnolo cable brackets from the top tube. The screws were so badly rusted that any attempt to loosen them with a screwdriver simply stripped out the flathead...
DIY Bike Repair Stand, Phase II: Mission accomplished.
First, I knew better. I should have stayed inside and rested. You see, this odd summer cold has stricken me and my family this week and I felt rather low all day today, what with the throat burning and the coughing and the tiredness. But I felt like I hadn’t made any progress and had a tiny bit of energy, so I did it. I went out to the garage and began putting away the camping gear from last weekend (more on that later this week). Then I thought, well, I could at least just get the lumber ready. Oh, and while I’m at it, maybe I could at least cut the pieces… and you know how the rest of that story goes. Having been one of the hotter days today, I think I sweat about a gallon of fluids out, at one point my son looking at me with concern on his...
My sordid two-wheeled history
To the casual newcomer here, one might assume I haven’t logged much time on bikes, but quite the contrary, I’ve been into bikes my whole life. I’ve always loved the feeling of flying down an open road on a bike. It’s just that in recent years, I’ve been, um, busy with life and have not been very good at keeping at it. Below are some photos and anecdotes of all the bikes I’ve owned (admittedly not a lot) over the years. I think this is more for my edification than anything else, but hopefully it can help spark some nostalgia with someone else out there. The Big Wheel I know, technically not a bike, but I rode the hell outta this thing. That is actually me in the photo, at our old house on Lynnridge in Cedar Hills, Oregon. I used...
DIY Bike Repair Stand, Phase 1
When I decided to take on the restoration of this vintage Bianchi, I quickly realized I was grossly under-equipped for the task at hand. Not only am I lacking experience in the ways of bike repair fu, but I don’t have a decent set of bike-specific tools. Nevermind the fact that I have nowhere to perch my bike while I work on it. For the tools, I realized that if I ordered a decent basic toolkit, that would get me started and that I would probably need some specialized tools to work on this old bike anyhow (which I can pick up as needed). Which left me with the repair stand issue. I don’t have a lot of extra money laying around these days, and after researching commercial bike repair stands, quickly realized I needed to find an alternative. So I put...
Tools. I need some.
So I’m looking at my tools and realizing I don’t have much in the way of bike tools. Looking online, there are a lot of options, from smaller “essentials” type kits, to full on retirement-fund-cashing-out master mechanic kits. What I need to know is, well, what do I need? In the short term, I need to disassemble this Bianchi. Over the long term, I’ll be doing maintenance and repairs on my own bikes (and the rest of the family bikes). So, does anyone have recommendations for repair stands and essential tools that also won’t put me into debt?
About
Hi, my name is Bret. I do lots of DIY electronics projects (with an emphasis on audio effects and synths), as well as guitar builds/repairs, and some tube amp stuff under the name eightysix audio.
Sometimes I post writing, photography and other DIY pursuits. Hope you enjoy and gain something useful out of this. Thanks for visiting.
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