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

[GeePig]

I have been working on the mounting brackets for my racing numbers, after having to finish fitting new cranks and a chain to the neighbour's bike - he insists on paying for my work, but the only currency I accept is to keep the old parts and deliveries of fresh eggs.

To relieve the tedium of a particularly long and repetitive text I am editing, I decided to give the oval plates a bit of a 3D curve rather than just having them flat. Enough to take away the flatness but not enough to make it difficult to paint the numbers on later. All I had to do was pull the cardboard over the conveniently curved corner of my desk, with my second hand on top of the cardboard to add pressure. Now I just need to tidy and fill the edges before I attach them to the structure.

 

[GeePig]

Progress has been slower than I expected this week, to many other things to do like mowing, fixing the mower and more mowing. I did get to test the racing plate mounting bracket to try and figure out how to mount the cardboard on it, as well as to test the rear mudguard. I had forgotten that I still need to drop the wheel out to drill the mudguard mountings out to 6 mm.

Then I played around with where I wanted to fit the numbers.

Today I also began fabricating the other three mounting points for the cable housings. Oh, and I also deliberately spilt some of the mower oil on the frame.

 

[GeePig]

I have finally cleared all outstanding work on other people's bikes, and am busy trying to ignore the things I need to do on my other bikes, like service my Kross daily rider.

I have started to make the brackets to mount my gear change and wiring housings, but I kind of lack the right materials. I had a couple of bits of aluminium strip that is normally used to clamp things like house wiring tubes - the electrical regulations state that all wiring in wooden houses has to be surface mounted so we have plastic tubing everywhere n our house, all neatly clipped with this easily formed strip. They looked good, but were not long enough to mount the housing the way I wanted it - plus I actually need four clips.

I do have a bit of this steel punched strip, and I did a bit of anvil work to make an L-bracket fit the curve of the tube. Next task is to hand rivet them together using thes cut down pop rivets, but already it seems to be getting too clunky. I will have to wait until I see what it looks like on the bike.

I had to guess to what length I should cut the rivets. If I was rivetting two flat sheets together using a parallel sided hole I could calculate it - but no, the L-bracket has a tapered hole and everything is curved, but at least they will be easy to drill out.

 

[GeePig]

The riveting did not go as well as I hoped, mostly because I had no way of holding the parts securely enough. Later I realized that I could have avoided pinching my thumb twice with the hammer, in the same place, by joining the pieces together with plumbers' solder. However, I was not happy with the look of the result, because it was just too clunky.

I then had a look around our barns to see if I could find some other material, and came across the old TV aerials we had removed from the house. They incorporated small aluminium tubes, which I could readily flatten out with the aid of a hammer. I was pleased with the resulting P shape, but they were about 6-7 mm wide and the smallest bolts I have are M4, not leaving much material on either side of the hole. I fitted them, but one will definitely need to replace one of them due to the aluminium splitting.

Finally I got the housings fitted, but I cannot say that I was totally happy with the result. I think it would be much better if the housings were spaced equally between the tubes.

I am now contemplating seeing if I can buy some of the aluminium strip I used for the first version and using a new design, a kind of double P clip that clamps around both tubes and a single P clip behind the chainwheel to keep the housings away from being eaten by the chain and sprockets. If this works out it will be great, as the aluminium is easy to work and I have any number of things on my bikes that need a decent frame clip.

 

[GeePig]

I got so much into the clip development cycle, that I forgot to show the bit that is coming together.

This is the old 1960s Romet light on my Romet frame - the top cable houses the wiring for it while the lower will have the gear change cable. I might still make a new single bracket that mounts both housings and the lamp, which might become essential as the chain has to make its way past there.

 

[kingfish254]

I'm sure you will figure out the other brackets. That light bracket is very nice!

 

[GeePig]

My local store does not carry the aluminium strapping, but I have checked the ones in Lublin and they do - and we will be heading to the city next week sometime, but it is a bit frustrating having to wait.

I did some work on my rear racing plates mount and did a test on the bike. It slides on and fits snugly, and now I am waiting for the glue to go off after fitting the oval plates on each side. Hopefully I have got them aligned properly.

Next I need to make the support for the front plate.

