Sean’s Blog

Years ago, I was riding on a stretch of bike path outside of Hellyer Velodrome. I was returning to my car and was about two miles out when I got a flat. I kind of just stared at the flat in disbelief because I hadn’t brought along a tube, pump, etc. My friend stuck his finger on it to stop the leak, but this didn’t do me any good. Or so I thought.

This old man appeared out of nowhere with his wife, complimented us on our fixies, and offered to have a look at my flat (while doing so, his wife told us of how he was a bike mechanic in his younger days and how he once rode X number of double centuries in one year). He then spit what I can only imagine to be a sticky loogi into his finger tips and proceeded to rub it into my flat until miraculously it stopped leaking air. He said that I might be able to make it back, but that I better ride fast. I jumped on the bike and sure enough, made it back to my car just as the tire began to feel squishy.

I’ve had many flats since then and just about every time I’ve tried spitting a loogi into my fingertips, but have yet to even stop the leak for a second. I can only imagine this old man laughing at the thought of me trying to replicate what he did.

Has anyone else had success with the loogi flat repair technique?

Note: I asked on bikeforums.net as well.

I’ve been working on building up the bicycle frame I made for Kate and the plan was to use the old parts from my Bianchi road bike. Of course, I had a working road bike to start, but as I took off each part I ended up with a few things that needed work before reassembling.

My Bianchi came with Campagnolo Mirage shifters. They’ve seen quite a few miles and the distinct clicks between gears slowly became a gummy slide between gears over the years. I was really on the fence with these things. These shifters are on the lower end of Campagnolo’s product offerings, but the nice thing about all of their shifters is that you can rebuild them. If I had some nicer shifters, I probably would have sent them down to Santa Cruz to have The Spokesman Bicycles work on them, but since I like getting my hands dirty I thought I would try rebuilding them.

I own a copy of Zinn & the Art of Road Bike Maintenance and there is a really handy section on rebuilding Campy shifters. I also ran across a post on rebuilding shifters on www.campyonly.com. You’ll want to order new “G” springs from Branford Bike (super nice guys by the way) at the minimum. I also bought a replacement “G” spring carrier since mine had a visible crack in them. If you don’t have a light grease, you’ll probably want to add that to your order from Branford Bike. I happened to order the combo springs and carrier set and there was just enough grease in the packaging to get by.

Rebuilding them was a bit tricky, and I was a little nervous since I once took apart a Campagnolo rear hub only to bring it into the LBS in defeat. Getting the tension correct on the springs is hard to explain in text, but you’ll know you have it when nothings wants to stay in place. Zinn does a really thorough job explaining the process.

After several attempts, I had a nicely working shifter again. And with the money I saved, I’m going to buy some replacement hoods to make them look new again.

I’ve been spending a ton of time lurking on the internet trying to find out where all the handmade frame builders hide. I think I’ve come upon some good resources. So if you spend way too much time day dreaming about handmade bicycles like I do, check a couple of them out.

www.bikeforums.net – This is a general bicycle forum, but they have a discussion group for Framebuilders and have been very helpful and kind to a newbie like me.
www.frameforum.org – This is a frame building specific forum. I haven’t spent much time here yet, but some of the people using this forum are instantly recognizable.
del.icio.us – I’ve been saving a lot of the framebuilders’ websites I’ve come across to my del.icio.us bookmarking site.

Also, in the bikeforums.net’s Framebuilder’s section is a post called FBQ. There are a bunch of links to questionnaires answered by the top names in the industry.

Last week I picked up the bicycle frame from the powder coater and I was quite pleased with the end result. I was expecting the thickness of the powder coat to cover up a lot of the detail in the lugs, but the tan color actually worked in favor of the details. It created a contrast between the shadows at the edge of the lugs that really helped the lug stand out.

The powder coat had a couple of small surface imperfections, but you would have to be looking for them to find them in my opinion. And upon closer inspection of the bicycle, I was able to find some spots that were out of alignment by several millimeters, but it would be hard to spot them unless I pointed them out. So I won’t.

All in all, I am still very pleased with the frame for a first time attempt. I’ve been busy researching other frame builders’ methods and looking at pictures of shop setups. I’m starting to get an idea of what tools I will buy and what methods I would change for my next attempt, but am sure I will have even more ideas after the second bicycle frame and so on.

I would also be interested in possibly sharing tools and shop space with another builder in or around San Francisco. Since I work full-time, there would be a lot of idle time when I would not be using the tools. Just throwing that out there.

I took a few more picture and posted them on Flickr.