Idon't spend a lot of unnecessary effort on bicycle repair, but recently I had a situation that I couldn't ignore. The freewheel on my rain bike had been acting strangely. A couple of times it started freewheeling in both directions, not too useful for forward motion. But it seemed to fix itself, and I even squirted a few drops of oil in the interstices of the thing for good measure.
Life was sweet again for a while when it exhibited the opposite symptom, not freewheeling in either direction. I was introduced rather abruptly to the joys of fixed gear riding, so I decided it was in fact time for a repair. Just slap a new freewheel on from my vast collection, and away I'd go. Alas, it was not that simple.As I started to take the freewheel off, I realized it wasn't a freewheel, it was a cassette. So much for that wheel. So in rooting around for another wheel, I came on the spare wheel for my Cannondale.
A few years ago, when I was flush with wheels, I decided to have two complete wheel/cogset/chain combos, one for normal use, and one for Vermont mountains. The Mountain Gear wheel hadn't actually been used in a number of years, and the chain had pretty much rusted solid. So I figured this was a good candidate for a replacement. However, when I slapped it in, I found that the smallest cog was running into a bolt holding the rack on protruding from the stay, a problem that didn't exist with the old wheel.
A few years ago, the rack had actually come apart, and as a temporary measure, I lashed it back together with string. That worked so well, that I saw no need to replace it. But since the string had been getting loose, and I happened to have a spare rack as a relic from my last totalled bicycle, I figured might as well replace it. This unfortunately entailed removing the rear brakes. when I attempted this, the bolt holding the brakes to the frame literally disintegrated. One twist of the wrench and all that was left was a bunch of white powder and pieces scattered over the floor.
Turns out the brakes that were on there really didn't fit anyway since the frame had one of these new fangled recessed holes. Back to the parts box. I came upon a nice Campagnolo brakeset that I had bought at the Big Event a few years back. Had a real moral dilemma on this one, since I couldn't see putting such a nice brakeset on a bike ridden primarily in foul weather, but since it was the only set that would fit, I decided to use it. Now we have a wheel that goes round, a one piece rack and brakes that work, job done. Not quite. The chain I had on was not made for a 13x28 cogset, so it wasn't long enough for the two big cogs. Since I had already spent well over an hour on a ten minute repair and since dinnertime was fast approaching, I reasoned that I never used those cogs on my commute anyway, and I'd add some links "One day."
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