Alfa Laughter

[GeePig]

The chair, was indeed still there, although the wood part was more broken than before. I planned to just remove the canvas material, but I needed a hexagon key to remove some bolts first.

Five minutes later, after a quick visit to my garage, I had the key and started to remove the material. The bolts through the wood came out really easily, but the cloth was a bit of a pain to remove as it kept catching on the joints between the metal frame. But off it came.

I also decided to keep the metal frame and some of the bolts.

I also kept one piece of the frame, as you never know when something like that could end up as part of a seat frame, for example...

After closer inspection of the metal frame once it was comfortable in the garage, I can see that one of the arms of that middle part could be just the right shape for the seat base.

Anyway, what it needs now is some thought and a little work with a tape measure.

 

[GeePig]

Back on Sunday, I sorted through some of my supplies to find a stock of parts that I could use, most of which need some work to clean them up and fix any issues they might have. They were then packed and put in the car ready for me to take to the city.

Since I have moved most of my bike stuff to the country, I now have some space to keep a small stock of things that we have grown and made at our place in the country - like the pears we are planning to use this weak and part of our stock of apple juice,

After all the sorting in my warsztat in the country, this is essentially what I have brought (including my 3-speed derailleur hub wrapped up at the back there).

The chromed gear lever I have brought in case the handlebar rotary switch does not work. The gear lever is nice, and original to the gear hub, but I am looking for something more modern, even if it needs some fixing.

Now I just need to decide what I will be working on this week, but it might be just cleaning up and painting things.

 

[GeePig]

<-- that is my 3 speed derailleur hub.

 

[GeePig]

The Romet Zenit was essentially the same bike as the Romet Jubilat, a single speed bike that was very popular back in the days when the choice was almost a Romet or nothing. I do have a Zenit, although little of what made it a Zenit rather than a Jubilat is still on the bike, and while I used the frame for my last build, this time round my build will be sporting several Zenit parts - the derailleur, the handlebars and a few other parts. I might even use the crank.

The Zenit was also available as a 4 speed, which really meant that the 5 speed hub they used got 4 gears on it rather than the middle 3 mine has. I would really like to find an early 4-speed from the late 1970s to compare the parts with mine from the late 1980s. They don't have any value, which means that most end up down the scrap yard - from which mine was rescued.

 

[GeePig]

I had a pair of Woods innertubes lying around spare, and I needed one for my trolly and I was hoping that the other would be good for this project. I pumped them up and left them in my warsztat while we were here in Lublin for a week. The when we got back, one was still up and other was not.

I have now cleaned up the valve for the deflated one and I probably have another core to go in. I would say that I spend quite a lot of time messing around with these old style valves, while the schrader ones just keep on working - as they are essentially the same valves that we have on cars. If I cannot get the valve to seal then I have one last tube - the rear one on my Wigry here in Lublin. Since both tires on my Turing and the front one on my Wigry are schrader, I could just swop the rear tube with one of the schrader ones that were on the old wheels and are currently on my bench.

Now these are my winter tires for my Wigry, but since I now have a 3-speed hub on the bike I may as well remove the tires from these wheels and fit one of the schrader valved tubes to the Wigry when I change to these tires for the winter.

Eventually, all those parts I take off all those bikes and the trailer get sorted out, fixed and reused more consistently.

Next we have this cardboard tube:

It was once much longer, and had some of the material we are using to insulate the house wrapped around it.

Last winter I built a cardboard fuel tank - seat - tail light combo to fit one of my unused bike frames (Best), and then fitted enough gear to it to make it a bike for as long as it took to take photos. Anyway, that cardboard structure is now sitting on the room divider wall behind me, along with some of my other cardboard art. I am not sure whether I should reuse that frame or the spare Jubilat frame (Danusia) for this build, and I don't want to make that decision until I get my front wheel built.

