Sunday 27 May 2012

Framejig Ahoy, and bonus Gazelle of Doom...

Mmmmm, Minitec



Now to make it look like that thing up there on the laptop...








Sweet. This is already one brazillion times better than the steel jig effort, stiff as a schoolboy with his first stick mag.

Now to  justify the massive expense of that lathe, this will account for one one half of a percent I would guess;



And that is pretty much where it sits right now, having well and truly used up any spousal goodwill I may have scraped together this week... this is mostly because the Gazelle finally arrived and I spend an extraordinary amount of time getting it to the rideable stage, but still nowhere near finished;



The pics do not do justice to the sheer size or ridiculous rake this thing has.

Everything was against me on this thing, every bolt was rusted up or broken off, and the sweet drum brake wheels are going to need re rimming which is why it has a spare set of 28"s on it for now. The rims actually turned out to be 700c, not the end of the world as I had a set of 700x45 tyres lying around. I thought I would chuck them on despite the poor condition of the rims, just to get it up and running, however one went bang before I even got it onto the bike...

The 700c rims are because it was actually built in 1977, so is a really quite irritating mix of old school design and newish school parts, ie the cotter crank axle was a Thompson type with pressed in shells. Of course I managed to smash one of the cones trying to remove one of the crankarms, rendering the entire crank useless. I then had to machine down a threaded bottom bracket shell and press the whole thing in. It worked well, but what a rigmarole.

On the positive side, the drum brakes were in good condition once cleaned up, and the Sturmey Archer 3 Speed was in perfect condition. A stripdown, clean and reassembly was all that was required there.

To ride it is very spacious and comfortable, and with a set of guards and various other accoutrements it will serve me well as my future Tweed Steed.

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