The recycled cycle

If you have wandered across my flickr stream lately you might of noticed a couple of pho­tos of my latest bicycle. So here is the story behind it. I reg­u­larly com­mute the 2.5km to and from the train sta­tion each day. Until recently on self destruct­ing cheap chinese hybrid, that is in des­per­ate need of replace­ment. So when the latest bulk rub­bish col­lec­tion occurred in our sub­urb, I decided to see if I could find a suit­able replace­ment. Unfor­tu­nately I spent the week­end clear­ing our shed of 10 years worth of junk to have a good look locally.

A few days later, on the way home in the bus (it was rain­ing heav­ily), I spot­ted a suit­able can­did­ate in a neigh­bour­ing sub­urb. It was a steel framed road bike, I was hop­ing for a steel framed moun­tain bike, but it just lying there, look­ing for a new home. So in the half light of dusk and in pour­ing rain I grabbed that bike and what looked like the remains of another heav­ily abused road bike that was lying under­neath it for spares.

One closer inspec­tion, the first bike I spot­ted was a 25 year old taiwanese road bike, from a time when the taiwanese went for quant­ity not qual­ity. While the frame was in decent con­di­tion, in addi­tion to a des­troyed set of front wheel bear­ings which put the bike of the road many years ago. all the no name com­pon­ents (wheels, brakes, cranks, stem etc.) as well as being poor qual­ity and heavy, they where badly rus­ted and unusable.

The abused bike was a japan­ese entry level racer of sim­ilar vin­tage. The frame was badly cor­roded by rust and dam­aged by a pre­vi­ous owner aggress­ively fit­ting a kick­stand. The com­pon­ents includ­ing Araya rims, Sunigo cranks and chain ring, Cherry cable pull breaks, SR stem and Shi­mano shifters and gears where is supris­ingly good con­di­tion and while the steel com­pon­ents, the bars, rims and cranks had sur­face cor­ro­sion, a single treat­ment of rust con­ver­tor fixed that.

So I spent $60 of new tubes, tyres, chain and brake cables (well $85 if you include tyre liners). Stripped two bikes down, cleaned the com­pon­ents, cleaned and repacked the bear­ings. The rebuilt one bike out of the parts, using the heavy but ser­vice­able taiwanese frame, the japan­ese com­pon­ents, a seat I had taken off my moun­tain bike a couple of years ago, a set of ped­als I was going to put on my moun­tain bike and after a few hours later I had a new com­muter which is fun to ride.

Why another bike when you have 3?

Was the ques­tion Angie asked. I already have a good road bike bike and a good moun­tain bike, but neither are really suited for the com­mute. A dual sus­pen­sion moun­tain bike with soft rub­ber is best suited to ham­mer­ing single­track and clam­ber­ing over obstacles not a couple of kms over bitu­men, with a little dirt and some kerb hop­ping thrown in, neither is my road bike. Plus I don’t like the idea of aban­don either at the train sta­tion, even though most days I get a bike locker.

So that leaves the hybrid. Well the hybrid is just a cheap piece of mass pro­duced rub­bish, bought a few years ago from a dis­count store when I did not know bet­ter. It got me back into cyc­ling, but that is it’s only vir­tue, built to the cheapest pos­sible price, poor qual­ity con­trol and com­pon­ents. It is fail­ing ter­ribly, both wheel are buckled, the gears are inter­est­ing chal­lenge, it needs to go to the bulk rub­bish collection.

Why recycled not new?

Why not, I wanted a bike to com­mute to the train sta­tion, I could get what I needed by recyc­ling someone else’s trash. Instead of buy­ing a cheap bike from a dis­count store for a few dol­lars more. I wanted some­thing reli­able and dur­able, my exper­i­ence with cheap new bikes is they are any­thing but reli­able and durable.

If I wanted some­thing new that was reli­able, dur­able and suited to the job in hand, I would need to spend more and make the pur­chase from a spe­cial­ist bike store. How­ever, after spend­ing a few hun­dred dol­lars on a bike would I feel happy leav­ing it at the train sta­tion, prob­ably not.

Why singlespeed?

Back to reli­ab­il­ity and dur­ab­il­ity, I just want to be able to grab the bike and ride to the train sta­tion each morn­ing with min­imum main­ten­ance. I am sure I would of got the six speed Shi­mano Deore rear derailer work­ing again. How­ever, with my road and moun­tain bikes the rear derailer needs reg­u­lar main­ten­ance to per­form at it’s peak. Without proper main­ten­ance, worn or poor qual­ity parts it is annoy­ing to apply extra force to the ped­als and the bike to shift a gear or two, like what hap­pens now with my hybrid.

Also the com­mute is rel­at­ively flat, both my house and the train sta­tion are at the top of hills, but neither inclines are steep. The cur­rent gear­ing of 40/17 is more than required. I have used 40/15 without a prob­lem, but the chain does not run true and I not ready to step up to 52/20. But for the com­mute one gear is enough.

All the cool kids have fixies

Why did I not I go for the sim­pli­city of fixed gear (ped­als dir­ectly driv­ing the rear wheel, so if you stop ped­alling the rear wheel stops turn­ing). Two reas­ons, the parts I had made a singlespeed and I have had inter­est­ing exper­i­ences ped­alling around corners, as the motor­cyc­list in me leans heav­ily and ped­als have dug into the ground. This is not some­thing I wish to repeat, par­tic­u­larly as the way home involves a long down­hill straight (which I have be known to break the local speed limit on my roadie), a round­about with a 270 degree turn and a short uphill sec­tion, which I try to hit at max­imum pos­sible speed.

Advice for others

Recyc­ling an old bike is rel­at­ively easy, it does require some spe­cial­ist tools, but if you are buy­ing your parts from your local bike shop, they will usu­ally help you out. The labour is the easy part, pick­ing the right bike to recycle is the chal­lenge and requires the luck.

And I will back on the scrounge next year, look­ing for a decent steel frame prefer­ably in a large size and any other qual­ity com­pon­ents that fall my way.

Final word, one other thing to add to your shop­ping list, new brake pads, 25 year old brake pads do not stop as you as you hoped.

This entry was posted on Friday, November 21st, 2008 at 8:01 pm and is filed under Just geek, cycling . You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. Both comments and pings are currently closed.