As a final task last night I sawed off half the oversized dynamo mount they insisted on using on the front forks, leaving the dynamo hanging out in the breeze. Once I finish touching up the paint there I can make the bracket for the front wiring housing and make a junction for the cabling up on the front light bracket.

 

[GeePig]

I have finished assembling the rear racing plates, so now I am fixing the edges by inserting wood glue and crushing them with pegs until it sets - using the clothes pegs that are not currently on the line. Most of these were in the house when we moved in, and it feels good to use them. The last owners only visited for a total of a few weeks every year over the past decade since their mother moved out and went to live with them in the city. The father died some years before that and I like to repair and use his tools and her things in the kitchen. When I make pierogi dumplings it is on her well worn dough board with her equally worn wooden rolling pin - which makes getting a uniform thickness rather a challenge but the continuity with her is good.

To make this structure I rolled the cardboard into a tube around a tub of skin cream, then rolled a piece of thread around each end to mark out the cutting line I needed to get the plates to taper in towards each other. Everything is stuck together with wood glue. Once the edges are all done I plan to sand them smooth before it is off to the coalshed for painting.

I was worried for a bit that the fact that it is made from cardboard would be visible, and even considered getting some filler. But then I decided no, I didn't think I should hide the materials just because it is cardboard. That would be like plastering our house to pretend that it was made of brick instead of wood.

 

[kingfish254]

You are a trailblazer! I think this may be the first time that someone has used Skin Cream on a RRB build.

 

[GeePig]

You are a trailblazer! I think this may be the first time that someone has used Skin Cream on a RRB build.

And that may not be the last time, either...

 

[GeePig]

To further my micrometer progress, I sawed off the end of the dynamo mount on the front fork, and then mounted the dynamo to what remained.

Many years ago, as a student studying engineering, I was always amazed at the lack of interest by my fellow students in the volume of materials they used and the final packaging size of whatever we were building. So while everyone else was consuming 4" by 5" electrical boards to mount like 8 components, mine was small enough to fit in a matchbox, for which they then had to spend five quid buying a box while mine was less than two-fifty. So OK, a normal bike might have a calliper brake, a mudguard and a dynamo engagement mechanism, but was hanging a dynamo 5 inches off the front of a fork the best solution, or were my fellow students still at work?

Anyways, it has the wiring housing fitting on, but I now realize I need one more to finish the project.

On other minor things, I have stopped patching up the paintwork, so that any chips or scrapes that happen from now on will still be present at the finish. If I didn't do that then I would end up with a result I would dread, the 'restored' bicycle. Today I also plan to sand and undercoat the rear racing plates.

 

[GeePig]

Well last night I finished building the structure for the rear racing plates, and began tidying them up. Then it was off for a test fit!

As you can see they are a snug fit over the seat stays, which makes the whole thing a bit tricky to fit, but unlikely to fall off while riding even though there is no permanent fitting - just a slide fit on the mounting plate.

There is still room to drop the seat, once I get the actual one finished of course.

Got the initial primer coat on. As you can see they still need some work, as the paint makes all the furry bits on the cardboard surface still up. Now that they are stiff with paint it is much, much easier to sand them away. I wish I could have found some filler paint as that might be even better, even so I noticed that the red primer I tried out on the front plate gave a noticeably heavier result than this white one, so I will probably use the red in future.

 

[kingfish254]

Cool idea for the racing plate sammich.

 

[GeePig]

Cool idea for the racing plate sammich.

Thanks, I just need to cut the number templates and finish painting it now...

 

[GeePig]

Well, the rainy days have come, which makes things tricky when what you want to spray is made of cardboard. Even cutting out paper templates gets a bit tricky as the higher moisture content is no friend of the crisply cut line. It was raining so badly on monday that James Rudy Bond joined me in the coalshed, hoping for a Milktini, shaken not stirred.

I have the whole week off, and this is the first time I have switched my computer on since I finished work on friday. Anyway, I saw an advert on Allegro for a 20" wheel kids bike some 15 miles to the southeast for 150 zloty with a Nexus 3-speed coaster brake, and another for a similar bike some 15 miles to the northwest with a SRAM 3-speed coaster brake plus a spare set of tires for 170 zloty. Decisions, decisions...

