Tight squeeze

I had a tough time putting on the kickstand. Zora’s old kickstand turns out to work just fine. I guess new ones just come extra-long to fit all bikes, and you cut it down to size. But, kind of strange for Rivendell to sell them assuming the buyer has a grinder. I mean, I’m building a bike and I don’t have a grinder.

There’s not much room for the kickstand (you can also see the bottom bracket spindle is a few millimeters too long as well). You can barely see part of the metal stay between the fender and the kickstand clamp. There’s a small hole in it for attaching the fender. But installing the kickstand necessitated replacing this little screw with a zip tie. This town wasn’t big enough for the little fender-screw nut and the big-ass kickstand screw that attaches the kickstand to the kickstand clamp. So the fender screw had to go.

The clamp attaching the kickstand is actually very rare, but available at Rivendell so that nice bikes can have kickstands. You won’t find it in their on-line catalog. But they have them. I’m wondering if I should get a kickstand on my Bianchi. I probably won’t.

And I don’t have a 14mm wrench (I’ve got every other size), so I can’t tighten it very well. The adjustable wrench is a bit too big to get in there.

You can also see what I consider the only funny-looking part of the bike as a result of the 650B wheels: the large gap near the bottom bracket between the fender and the rear wheel. Oh well.

Here’s a shot of the rear cog. I’m showing it because of the two little yellow lines on the shifter. They’re supposed to line up in fourth gear. It’s a nice little Shimano system for easy shifter-cable adjusting. You can make minor adjustments in the cable with barrel adjusters. It sure as hell beats the guess work of adjusting an old Sturmey-Archer hub (and the no-traction danger of being between gears on a Sturmey-Archer). Sturmey-Archer is the standard old 3-speed hub found on old Raleighs–great bikes, but a bitch to work on with their English measurements, cottered cranks, and their everything-comes-apart-what’s-Shimano components.

And, perhaps most importantly, Zora came back home last night. She was very happy to see her bike (though it wasn’t a surprise, given this blog and my tendency to shift all conversation to things bike-related)… and me too, of course.

She had to run off to work today and will take the Bluebird for their maiden ride tomorrow, I assume. I’ll be there with a camera, like for the first ride after you remove the training wheels.