Ten Turing - Tales from the Coalshed: Coming of the Coalshed Racer

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Well, here goes, I suppose, because already I have doubts as to the value of my project - best to get them out of the way early, I say.

My bike is a Romet Turing 2, made in Poland and given to me by the cousin of the people from whom we recently bought a small farm, after I found it dusty and cobwebby in a corner of one of the barns. The Turing (from the English word 'Touring') was never a great bike, just a cheap one for the cheap masses living in rural areas, sold alongside the Jubilat folder that is my usual choice for modification. But this one was free and available in a timely manner. I am quite excited by the fact that I now own both classic Polish bikes.

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Found in a barn, now living in my workshop>former coal storage>former drying room

I am not a fan of chain guards, but I find myself strangely attracted to this one - but it is damaged where it mounts at the front, so it goes on the back burner for now. It is on 26" wheels, while my Jubilats are all 24", but things like the chainwheels, brakes, coaster hubs, front hubs and seats are all interchangeable and much of the rest similar enough to be. I do have a number of other parts bikes around, so I am hoping that inspiration will strike.

The only slight problems are that working in a former coal store is not ideal, my normal garage where I normally work is an hour away and forces me to plan ahead what to collect from / take to / do there, and my tools have to be shuttled between sites. The good thing is that I have time to find stuff in the barns that I can incorporate.

Finally, it is 'Ten Turing' as 'ten' is Polish for 'this'.
 
Welcome aboard with the barn find... Good to see more European builders joining in.
 
Welcome to the fun that is a RRB Build Off! I agree that chain guard is cool, maybe you'll have luck coming up with another fastener.

Barn finds are always high on my list, I have done a few. Especially the tie it has to the farm.

Keep the photos and process posts coming, and....RaT oN~!
 
Welcome to RRB and the madness of the build off.
What part of Poland are you in? I've been to Krakow and Warsaw and loved it.
It's always great to get international builders in the build offs.
Thanks for the history on the bike and the Polish translations. My first thought after seeing that it was a ladies bike and in a coal store, was the old movie and song "Coal Miners Daughter"
Have fun!
 
Welcome to the fun that is a RRB Build Off! I agree that chain guard is cool, maybe you'll have luck coming up with another fastener.

It may find its way onto one of my folder projects. What surprised me was that the mounting bracket is fitted between the BB shell and the chain side press-fit bearing carrier - no extra bracket required...
 
Welcome to RRB and the madness of the build off.
What part of Poland are you in? I've been to Krakow and Warsaw and loved it.
It's always great to get international builders in the build offs.
Thanks for the history on the bike and the Polish translations. My first thought after seeing that it was a ladies bike and in a coal store, was the old movie and song "Coal Miners Daughter"
Have fun!
Thanks, I am over in Eastern Poland, near the borders with Belarus and Ukraine, in a village where the road stops at the edge of a forest - so more logging tracks to ride than smooth tarmac.

They sometimes call these bikes lady's bikes here as well, but no one seems to care much as it is a very practical design - you can attach a big plastic box on the rear rack to carry supplies AND still get on it while wearing boots. The paint is actually scuffed away on top of the cross bar as a result.
 
Welcome on board! Czyli zapraszamy serdecznie ;)
Great you've joined and that's a really nice bike to start with.
If you'd need help sourcing parts or making anything custom - feel free to contact me, i am living in Poznań, so shipping won't be an issue :)
 
Thanks, I am over in Eastern Poland, near the borders with Belarus and Ukraine, in a village where the road stops at the edge of a forest - so more logging tracks to ride than smooth tarmac.

They sometimes call these bikes lady's bikes here as well, but no one seems to care much as it is a very practical design - you can attach a big plastic box on the rear rack to carry supplies AND still get on it while wearing boots. The paint is actually scuffed away on top of the cross bar as a result.
Pozdrowienia z Berlina!
The village you are describing sounds very much like a place I visited some 26 years ago on my second of two bike trips through Poland: The area around the lake Jezioro Czarne....
 