I went with the SRAM because the hub traces its roots back to Fichtel+Sachs, as does the Czech Velosteel coaster brakes I have on my Romets, including Turing when I got it. I now have Velosteel hubs, the S+F on Ten Turing and a SRAM. Whatever, I bought the bike for parts to modify and upgrade my bikes - and in case I really needed the shifter for Ten Turing, because it would be a bit sad if I could not ride it. I will be using the SRAM cable-to-hub connector instead of the S+F one as being less fiddly to fit.

The bike turned out to be a Zasada, a Polish manufacturer/assembler (I do not know which currently), so it goes well with my Romet and Kross bikes, and a mine of bits and pieces - such as the saddle. This saddle is a bit shorter than the one I planned to use, but once I finish fitting the cable mounts and get the back wheel on again I can test it for fit and comfort.

Other than dampish cardboard, the cable mounts have been the biggest block on project advancement. Still, we went back to the big bad city, collecting the Zasada on the way, and while there I managed to buy the roll of aluminium pipe mounting strip. All the similar steel strip was kept over beside the screws and tools, but the aluminium was buried in among the electrical items. But I have it, and have bent a set of cable clips to shape and sent them to the back of the coal shed for spraying. If you need strength then the steel version, available in a surprising range of widths, would be the best, but the aluminium is so easy to bend around a frame tube and is also ideal for many tasks that you could do with a plastic tie except the latter would look out of place.

That's it for the moment, I just hope it does not start raining again - even just for my mower's sake.

 

[GeePig]

The number of things left in my rack to fit is growing smaller, but it is always the details that seem to take up most of the time.

I painted and fitted the cable brackets, and these are definitely the best so far, and although I cannot get the cables as taut as I would like they at least run in the positions that I intended. Hopefully the chainwheel and chain will not clash with them.

The rear wheel is still off at the moment, partly because I need to figure out where the washers for it need to go on the axle and partly because I drilled some of the cable clamp fixing holes in situ.

I cut the cables to length, all except the one that runs down to the dynamo as I need to fit the front racing plate first to figure out how it will get past that. I did a test fit of the racing plate, and realised that I needed to turn the light mounting bracket upside down to get enough clearance under the light. Luckily this also gave me the chance to paint the nuts and bolts that hold the light bracket together.

I also test drilled the end of this acorn shaped nut to give a neater appearance to the cable housing mounts, and as it worked fine all I have to do is drill a few more to make a complete set.

I fitted the front mudguard before test fitting the front racing plate, and then took the long strips I cut from the end of the material we bought to keep the weeds from growing on our piwnica - an underground storage room for food located between our house and the wooden barn, and resembling some kind of neolithic tomb. It is well made in cut limestone and then covered in earth, which catches the afternoon sun nicely for our strawberries and anything else that chooses to seed there. Anyway, the material has a good feel and some stretch, and went on the handlebars surprisingly easy. As I have not been able to find any handlebar end caps locally I used the plugs from the tops of the front forks from one of my scrap bikes, but they did require a bit of judicial hammering and poking with a screwdriver to drive them in.

It was at this point that I realised the backs of the lights still looked a bit plasticky even though I had painted them matt black, so now I plan to remove them and paint them green - anyway, everything looked way too black up there.

 

[GeePig]

I repainted the light bodies in green, and when wifie came to visit me in the coalshed she said she liked the colour - so I feel like a winner already.

For the past few weeks I have been looking for some suitable screws to hold the light bodies on as I could not find the originals anywhere. However, with the parts box emptying out I found them in the bottom of one, lying there all innocent like...

Next was the job I had been dreading a bit - the painting of the race numbers. I drew them in Microsoft Paint, printed them out, cut one oval out to mark out the cardboard, and then, when built up, painted the plates black. Yesterday I cut out all three sets of numbers using a small knife, then stuck them to the plates using a water-soluble paper glue pen.

To position the numbers correctly I used the oval template I had cut out earlier, so all I had to do was place the number in the gap and remove the oval template. I then made sure that the numbers were stuck down fully and sprayed the front face of the plates white. After about an three quarters of an hour the paint was just the right level of tacky to lift one edge of the numbers with the knife and peel them away. Today the paint was dry enough to start carefully wiping off the glue with a very wet paper towel.

There were some minor issues where the number templates lifted slightly during the spraying - but since I was trying to stick to a lightly rippled surface it was a good result.