The issue is that I have since reused the fork off Best on my Zenit and am not sure that I have another fork that would fit, as I had to shorten the head stock. Danusia's fork has a wear groove in the shaft that means it is u/s until I can weld it up, but I have no welder. However I now have the Jubilat fork from Zenit doing nothing, but it is a classic Jubilat fork instead of the chunkier, more modern one that was on Danusia.

So the question is: if I am going to build a cardboard 'engine' based around this tube then I need to know whether it will be the Best or the folding Danusia frame that I will be using.

Of course, since I need to go and see the guy in the village who repairs cars to see if he can weld my mower frame, he might be able to weld my Danusia fork as well.

Yeah, so I have not chosen the frame yet.

 

[GeePig]

Having enough paint makes things go so much more smoothly, and I would like to get most of it done while the weather is at least still warm.

I need to arrange something where I can hang the things I want to paint here. In the country I have a piece of string I can hang between the animal tying up rings that are on either side of the brick barns main door, but I really need to organise something here as well, as it would make the process a whole lot quicker.

Once it is done and dry, I will be able to get on with building the wheel. That will have to wait until we are back here on sunday night, though. Once the wheel is built I will be able to try out how each of the frames will look, which means taking the wheels back to the country next weekend and trying them out on my small collection of frames.

This pair of wheels and the fruit boxes will be going back with us today, although only one of the inner tubes. The other tube will go on the rear wheel of my Wigry here, as then all the wheels on both bikes will have schrader tubes. This means I do not have to keep a stock of the Dunlop type of tube valves here.

I find it helps to keep things sorted like this, rather than having half a dozen or more partly built but disfunctional frames lying around: when I have a moment I can strip or fix something, and then when I am building a project bike it is like having a proper store of parts you can go to, but without the miserable storemen. This pair of wheels are in good, clean and working condition, and I don't think I have a 20" pair built up, so these may end up on the next wigry frame I come across.

 

[GeePig]

This is my Wigry, and when I started work on exchanging the innertube I quickly realised that I do not have a spanner or socket large enough here to fit one of the axle nuts. It must be about 21 mm, and all my large spanners are back in the country.

You can see that it has a dunlop type valve. Once this tube has been exchanged, both bikes will have the same valve types.

These are not the original wheels, those are the ones I will be taking back to the country. These have far more spokes than the 28 that Romet used on its 20" wheels, they are from another Polish bike manufacturer, a Zasada. I bought the Zasada for its wheels and tires, including a spare set of the latter, the ones I will be putting on for the winter. The crank on this side is not original either, it came off a Dutch bike with a damaged front fork that was dumped at the same time here. The saddle is off the the Zasada as well, which pretty much fixes most of the problems I usually have with Wigry's having such a small frame.

 

[Ulu]

Thanks again for the history on these old Soviet bikes. Except for this thread I would never know they existed at all.

By the way, your trolley has small inner tubes?

Here in Clovis, our trolley has some big inner tubes!

 

[Ulu]

I knew some of the guys that welded that trolley.

I was in the engineering department at a company that did lots of light structural welding. Guys from our welding shop built that as a side job.

It’s sort of a local tourist attraction.

I have a feeling that trolley you are referring to is what we would call a “cart”.

Usually something small pulled by hand or pushed by hand. If it’s powered by an animal you would call it by the animals name, like a donkey cart or an ox cart.

It would be more likely to be here, a shopping cart, or a tool cart, or even a tea cart.

 

[GeePig]

Ah well, you see here in Europe we know that a cart is something pulled by an animal, mostly horses...

But here is my hand-pulled cart:

We actually have a cart in one of our barns, and although it was later modified to be pulled by a tractor we still have the bits and pieces for a horse to pull it. I do9n't have a full picture of it, but here is half of it with one of my cats standing on it. The cat is quite small:

It is funny that you should mention trolleybuses, because here in Lublin we have the largest system of them in Poland, not that there are more than about 3-4 places that still have trolleybuses. But Lublin has the largest system: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Trolleybuses_in_Lublin

Mind you, they have changed a lot in the 25 years that I have been here, as electronics was not a thing when I arrived.

