A long and frustrating but ultimately pretty successful session at the
co-op today. I fixed the kickstand issue mentioned previously, that's
all good now. I also shortened the front brake cable that I installed
previously, as it was really a bit too long, it looks much nicer now,
and should perform better too.
Installing the rear Mafac caliper ended up not being the mission
impossible I was fearing. It was quite straightforward to remove the
little vertical-mounting adapter which was bolted on there. When
being mounted horizontally, you are supposed to use a special washer,
which is flat on one side (which goes up against the caliper boss) and
curved on the other (which fits snugly over the brake bridge).
Obviously my vertical calipers did not come with these, but I found
some generic ones in the bottom of a big bucket of random brake parts,
and they seem to work. Perhaps one day if I really feel like I will
buy the original Mafac bolts off eBay, but there are enough other
parts of the bike which are a bit kludgey that I can't really consider
this a high priority.
With the rear caliper mounted, the only thing left was to install the
cable. This should have been pretty quick and painless, but turned
into one of those unbelievable cascade-of-problem situations which
drag on for hours. I mentioned previously that the rear cable hanger
I was given was a strange pulley thing unlike any other hanger I'd
seen. As soon as I held the thing up to the seatpost clamp bolt to
think about how to attach it, I realised something was wrong. I just
couldn't for the life of me see how to attach it in such a way that
the cable would enter and leave at the appropriate angles. I embarked
on a very thorough search of the brake parts looking for other
hangers, but succeeded only in finding a whole lot more of the the
very same pulley part. The staff member assisting today couldn't
figure it out either, and only after we eventually resorted to having
a look at the restored old bikes that are sold on Sundays did we find
an example of one of these things correctly installed which answered
our questions: the pulley hangers are for mixte frames! Because the
top tube of a mixte slopes downward and intersects the seat tube below
the rear brake bridge, you have to run the brake cable *up* the seat
tube, around a pulley and back down to the calipers. There's just no
way to use this part on a standard diamond framed bike.
At this point I was really confused about the total lack of suitable
hangers. This place has piles and piles of old Weinmann centrepull
brakes and they were obviously very commonly installed on bikes sold
around here back in the day. It's inconceivable that *all* those
brakes were scavenged from dead mixtes, which are relatively rare, so
where the heck are all the hangers? At one point I dejetedly thought
I was going to have to buy a new one (not that I would mind dropping
less than 10 Euro on a new part, but it would delay the project yet
further), but after heroic searching I found *two* hangers, in some
random bucket that was *near* the brake stuff but not really with it.
One boring rainy Sunday I'm going to go in and spend a day resorting
all the random tiny parts at this place.
Anyway, this hanger was very clearly designed for a different size and
type of bolt than the one seat tube clamp, and changing my bolt proved
to be difficult because the clamp had actually slightly deformed
around the eyelet, under the pressure of the (over?) tightened nut,
and getting a new bolt all the way in or out of it was extremely
difficult, so I ended up having to drill it out ever so slightly.
Eventually I got everything together, and installed a brake cable, but
I was running out of time and didn't have a chance to properly tighten
and adjust the cable. So, the rear brake is now at about the same
status as the front brake was at the end of last Thursday.
Astonishingly, unbelivably, infuriatingly, my Kool Stop brake pads
still haven't turned up, even though they arrived in Helsinki a week
ago. DHL's online tracking is totally useless, so I have asked the
eBay seller to inquire with them directly. We'll see what happens.
The best case scenario now is that the pads turn up early next week,
and I can spend a leisurely session at the co-op next Thursday
installing them and fine-tuning their positioning, cable tightness,
etc, and get the brakes all nice and set up. That's really all that
is left to do. Next week, I'll walk there instead of ride, and bring
my 70 Euro with me, with the full expectation that I'll be able to
ride the thing home. Hopefully it doesn't fall apart halfway there.,
with the full expectation that I'll be able to ride the thing home.
Hopefully it doesn't fall apart halfway there.