Pozdrowienia z Berlina!
The village you are describing sounds very much like a place I visited some 26 years ago on my second of two bike trips through Poland: The area around the lake Jezioro Czarne....
I think that you would recognise our place then, as in many ways it is still much like it was 26 years ago, and we live in a wooden cottage with a farmyard out back rather than a garden...
 
Welcome on board! Czyli zapraszamy serdecznie ;)
Great you've joined and that's a really nice bike to start with.
If you'd need help sourcing parts or making anything custom - feel free to contact me, i am living in Poznań, so shipping won't be an issue :)
Thanks, and so between us we straddle the whole of Poland :)
I get most of my parts via Allegro, olx and Facebook, and one of our neighbours is on friendly terms with the local scrap dealer, so I am hoping he can introduce me as well...
 
A few weeks ahead of the start date and I had already stripped down the bike, because at that stage I had not really thought about entering and I just needed the bike cleaned, any defects discovered and everything packed away in the least space. I like storing all the lighting from all my stripped bikes in one box, all the plastic parts in another, all the brakes in a third, and so on - it helps break the link between the part and the bike it came on, so when I need a light I find myself comparing the lights with their purpose rather than the source bikes.

Entering only became inevitable as the frames began stacking up, parts boxes overflowing. I had been busy, trying to finish off a Romet Jubilat project for a friend who had been riding such folders with coaster brakes for fifty years (ha ha, so no pressure then) when one night we were returning from the farm, and on parking outside our block we saw shiny things in the light of the headlamps, right beside the dumpsters. The shiny things turned out to be a cute little Romet Wigry folder missing a crank and pedal plus a Dutch bike with a trashed front end - but with a good crank and pedal that were the perfect size for the Wigry. The Wigry got a rebuild and the Dutch bike frame stripped and stored alongside Turing. Then the friend with the Jubilat gave me a slightly trashed chainstore off-road bike in exchange. Another frame.

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Whitey - similar in design to the Turing, but bigger, heavier and much better quality.

The shiny chrome handlebars and the sprung seat from the Dutch bike, fairly good 26” rims from “Pigdog” the chainstore bike - would be ideal for replacing the very rusty ones on Turing. All very nice...

… but the Dutch bike also had a Sachs 3-speed coaster brake hub. Turings only ever came with Velosteel single-speed coaster brakes, so this would be like dropping a supercharged V8 motor into your humble 4 cylinder rust bucket. I love the Velosteel hubs, and Turing’s will make a good spare as people trash the things regularly through a lack of maintenance.

The final piece of the jigsaw was a child’s off-road bike I had paid very little for as a source of various parts, a Kross Best, also made in Poland, and probably good for its handlebar stem.

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Pigdog, Turing and Best

Now that I am in it was time to gather the parts plus my collection of matt black rattle paint cans, and to strip off the decals and sand back the rust. I approach sanding as a boring task until I have the frame in my hands - when it begins to feel more like a bike than just another component.
 
So I now have the wheels on the frame temporarily, after a touch of filing on the front fork, but I am unsure what to do about the tires - they were made by Stomil, a Polish tire company that has not made bicycle tires since 2005, were fitted to virtually everything and still have a good amount of tread. Being left in a barn certainly never did them any harm.

But what to replace them with on my tiny budget?
 
So we had to travel back to the city for a day to pick up some documents, and it was only while returning that I remembered all the things I could have picked up. Luckily we have to go back at the end of this week. Note to self: less riding the bikes there, more shuffling through my parts boxes.
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I have rolled on it down the yard, and it is kind of bike shaped once more, but the time has come to strip those wheels down.
 
I have been back tot he city to pick up some stuff, such as fenders from my 24" wheel bikes, fiddling around with paint and generally making no visible progress. Still, I did give the coal shed a bit of a clean up and now have recovered from the cobwebby recesses one 26" inner tube with puncture, one very large hammer, one steel washboard (which is kind of begging to be used somehow), one 26" Stomil tire and one flame damaged tire pump. Clearly I am not the first person to see in the coal shed enough of the attributes of a bicycle repair workshop.
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Bald as a badger is how we describe this Stomil Zebra tire.

