Actually, this slick lil' whip been finished for the past few weeks, I've just been a bit of a slacker as of late. This photo was taken pre-adjustments; the rear derailleur makes a lot more sense now and the fit is a little different. The build was pretty successful; only a few setbacks happened while installing the shifters and derailleurs, and the brakes were a piece of cake!
Which brings me to some important lessons learned and to keep in mind for future tinkering:
- use a level when installing the shifters, the left shifter/brake handle is slightly higher than the right
- removing a link from the chain may or may not have been a good idea, continue researching that before the Spring
- the front derailleur took a surprisingly long time to get right, mostly because the bracket was slightly bent, when you're fiddling with the limit screws for more than 30 minutes, check to see if the bracket is bent
- try your absolute hardest not to fray the ends of the cables! shit is so annoying to replace and cabling isn't cheap!
- take everything in stride - take your time adjusting the indexing and finding the ideal tension for the rear derailleur cable
After a couple of rides on the trainer and one ride in the cold Chicago Winter (which I'll ramble about in my next post!), I can already tell that there are things I'll have to keep re-adjusting until they're just right/I become more skillful.
As I mentioned above, adjusting the derailleur indexing and shifting can take some time. I thought about crying uncle and bringing it to my favorite bike shop in Chicago and have the pros quickly solve all of my shifting woes, but instead I pulled up Sheldon Brown's site as well as multiple youtube videos for me to review and attacked it on my own. With an inspirational tune in my head I slowly went about turning adjusting barrels, tightening and loosening tiny screws, using lots of colorful language and upshifting/downshifting repeatedly until it was in a reasonably good state of tune.
This proved to be an excellent decision, because by the time I was taking the bike off the stand and giving it a big smiley gaze, my mechanical inclination had increased GREATLY. I became a more successful hobbyist, I gained some very valuable experience, I became a more enlightened cyclist... and I've run out of positive titles to give myself!
Stay tuned for my next post, when I recollect this weekend's rides in the real Hell of the North... Dangerous bike paths, dangerous/brainless shoppers on State Street, Milwaukee Ave, fearless suburban tractors and loss of feeling in fingers, toes and the gentleman's region.