Nicely imperfect, the plates slid onto the mounts relatively easily

Feeling pleased, I unwrapped the chainwheel, greased up the BB bearings and began its assembly. It was only then I realised that since the BB dustcap on the chainwheel side is fixed to the chain wheel it had ended up being painted black. But I had forgotten to do anything about the dustcap for the other side.

One quick paintjob later, and hopefully I can finish assembling it later today.

The weather forecast says wet and cold this week, so I don't think there will be any lovely sun-drenched photoshoot for me. But that is OK, because this is a project born in a coalshed, where even most of the photography so far has been gritty and dim.

 

[GeePig]

Sometimes I never thought I would get it finished, but today I was actually looking at my supplies of inner cable for the gear change. The Zasada offered up its SRAM cable connector as I couldn't think of a way to finish off the cable end to prevent it being pulled out of the S+F cable end thingy half way down the road - I really must find out how other people do it, it's probably quite simple. I would prefer the classic look of the S+F cable-to-chain connector, and maybe there is time yet. My lever seemed to pull the chain in and out, which should mean I can engage all three gears.

I should have paid more attention to the needs of the hub earlier, but I was more concerned whether I had the spokes to successfully weave it into the wheel. I finished assembling the BB and the crank, and then thought it would be a good idea to check the alignment of the chainwheel withe the rear sprocket. Duh, the sprocket was the wrong way round, so out it all comes again, refit the sprocket - and what about the brake reaction arm? No clip.

Through the parts box, one quick paint job later and it is done, except the holes through it are a fraction smaller than 6 mm. Luckily it was lunch time.

On the upside there was a 6 mm gap between the gear cable and the chainwheel.

Still to go are the chain, reaction arm clip, second pedal and a general tighten all round - and then I will be able to flip it right side up. All things being equal I will be able to give it a test ride, the first time on the frame except for a roll down the yard when I first fitted the wheels, months ago.

I still need to finish the electrical system, as well, but hopefully that will be no more than an hour or two of fiddling around.

I don't know whether it is going to work as a rat rod, or even ride well, but it is getting rather later to do anything about either...

 

[GeePig]

Raining again, which I would not normally mind for a bike shoot, but perhaps not so good for one with not fully sealed cardboard on it

 

[Tallbikeman]

The number of things left in my rack to fit is growing smaller, but it is always the details that seem to take up most of the time.

I painted and fitted the cable brackets, and these are definitely the best so far, and although I cannot get the cables as taut as I would like they at least run in the positions that I intended. Hopefully the chainwheel and chain will not clash with them.

The rear wheel is still off at the moment, partly because I need to figure out where the washers for it need to go on the axle and partly because I drilled some of the cable clamp fixing holes in situ.

I cut the cables to length, all except the one that runs down to the dynamo as I need to fit the front racing plate first to figure out how it will get past that. I did a test fit of the racing plate, and realised that I needed to turn the light mounting bracket upside down to get enough clearance under the light. Luckily this also gave me the chance to paint the nuts and bolts that hold the light bracket together.

I also test drilled the end of this acorn shaped nut to give a neater appearance to the cable housing mounts, and as it worked fine all I have to do is drill a few more to make a complete set.

I fitted the front mudguard before test fitting the front racing plate, and then took the long strips I cut from the end of the material we bought to keep the weeds from growing on our piwnica - an underground storage room for food located between our house and the wooden barn, and resembling some kind of neolithic tomb. It is well made in cut limestone and then covered in earth, which catches the afternoon sun nicely for our strawberries and anything else that chooses to seed there. Anyway, the material has a good feel and some stretch, and went on the handlebars surprisingly easy. As I have not been able to find any handlebar end caps locally I used the plugs from the tops of the front forks from one of my scrap bikes, but they did require a bit of judicial hammering and poking with a screwdriver to drive them in.

It was at this point that I realised the backs of the lights still looked a bit plasticky even though I had painted them matt black, so now I plan to remove them and paint them green - anyway, everything looked way too black up there.

I like your light bracket setup. Your handlebar is very racy looking. I have owned and operated several Favorite coaster brake hubs made in Czech Republic. They are an ancestor to the Velotsteel and were excellent hubs. I have tried all kinds of tapes and foam insulation tubes for handlebar grips. Still trying to find handlebar grip nirvana.