I already have a matched set of 26" Stomil Zebras on Ten Turing, a bike which I found lurking in another barn here, in pretty good condition - but now I have a hankering for another similarly bald tire for the build. I was looking at tires down the local DIY centre, but they did not have any in 26" in stock, and I am still uncertain what to do, rubber wise, in budget and in practice.
 
Sounds like you had a productive time Working in the Coal Mine! :D

 
Today, while the electrics were off in our farm, I spent some time reassembling some things and experimenting with additions to the finish for others.

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Somehow I need to achieve union between all the different materials without losing the marks of abuse - and at the same time celebrating what is good in cheap plastic. These bearings in these pedals cannot be serviced, are badly worn and I am sure that many people would just toss them. I am just going to stuff them with grease, disrupt the finish and fit them.

As an aside I notice that rats sometimes get in my coal shed and pee on fresh paint - so should I credit them too as valuable members of my build team?

#romet #rower #turing
 
I have been collecting together the parts which I plan to use, such as the pair of lights that will go on the front and the single one at the rear.

The one at the rear is by far the more interesting as I found it in the attic of the cottage amongst piles of the kind of bits that accumulate on a farm, like old TVs, bent and rusty nails, wire, string, electric ovens, trunks and a full set of tack for a horse to pull the wagon standing in our wagon shed. When the weather warms up I will get the tack down, lay it out on the yard so that the sun warms the leather into a state of cooperation, and then give it a scrub and then apply whatever gunk is typical in this region.

Anyways, the light is bakelite and on the switch is says 'Made in USSR' (it actually says 'сделано в ссср', but even my weedy Russian can understand that). There is no way that I will be trusting my life to such an ancient lead light running on mains voltage, even if I could still find a bulb or even a socket. Maybe it was originally 12/24V DC, but it was certainly packing 220V AC gear until I stripped it down. I also happen to have a Made in Russia rear reflector, attached rather crudely to one of my Polish bikes, where the reflector part is about the right size to fit. The lead light never had a perspex lens, just bare access to a 220V bulb, but I am sure I can find a way to get everything to fit.

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Prepping and painting will recommence!
 
I found this in my coal shed / bicycle workshop, a lovely tin of grease from Jedlicze, a town in southeast Poland, which I am now using when I rebuild my hubs. Before that I had to spend some time carefully removing the crud from around the lid so that none of it fell inside when I first levered the lid off. Behind it, up against the wall to the right, is a large hammer that I also found in there, lodged behind the furnace.
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Finally, rather than being some kind of space motif or or oil leak, the red and black on my bench shows that I have not been a total bum in the build.
 
I have been messing around with paint for lots of small parts, and also trying to replace my table in the coal shed with another that more closely resembles what at first glance could be but isn't a workbench. First though, I had to fix the table on the stoop, then convert an old chair-bed (an 'Amerykanka' from the 1970s) into a work surface in the brick barn, and reassemble some bookshelves to store tools to go along with it. Next week I hope to get back to building my workbench.

I took the handle from an old BBQ, stripped it and painted it as well as the fixings as I liked the heads of the bolts and the M6 nuts were thin enough to be used as locknuts. Only then did I test it out as a bracket for the twin headlamps. This was intentional as the effect I am trying to achieve is not that of a new racer, not of an old worn out one, not of a restored 'like new' or 'as is' one - but one that has continued to be used functionally, with worn parts replaced naturally, competitively and as supply allows, and where renovation means 'to make it work today and continuously'. I even have a roll of duct tape to keep cables in place. So I filed the ends to allow the light mounts to fit, and bent the bracket so that the lights themselves would not be too far forward. Off the paint chipped, ready for a partial 'renovation' later.

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Saggy light position before I filed the ends of the bracket, but not before I had taken a hammer to it.

The lights are not the same size, each is mounted in different directions and they can be adjusted separately. I would like them to be spring mounted, but I only have one spring available at the moment, and that was out of the partly melted bicycle pump.

Now I have to mow the yard...
 

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