Dollars and Centaurs

If my recent acquisition made you think, “Oh, great, now all I’m gonna read about for the next week is a tedious account of tuning up some old bike,” then you’re exactly right. Well, deal with it. Also, I’m doing a service to humanity, because what you may mistake for tediousness is in fact an important historical document, and when your grandchildren unearth these old pre-electronic relics and need to get them running smoothly again this blog will serve as a vital resource.

Anyway, when I first saw the listing for the bike I wasn’t sure if I’d end up riding it or just plundering it for its precious 10-speed Campagnolo components:

You know how they say you should buy real estate because God isn’t making any more of it? Well, the same thing is true of Campagnolo 10-speed:

However, once I had the bike and found that it fit I decided I was going to keep it intact and enjoy riding it, at least for the foreseeable future. I also decided that if I was going to bring another bike into the household I was going to do my very best not to spend a single penny on it, which is exactly how I imagine I’d approach having a third child. Instead, I’d rely entirely on spare parts and my own resourcefulness, and while I may be deficient in the latter, the former at least I have in abundance.

So far at least I’ve been successful, because while the bike was in dire need of maintenance, fortunately it was in much better shape than the Surprise Marinoni:

Between the overall condition of that bike and my lack of spare parts for pointy-hood era Campagnolo stuff, there was no way to avoid calling in supplies, and while I was ultimately able to complete the mission at a fairly modest cost it was more of an undertaking than I anticipated:

As for this bike, apart from the stuff I needed to change for fit (stem, saddle, pedals–all stuff that I had), the only parts in dire need of replacement were the badly rusted chain and the credit card-thin rear brake pads. Yes, drenching the chain in Dumone was enough to get it running again, but it was so badly worn that, as a highly astute commenter pointed out, it didn’t even seat fully on the chainrings:

Now, refurbishing a bicycle is a time of great anxiety for me, because it forces me to confront the fact that my bike stuff is in a state of extreme disorganization. You know how in cartoons a character will open the door to an overstuffed closet and a bowling ball will fall on their head? This is exactly what happens to me, though I don’t own any bowling balls, so it’s usually something like a motorcycle helmet or a beach chair, though in this particular instance it was the combination ice scraper/snow brush from my car I had finally put away for the spring. From there it’s a process of feeling frustrated and guilty for what a mess this all is as I pull stuff out and find all the things I forgot I had and have since bought again. (Cleats is a big one; I’m always finding unopened packages of road pedal cleats.) Since there’s no organization I have only the half-memory of some component I’m pretty sure I own to guide me. Have you ever gone back to the neighborhood you grew up in after being away for many, many years and tried to find some destination you used to frequent before you were aware of stuff like street names? It feels a lot like that.

This is to say that in order to replace a chain this worn you also need to replace the cassette, and I had a half-memory of a Campagnolo 10-speed cassette somewhere, which incredibly I was able to find. Easier to find were the many baggies full of grimy chains I keep when they don’t seem worn enough to throw away. So I chose the one I thought was a 10-speed, thoroughly degreased it using Dumonde Tech Citrus Solvent (making the whole house smell like an orange nuclear bomb had gone off in the process), installed it along with the cassette, and happily both proved to be in good shape and the bike is running and shifting smoothly and beautifully:

I mean really, it’s so much better. It’s like when I finally got reading glasses and discovered Whatsapp has a background pattern.

Then there were the brake pads:

I was pretty sure I had Campy brake pads, but the sheer volume of pads I owned and the high degree of disorganization in which they existed nearly brought me to tears. However, I didn’t want to spend any money, even on a crucial safety component–especially now that the rim brake market is so depressed that you can find a whole set of brakes complete with pads for about the same price. So eventually I just gave up and stole a pair of Shimano-style pads and carriers from a generic brake and used those instead:

With the washer from the Campy carrier it works fine, with the added benefit that I can now use any of the roughly one trillion Shimano brake pads I have. Plus, the front carriers had long been replaced with different pads anyway, so it’s not like I needed to keep the bike consistent:

The last thing I did was something completely unnecessary, yet it was still troubling me. For some reason, even though I’m a complete slob and my bikes all reflect it, I have a compulsion to align tire labels with valve stems. See, you can get away with being a dirtbag as long as you do certain fundamental things that shows you’re paying attention. Bedhead or a rumpled shirt can be a fashion statement, but if you forget to zip up your fly or you’re only wearing one sock you’re clearly just out of it, or possibly homeless, and I feel the same way about tire labels. (Though I completely understand why many other people can’t be bothered.) So I fixed it:

By the way, I was reluctant to do so since there’s a very real chance with those older Continental tires that the sidewall will disintegrate as soon as you put a tire lever to it. Fortunately that didn’t happen, though there were definitely flakes. However, in the spirt of not spending money I’d like to keep using the tires since there’s plenty of life left in the tread.

The next thing I should do is grease the hubs, which feel dry, but I discovered that the little bearing preload collar on both wheels is cracked, and I’m afraid to disturb them lest they fall completely apart. So I will ride them as is until I can find suitable replacements. But in the meantime the wheels are true, and they’re rolling along just fine.

As for the turn-of-the-century phenomenon that was the road bike triple, that is a subject so complex I must address it separately in a future post:

But it’s working great and I like it.

Of course I’m already cogitating on what the future holds for this bike. For example, there’s a strong argument to be made that I should take it and the Faggin and simply swap most of the parts: