Tagged: Clean

A good day for cleaning.

What better way to spend a beautiful sunny Sunday? Well I could think of loads of ideas but today I ended up spending most of the day cleaning. The Corolla was first on the list after the UK got hit by rain contamination with sand and dust from the Sahara. I’m not religious with my car cleaning but the thin layer of speckled dust was annoying. It’s a bit of a chore cleaning the car without a hose so I’ve developed a technique of soaping a panel at a time with the microfibre mitt I have before wiping away all the residue with a chamois washed in clean water. It’s not ideal but it get’s the job done. Three hours soon disappeared from washing and polishing the car! It got almost the full works today with all my Autoglym gear. Full bodywork polish, all the tyres dressed, all windows polished, plastics polished and anything vinyl or rubber was treated to a wipe over with some Vinyl and Rubber care. I must admit, despite knowing the old girl needs a full respray, she don’t half look good with a good polish.

I’m going to have to do something about the front bumper soon though. It’s obviously had a terrible respray at some point in its life. There’s paint flaking off and a million and one stone chips 😦 It’s like a giant dot to dot on the front bumper. Another annoyance… I found out someone again has hit my car. With what, I don’t know but the drivers side rear quarter has a “nice” new scratch down it. It looks like something with green paint has hit it. Nobody has any respect for anyone’s property anymore…

That three hours on the car tired me out a bit but I carried on with the mountain bike next in line. It was caked in mud and after my last ride out along the canal it had been left with a flat tyre. On that ride I think I picked up about 6 punctures and I couldn’t find the culprit. It got to the point where I walked the bike home. Those “fat” tyres I put on in January seem to have absolutely no puncture protection. Everything is drying up now though so I swapped out the rear tyre for one of the “slimmer” Panaracer tyres I was using last summer. The bike was stripped of all it’s guards and given a good clean in every places I could find dirt. The chain in surprisingly shiny still! All the gearing got a good dose of Muc-Off dry lube so it’s all ready to roll again now.

I have found another potential issue though. I found out the steerer tube was wobbling about a bit in the headset and on stripping everything down I found the pressed in bearings seemed a bit rough. I’l have to replace those at some point (and I’ll probably re-do the frames paintwork at the same time). I’m not entirely sure why the front forks had come loose though, the top nut was tight. I added an extra spacer just in case and tightened it all back up and the play went away. It’s a never ending world of work!

By the time I’d done all that I didn’t really feel like starting on the road bike so that will have to wait till tomorrow!

Power Tools make my life easier.

Wow over a week without a post. I’ll be honest. I got a little distracted with some console gaming and forgot about all the jobs that needed to be done. I’m back on it now though with the stripping and refurbishing of a sideboard I picked up before Christmas.

Yeh, Christmas. Almost 4 months ago now. It’s sat in my garage the whole time and the damp winter hasn’t been kind to it. I found out at the weekend a light layer of mould had started to grow on the varnish so I thought it was about time I started to strip it down. Luckily this piece is actually solid wood and it’s quite modern so I was able to unscrew most pieces. It’s made life so much easier having the pieces to work on individually. I’m not actually sure what wood it’s made out of. It was listed as Walnut but I have no idea. It looks better without the dark varnish anyway.

Life has been made so much easier with two of my old impulse buys. Around the time I bought up all this furniture I decided to treat myself to a pretty expensive Hitachi belt sander and a Bosch detail sander. They worked an absolute treat today. I’ve tried the detail sander before and wasn’t really impressed with it but after using it to get into all the corners on the door frames my mind is completely changed. When it comes to removing the light layer of varnish that needed to be shifted it was faultless. Ok it takes some time but it hasn’t got the force of the belt sander. The finish was brilliant too, all the way into the corners. The belt sander though, that beast has saved me days. It took me several weekends to strip down the chest of drawers but it took only 2.5 hours to strip and sand down everything I’ve got done today. It was well worth the price tag!