 

[Ulu]

Old town Clovis is pretty small. We have a kind of tiny hybrid bus system with LNG powered busses.

Nearly everyone lives in the suburbs and countryside, and they all own cars, and often a truck. Few bus riders live here by comparison to any real city.

But our Clovis trolley is a full custom. One off. One of a kind. It’s been going on a limited basis for 30 years now.

 

[GeePig]

Our friday + weekend in the country was interesting as our niece had been staying there for the week and, as a consequence, the cats would not eat cat food but had a great time instead.

Anyway, you know how it feels when you have an awkward job, and then you figure out the obvious answer that makes it a ten minute one instead...

Think of rusted on spokes, where most of them come out but then there is a few that just won't shift. Then I remembered the gas burner I bought last year, which I could use to heat each of the nipples a little until they just wanted to come undone. Ah, the number of times I have messed around for over a week to get them shifted.

I then also remembered that I had a spray can of deruster around, sitting there unused since I bought it back in the spring. That means in less thasn half an hour I went from two miserable, partly spoked wheels getting in the way on my bench to a pair ready for painting. The wheels are for my trolley, but the hubs are ready for whatever build I decide to use them on in the future - and now I am going to have both my bench space and trolley back in operation.

I just need to clean up the spokes and exchange the hubs, and that will be another job out of the way.

In this way, the lightly damaged hubs I am installing instead means I have two good hubs in store, ready for the future, as well as two rebuilt wheels I can borrow anytime if I need them temporarily.

 

[Ulu]

I’ve never had any so stuck that I had to heat them up. Usually a little penetrating oil and the next morning they come undone.

It’s the desert climate here. Things just don’t rust up like they do where it rains.

 

[GeePig]

Ah.... life in the desert....

I cannot remember the last time a 20+ year wheel came apart in one go, you have to plan to get to that task early.

 

[GeePig]

The other day we went to see the guy who repairs cars around here, at his little garage. There are cars there, piles of tires, and a tractor with a wheel off, all in the usual thin strips of land going back from the road that eventually becomes a field. If you ever look at a satellite image of eastern Poland you will see it is covered in these thin strip fields. All I wanted was a quick weld to my mower and my forks, and like usual he does not charge us. When we return later, with a bar of chocolate that he likes, the jobs are done, but he does have a request - his daughter has a bike she likes to ride in the summer, but they can't fix the gear selection.

I can already see that there is a problem and that parts of it have been off before. It is going to be a bit of a challenge, especially as I have never stripped this kind of gear hub before. But I look forward to doing it.

The welding was good, given that it was a bit problematic. It was then slit that had worn in there because the bearing were not aligned properly.

So now I have to grind (file) away the excess weld, and then it will hopefully be ready for assembly. I will also have to make sure that whatever caused the slot is ground back a bit as well.

I really hope that this works out, as it is my only non-usual-stock Jubilat front fork, with full welding instead of the usual part job one finds on most of these Romets. It was built for a different company to sell, 'Danusia', and hence my desire to get the slot worn into the shaft welded.

 

[GeePig]

I did some good work yesterday, as I swopped the innertubes on my Wigry so that all my Lublin bikes now have schrader valves, and I can use this 'classic' valved tube on my build. Since I have many Romets, it is good to standardise what components I have in each location, especially as I have most of my parts in the country.

Now, having said that, note how many spokes there are on this wheel: 36. It is a non-Romet 20" wheel, and all my 24" and bigger wheels also have 36 spokes...

Meet my 20" front wheel for this project.

Note the front hub I have for it.

Note how it is a 36 spoke hub.

Note how I have a 28 spoke rim.

Yep, when you are gathering parts in one location to take to the other, it is easy to forget things like Romet 20" wheels have less spokes when your only other 20" Romet wheels are on your trailer and almost unridden other Wigry, and have never been stripped down until recently. duh!

