What's New

Well not too much new to report on the Schwinn. I have been riding a good deal on the bike in it's current state. For the small amount of $$$ I have spent on it, it rides really good and I have not had any major breakdowns. I did recently kill each tube when I over inflated the tires to 80 PSI (vs. the max marked pressure of 70 PSI). Over the course of two days both tubes failed at the valve. When I changed them the tubes looked at least 15 years old and were a good deal thicker and heavier than the ones that replaced them. So my ride is now lighter.

With a little mud

Slightly cleaner and with the back pannier on

The next upgrade is going to be the drive train. I have two complaints with the stem mounted shifters.

1. They are too close to my knees when I am out of the saddle.
2. They keep losing tension and every now and then will phantom shift down a gear.

I am going to convert the bike to a 1 X 10 using one of the new Shimano clutch derailleurs, a narrow wide front chain ring and a Gevenalle (Retroshift) brake lever mounted shifter. That will give me me 10 gears that are comparable to what I have now. Currently I have the original 6 speed rear and two chain-rings up front. The original gearing has a gear ratio that overlaps so really it is only an 11 speed. I am going to gear it a bit lower so I can climb and explore off road a bit more. I will most likely get a new 104 BCD mountain bike crank set when I do the upgrade. I would like a through axle to make the cranks lighter and stronger and the 104 BDC narrow wide chain rings area about half the price of a 5 bolt version narrow wide chain ring. The upgrade gets to be a bit more detailed as I will need at least a new rear wheel to fit a 10 speed cassette onto. Especially more detailed since I am thinking about building the wheel myself. more to come on that...

Old vs. New Gear Ratios

The new drivetrain I am planning is a 1x10 that will give me 10 total gears. The drivetrain I am replacing is a 2x6 that provides 12 gears. However, I calculated out the gear ratio for each combination and found that there were some overlaps. To my surprise I only have 9 unique gear combinations inthe current   drivetrain. I will get more gear combinations with the 1x10.

Here is the current 2x6 gearing using "gain ratio". The yellow items are the overlapping gears showing 9 actual gear combinations. I am using 46T and 36T front rings with a 14-28 six-speed freewheel.

Here  is the 1x10 set up. There are 10 gears with a higher and lower gear combo than the old setup. I will use a 39T chain ring and a 11-36 cassette.

Brazing Rack Mounts

Did some rack braze-ons last weekend. It was a little tough because I used MAPP gas and it took a awhile to get to brazing temperature. There was a sweet spot temperature that was hard to get to without burning off too much of the flux. The biggest solution came when I was taking flux from other parts of the assembly and moving it into the area I was working on. I practiced a bunch on a piece of scrap chrome-Molly and felt comfortable enough trying it on the bike.

Getting the parts hot enough for the silver to flow when I had the parts clamped together was a challenge. Once I put a tack weld of silver solder on and could remove the clamp the silver flowed OK. I don't think I will win any awards for the looks of my brazing but the mounts are on very solid.

February Update

I have done a little work on the bike since the last post but I hope to be getting some things done in the next couple of months. I moved in November and have been busy setting up the house and my new bike workshop. Here is a picture of the bike after a nice gravel ride around the new neighborhood. It rides great but still needs work.




After a slightly sloppy gravel road ride

New updates include:

Brazed on new cable stops on the top tube
Brazed on cantilever post on the seat stays
Brazed on a brake bridge (Need to put a new one on one day as this on is too small)
Put lower geared chain rings on up front (46 and 34 tooth front chain rings)
Put on new drop bars and brake levers
Put on a new 350mm steerer tube fork

Schwinn update

I threw on some old 700C wheels with roughly 31cm wide tires (temp sizing wheels), put on Shimano clipless pedals and repacked the bearings on the axles and bottom bracket.



It is looking and riding better...

Seat and seat post finished

I finished the seat and seat post install yesterday.

First I drilled out the relief hole in the seat tube slot.



Widening the seat tube relief hole

Then I cleaned up the inside of the seat tube using a flex hone. I bought the hone from Jegs.com and it was about $8. It worked really well.

I also used a wire wheel to the seat post bindings as they had a bunch of surface rust. After that I sprayed it with some primer.

It is much shinier in there then the photo shows

 

A little primer to keep the rust a bay

 

When I put the new seat post in it was still too tight and it got a little scrapped up. I took a large screw driver and put it in to the slot and widened the gap a bit. That did the trick and it slid in no problem.

I cut a bit off of the new seat post and grinded down the edges and put a liberal coating of grease on it. Not that I am worried about weight on this project but I thought it would be fun to cut the seat post then clean the edges up.

I then put in an actual seat post binder bolt vs. the junk drawer bolt that was in there.

$5 seat post binder bolt

Here is the finished results.

I did 12 miles on it today when I rode to a friends house. I was very comfortable, much better than the old Schwinn/Viscount seat that was on it.

Seat & seat post

The first official upgrade is going to be my seat and seat post.

I would have liked to use the original seat post but it is only 200mm tall. Not tall enough for me. I bought a 300mm seat post in the right 26.4mm diameter. But before I put it in I want to clean out the seat tube. I was not sure why but the original seat post is gouged up pretty bad. I took a file to the edge of the seat tube to clean it up but I did not see anything that would have caused the scratches. I am going to use a flex hone to clean it out before I put the new post in.

Old post

I also noticed that the seat tube slot does not have much of a strain relief hole at the end of it. I am debating whether I drill one in before I do the honing. The hole usually reduces the occurrence of cracks from the base of the binder slot.

The seat I am going to use is a Specialized Toupe that I had on one of my other bikes. It's a great seat and very light. It might be a bit under padded for gravel but the top is thin and it flexes pretty good which makes it more comfortable than it looks.

And lastly I have to add a true binder bolt.