Here’s the progress:

Before

After

There’s still a bit more to do. The sides still need sanding and I need to work on the innards but I don’t think that will take much longer. Then all I should need to do is give it a quick finish by hand and give it a good few coats of wax.

Project Daily – Recall Work

Back in late summer I received a letter from VOSA and Toyota informing me they’d issues a recall notice for my car. It needed some work doing to the Passenger Airbag and after a quick search I found out it was an issue with the inflater propellent. It seems weird it took 11 years to find the fault but the work was being carried out for free so I got the car booked in last week. I was putting it off a bit and didn’t realise how long it had been since I received the letter but it turned out to be quite convenient because the steering angle sensor also needed resetting so that was added to the list of work to carry out.

Yesterday I took it down to the garage for the work. I dropped the car off at 9am and by 1pm I had the car back. They had carried out the recall work and attempted to reset the sensor but unfortunately it doesn’t seem to be responding. I have a feeling the steering rack and steering column haven’t been aligned correctly so I’m going to have to strip that down and investigate. It’s either do it myself or give it to Toyota to do but I don’t really fancy paying their labour prices!

While the car was with them they’d also carried out a vehicle check and the only thing they advised me on was the handbrake had slightly excessive travel. In their words I’ve “got myself a nice little car”. It’s quite nice to hear that after all the work I’ve put into getting it back up to standard. They also washed and hoovered the car for me which was awesome. It’s not something I was expecting and seeing as I didn’t pay for any of that work I walked away very happy. Despite all the previous little problems and waits I’ve had with ordering parts, Toyota do have some good customer service.

So a couple more jobs left to do and the car is as close to perfect as I can get it. Happy days. She looks bloody nice when she’s clean too!

Project 80’s – Rear Hub Problems

It’s just a small update for the “fixie” build today. Last time round I’d assembled the front wheel and got that ready for fitting. I’d stripped down the hub and rebuilt that, along with replacing a spoke and assembling the inner tube and tyre. It is all good to go but before I put it on the bike I wanted to give all the spokes and rim a quick clean. I was being a bit optimistic thinking it was going to be a quick clean. The spokes didn’t look too dirty but after cleaning one with some metal polish and seeing the amount of dirt it removed and the effort it took I realised it was going to take a while. In an attempt to speed things up a bit I started off by using a light grade of sandpaper and wet sanding all the spokes and rims. It worked really well, but the polish was still needed to bring the shine back. Two hours or so after starting I had a clean front wheel.

After cleaning it all up I have noticed the rim could really do with being replaced. There are quite a few rough patches on the brake surface where the chrome has worn away and rust started as well as a couple of dings but it will do to get me rolling (and I don’t have the money spare now, damn rear hub)

Before I detail on the rear hub… The crankset is now ground down and just needs a clean up and polish before fitting to the bike. I’ve decided to saves a few pennies and not get it powder coated so for now, it’ll be staying silver/chrome.

The rear hub… I was hoping to clean the original hub up and re-use that for the final assembly. The idea was to just replace the rim and spokes after giving the original gear a good clean and rebuild. It didn’t exactly go to plan. The cleaning went really well; A good dose of degreaser took it from a rear hub thick with 20 or so years of dirt and grease to a perfectly gleaming chrome example. Unfortunately that’s where I discovered a problem. One half of the hub broke away. I thought it might have just be pressed together so I carried on assembling the hub with new grease and bearings only to find when it was all together the hub was useless. Even with the whole thing assembled, both sides of the hub could move independently. I guess it must have been welded together originally but over the years the rust has eaten that away.

