The old bike is coming back together again. I’ve learned a couple of valuable lessons in the process:
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| a $30 toolbox should prevent $50 in lost parts, every time |
1) Don’t take your parts to high school to get them worked on, they lose parts, don’t do the work anyway and it causes confusion and headaches when you’re trying to reassemble the thing.
2) I tried taking photos as I took the bike apart, which works well when you’re putting it back together, but with so many small fasteners and other odds and ends it pays to have a parts tray set up and labelled.
I’ve since purchased a cheap sectioned toolbox that will serve as a parts holder. I’ll use an erasable marker to label the parts as they go into each section of the toolbox. That should resolve future finding-the-right-fastener headaches.
In the meantime, after multiple trips to dealer to pick up bits and pieces, I think I’m putting this all down as lessons learned and moving on.
The geometry of the bike is coming back together, but I’ve still got some work to do. The rear brake went back on well, bled well and works perfectly. It even has good pedal feel. A concern in the rear is that the rotor suddenly seems out of round (it was fine before). I’m going to get it back on the road and see if it needs reseating – it’s a 20+ year old bike, so maybe I put the rotor back on the hub in a different way and it’s not happy.
The front end all went back together without problems, but the front brakes don’t seem to want to bleed to a tight lever. Fortunately CoG has a solution. After leaving the lever tied closed for the night the brakes are starting to come back. Another round of bleeding and I should have some sharp feeling front brakes again.
If I can get the front brakes finished up and the fueling sorted, I should be ready to go just in time for the roads to get rained clear of the sand and salt of winter.
