Re: Chuffstah, details, it's all details.
Here's some of what I've been working on. I found these dropout extensions at the dump. I don't know what they are, they are 1/8"+ thick galvanized steel. I think they must have come off a boat, they had stainless bolts through one of the holes. All the empty holes were already in the plates, they look wicked adjustable! I found four altogether. I used 3/8" bolts to bolt them into the dropout. There was a little slop so it was a pain to get them lined up to one another. I made a slot for the axle for tension adjustment, didn't take much.
I'm pretty happy with how my chainring and crank came out. The chainring is off a 10 speed, I cut the "spider" off the little chainring. I don't know why a bike from the early 80's had a skip tooth chainring except that it was punched out and wicked cheap. I sanded the chrome with my hand and a sander and a Dremel and eventually got through enough of it that my pickle juice would work. A little of the chrome is left, alot of the copper also, I got lucky, there was a very thick layer of copper. On the crank I used a 40 grit disc on my angle grinder to grind all the chrome off. I really like the texture, and the color that came up after the juice is good also.
These are what hold the truss rods to the handlebars, you'll recognize them as Wald stems, with the stem cut off. Again I ground, filed, sanded and cussed until the chrome came off enough to pickle the steel to that flat gray color that I like. These stems were very different, the chrome was different colors and thicker on the one on the left. It made getting the patina to match difficult, not helped by making a new batch of juice between them. The one on the left has not been pickled yet in this picture. It worked well though and now they look quite close.
Here's the pickle, salt water, vinegar and hydrogen peroxide. About half salt water, 3/8ths vinegar and an 1/8th peroxide. I guess. I don't really remember. If I keep doing this I'll have to get scientific and stuff :lol: . I check what I put in pretty often, the truss rod clamp took about 1/2 hour in new solution, when it gets old it takes alot longer. I scrub it off in hot soapy water when it's dome and give it a good coat of oil.
Here's a picture of my winter shop, the end of it anyway, not fully moved in yet. Pretty nice but my wife doesn't like the fumes and I have to be quiet sometimes
, better than freezing.
Here's my chainring spacing problem, I've gotten some feedback on how to fix it but I don't know which I'm going to do yet. In order to get the chainring away from the frame I had to put spacers between it and the shoulder on the crank. That worked fine except now I don't have enough threads left on the off side for a lock nut :roll: . The chainline is OK. I may try a MTB crank, apparently they are wider or I may dimple the frame. I will find out, however, how far you can ride without a locknut before it all goes wrong! :lol:
I'm going to have three days off for Thanksgiving so it should be done then. (yeah right!!) :roll: :lol:
Thanks for looking. Cheers