There’s nothing really I could do about that hub so I’ve had to spend a little more in my final order for the build and buy a complete new rear wheel. The whole order should be with me tomorrow but I found it a bit difficult deciphering all the information that the internet could throw at me when making my choice. I went with a Halo Aerotrack wheel with a track (flip/flop) hub. That wasn’t the problem. Choosing a 120mm axle hub was easy. The problem came with choosing the gearing. I was originally thinking one of those “single speed conversion kits” would be what I needed but I couldn’t work out why they all had Shimano style grooves in them. Then there was just single sprockets with those grooves in and some without. It then dawned on me what the conversion kits were for; Singlespeed, not Fixed Gear. Although they both use just one speed the single speed keeps the ability to coast with a freewheel or freehub and the conversion kits were to replace the rear cassettes on Shimano Style freehubs. Having a fixed gear means of course, you don’t use a freehub or freewheel. The conversion kits were out of the question and the Shimano style sprockets were too so it was just down to the threaded sprockets.

I managed to find out that fixed hubs have two sets of threads. One for the sprocket and one for a lock ring to stop the sprocket working itself loose. After looking through the Halo website I found out the right thread information and I’ve hopefully order a sprocket and lock ring to suit. We’ll soon see!

One wheel on my bicycle

Another step closer to finishing.

I’ve decided to go down the more, cost efficient, route on this one again. Instead of buying a brand new front wheel and tyre I’ve decided to clean up and re-use the original front wheel off the bike as well as using the original tyres off my Falcon. It’s not the look I wanted but it will do the job.

After inspecting the wheel I noticed a bend close to the hub in one of the spokes. I didn’t really want to leave it in there in case it become a weak point. Thankfully I’d kept the spokes from the rear wheel I stripped down and after finding a straight one it was a relatively easy task of removing the old and fitting the new. I was pretty lucky with the nipple too as it didn’t put up any fight when it came to undo it. Replacing one spoke is easy. With the tyre off, I used my spoke key to grip onto the nipple tightly and loosened it by turning it clockwise (If you’re attacking it from the tyre side it’s the opposite / normal way to loosen and tighten, ie. anti clockwise to loosen). Once the nipple is removed it really is just a case of feeding the spoke back through the hub, making sure you remember how it was orientated, then grabbing the new spoke and fitting that. Building a whole wheel will be a whole other story and it’s something I’m going to attempt with the rear wheel.

I used some Halfords rim tape to protect the inner tube before installing the old tyre off my Falcon and starting on the bearings.

I don’t imagine these bearings have been touched since the bike was made so they were a little rough and everything was covered in thick, dirty grease. I’ve covered this before but in case anyone missed that, this is my method:
– Undo the locking nut and cap from one side of the hub only.
– Scoop out all the bearings from that side.
– Slide the axle out the other side with the opposite locking nut and cap still attached. (Make sure you catch all the bearings.
– Degrease and clean the hub and all components.
– Apply grease to the cup that’s still on the axle and set the clean bearings into that grease.
– Cover those bearings with a bit more grease.
– Smear the axle with grease and apply a bit to the hub (where the bearings will sit)
– Slide the axle back into position through the hub and rest the “completed” side on the work surface so that it can’t fall out while you work on the other side.
– With the incomplete side up, apply some grease to the hub where the bearings will sit and to the inside of the cap.
– Fit the bearings into the grease in the hub.
– Fit the cap and locknut so that it pinches everything together.
– To get an idea of how tight the hub is I like to hold the axle and spin the wheel to see how much resistance there is. I adjust it so that the bearings don’t sound rough (too tight) but not so much that the axle can move (too loose).
– (With the bearings spinning to your taste) Hold the bearings cap with a thin bike spanner while you tighten the locknut to it.

Job done. I’ve so far cleaned up the faces of the hubs but I’ve still got to clean the back sides and the spokes. I should be able to get the whole wheel sparkling like new. It’s just going to take a lot of de-greasing and a lot of polish. I think the next step will be to re-assemble the old rear hub to see if it’s still usable. If it turns out to be OK, I’ll buy some new spokes and get the old rim repainting before attempting to rebuild the whole wheel. Then it’s just down to fixing the cranks, buying and set of pedals and a chain and the bike should be finished.