Oh look, one of the recently stripped 20" trailer wheels, is that a 28 hole rim...

As it happens I had three unused front hubs in my store, and only one of them was 28 spoke, originally from the wheel now painted cream, and that hub is still unpainted.

Just another delay in getting the front wheel built, but I can still progress and get the trailer wheels painted and built up...

I should also have picked up some of the other stuff I need that need cleaning up or painting, like the handlebars and other upper bike parts.

 

[Ulu]

Ah.... life in the desert....

I cannot remember the last time a 20+ year wheel came apart in one go, you have to plan to get to that task early.

I pulled apart that 60 old wheel from the 1963 (?) Wayfarer, and there was a little rust, but it came apart dry. Only a couple spokes were stuck. I was amazed.

Fortunately, the butchery on that bike happened decades ago, and somebody just put it away and forgot about it.

I have an old four-wheel-drive Scout to take apart one of these days and it has been in the frozen Northlands and the Rocky Mountains.

The rear brakes are frozen stuck and so is the engine. It should be fun. ;-)

Note how it is a 36 spoke hub.

Note how I have a 28 spoke rim.

I just went through this with the wayfarer. In reverse.

Eventually I bought a brand new wheel assembly just to get a matching 36 hole chrome hub.

 

[GeePig]

Only a couple spokes were stuck. I was amazed.

I would be completely dumbfounded if that happened to me...

The other month I had to give up on some of the spokes on a rear Ukraine wheel I found in the attic of one of my barns and cut them off. Nice wheel though, although a bit rusty, and the hub was very similar to those found on Romets.

 

[GeePig]

The difference in the number of holes between a 28 and a 36 spoke wheel is obvious once you are looking for it, but when I was checking out my spare hubs I completely forgot that there was a difference in the number of holes. I mean, the one on the left only has 4 holes less per side.

There are many, many little details that you might never notice, like the difference in the length of bare section in the middle of these two front axles, for the same models of bikes from different eras.

Anyway, here I am painting the rims and things. I did try hanging them so that I could get a coat on in one go - but I missed so many little bits that I have gone back to my old way. At least it is mostly nice and quiet in my garages, so I don't usually have to move my painting 'tables'.

Anyway, since I plan on making a seat. I ought to give some thought to creating one of those thingies that go behind the saddle. Now I could go and buy some appropriately sized steel tube, but as I have got these pieces of tube from our old clothes dryer...

Well, I could go and buy some from the internet, probably, but that is just not what I want to do.

Anyway, I admit that they are not actual tube, more just rolled steel without a weld, and yes they have bent a bit. But they are free, and even if they are not a great success I can still learn from using them - such as length, how to bend them and also flatten them off without a vice. This is exactly the kind of reason why I kept them rather than tossing them in the bin.

 

[GeePig]

Today we will head back to the countryside until next Wednesday, as it is Halloween. Well, it is a little more serious than that, with the graves down the cemeteries all being visited, cleaned up and flowers and lights added to them. Once they used to be just candles in saucers, which was a real pain if there was any breeze - one puff of wind and they would all be out in any open cemetery setting. Then there are the coloured lanterns with a candle inside, and they are much better at staying alight, but over the past 25 years they have grown to be absolutely huge.

I have thrown out at least 100 candle lamps from our place, as instead of putting them in the waste bins at the cemetery they ended up being brought home and dumped in the barns and even in the roof space in the cottage. I think I have got rid of them all now, but I cannot be sure...

Anyway, wifie has gone to do the candles, as she has a day off today.

Anyway, yesterday I was going to finish reassembling the derailleur, but then realised I had left my grease back in the village, so I have packed those gears to take with us.

This is actually the derailleur off Zenit, the bike I used for the summer build, and I will also be using the original handlebars from that bike as well.

I am taking the 20" trailer wheels + the 20" front wheel for this project back to the village so that I can reassemble them there, plus parts of the seat so that I can at least do the sawing and drilling in my only surviving vice.