Wednesday, July 20, 2005

Busted Parts!


After racing Fireweed, Ben and I were breaking our bikes down and packing them up in there respective cases for our flights back to the lower 48. As many of you know, I’m a larger rider, some times we joking call me “beef cake”, I’m 6’2” and weight in generally somewhere around 180 lbs, for an American this makes me quite fit, but for a cyclist. I’m beef cake. Well, the hard plastic performance bicycle cases Ben and I use are one size fits all, and my bike a 59 Litespeed Vortex, just barely fits in the case. I find to get it to comfortably fit in I need to remove the rear derailleur. I’m sure you can see where this is going.

While I was unscrewing my rear record rear derailleur for the flight back home some how I snapped the derailleur tab which limits the derailleur travel. I was pissed. I didn’t exactly want to buy a new rear derailleur. I sucked it up, and finished boxing the bike up.

A week later, on getting home, I started to re-assemble the bike. Soon I was at the rear derailleur, I thought there was a good chance I would need to order a new one. But with Campy, unlike shimano, there’s always the chance that parts can be repaired as Campy sells replacement parts and publishes documents on how everything fits together. I downloaded the diagrams and around an hour later had the derailleur apart. Now I just need to find the limiter sleeve for a campy record 2002 rear derailleur. I found I could order the part on the web but I need one fast and couldn’t wait to receive it so I grabbed the phone and started call shops. With luck I found the part, Gregg’s Cycles had one at their green lake shop, they indicated it was expensive, but at $30 if it would fix my rear derailleur it would be over five times less then buying a whole new one.

The trick with repairing something is almost never really taking it apart, but getting things put back together. In the case of the derailleur, the tricky part was rewinding the internal spring which sits behind the sleeve I was replacing. With pliers and some luck an hour and half later I had the derailleur put back together as good as new. With even more confirmation as to why I ride campy.

It’s Tartan Time

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