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BTW, a little hack I use for keeping parts together - for specific projects - when those parts need to return to said projects...
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...egg cartons. It keeps everything compartmentalized, and you can stack them.
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View attachment 264088...egg cartons. It keeps everything compartmentalized, and you can stack them.View attachment 264087
This is a good idea. I ran into this in 1962 when a close mechanical genius friend rebuilt a ford 390 police interceptor engine. He wasn’t old enough to drive yet. His dad had a 1957 Fairlane and the engine died. He convinced his dad that he could put an engine in it. He used egg cartons to keep the lifters arranged and a tree branch in the yard as an engine stand and hoist. Here ya go dad, all fixed. His dad pulled out of the driveway, gave it the usual amount of gas and burned a patch in the street. He had ulterior motives as it ended out being his car for high school. After HS he got a blown up 427 and put the cam, heads, intake and cast iron headers on the 390. In his 40s he built a cobra replica with a classic 427 in it. He bought one piece at a time but to save money he built his own frame. The fiberglass body, used for frame measurements, sat on a trailer for 4 years while he collected parts. The original mag wheels were $1200 each and the gas cap was $200. Back then you could buy a car for all that.
 
These truss rods were very wobbly. Let's get them straight!

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Because they are hollow tubes, I had to be very careful with straightening them. Clamping them in the vice was out of the question. I decided to make a wooden buck to sandwich over the tube to avoid crushing it in the vice.

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A second buck was used outside of the vice. The gap between the two bucks served as an alignment gauge. By rotating the tube inside the bucks, the gap would open or close revealing the direction of the bends. It worked very similarly to truing a wheel.

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Once the bend was located, the outside buck was gently used to push and pull the bends back to straight.

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This was a rinse-and-repeat process up and down the tube until all the bends were gone.

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Several hours later...

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Wildcat shares his opinion on Sturmey Archer 3 speed hubs:
The Sturmey Archer 3 with coaster hub is a good hub
along with some great advice for a quick cleanup:
" I never take them apart to lube, they usually have an oil port on the hub shell. Light oil like good machine oil is what works best. I also remove the shift chain and add light oil right down in the axle where the chain attaches to get the oil all in the guts. Once it gets all worked in that's when the gears can be adjusted perfectly. The shift chain could probably use some oil also"
 
Neither of mine have oil ports. You can still oil and clean them thru the chain hole.

Spray thru the hole with an aerosol can penetrating oil, tip the hole down, and shoot 60 psi air up through the hole while working the hub. That brings the oil back out.

Repeat until any grit is flushed, then put in some nice light lube oil. Work it in, spray it out & relube.

This revived the SA canal victim I rescued.
That bike had mud in every pore.
 
Most of you with modern mtbs have probably seen this fancy tool:

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One of the MC shops I worked at had a salty old service manager that liked to make specialty tools. He always labled them Mac-On or Smash-On tools. ;)
 
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I just discovered, that my go to source for all things F+S coaster brake hubs had an English version of it's site.
Here you go for loads of info in form of scanned documents and helpful videos:

http://www.torpedo-coasterbrake.com
 
My favorite tire spoons are a metal set I got in the 80's (has it really been about 40 years?) To make the spoons slide easier between the rim and tire I bevel the edges of the spoon a little more using a file. Then I polish it a little with sandpaper. Might be over kill but sometimes it's the little things.
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Someone stole one of my .... Cepek bead breaker irons. I only have half a set.
I should look on ebay….💥🤔💥

I have a nice set of big craftsman spoons from the ‘60s and the chrome is still nice.

For motorcycles, I also have a small set from Motion Pro, plus the nylon rim cushions.

Then, a tiny Quick Stick for bicycles.
 
Wildcat dropping knowledge on how to spread the rear stays:
I would take the 2 x 4 and slide it up to where the tire sits then hammer it foward, which widens the dropouts considerably
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"I would line up the 2 x 4 between the seat stays and chain stays at the same time and widen them both together that way. I would widen them well past the width I needed then remove the 2 x 4 to see how much width it still had. Once it's wide enough, then the dropouts need to be lined up as they will point outwards.
I also used a wide mallet and hammered it up into the stays and did the same thing, then clamped the dropouts to get them straight."
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