Although the thought of change had planted its seeds in my brain, it was going to take a while before I actually did something about it. I had a brief look at parts, and found them rather expensive, and so decided to wait for the January sales before making any purchases.
January came and went, and I didn't really come across the parts that I was looking for, in the price range that I wanted. I began contemplating just giving the bike to halfords, and they would replace all of it with cheap parts, and the bike becomes functional again. However, this would deprive me of hours of fun in the garage getting messy, and so although I dwelled on the idea, I never went through with it. So the bike continued to gather dust in the garage. That was until I stumbled upon this brilliant kit on Wiggle:
http://www.wiggle.co.uk/gusset-1-er-single-speed-conversion-kit/
This made me think, why not convert it to a single speed. There is only one hill on the way to work, it would be a completely different challenge, and maybe I would finally be considered "trendy". So I acquired a few other parts to make it all happen. They were as follows :
A beautiful Sturmey Archer F26 48 teeth silver chainset:
http://singlespeedcomponents.co.uk/chainsets/sunrace-sturmey-archer-silver.html
And finally a cheapo chain tensioner:
http://www.gussetbikes.com/products-information.php?id=CHGUSSFK
Once all the parts had been delivered, work began on that weekend. The first task was to strip and clean the Apollo of its old rusty parts. This was easier said than done.
Rust is like equivalent of superglue for metal. If efforts aren't made to keep rust at bay, parts tend to just join together to form one brilliantly integrated part, perfect in its place, but impossible to remove. Since barely anything had been serviced on the Apollo for a few years, the bike was now just one solid mix of aluminium, steel, grease and dust. The pedals had fused into the cranks, the bottom bracket had become one with the frame, and the cassette and the wheel were just one integrated unit. WD40 on its own self was not going to be enough. I had to employ the additional assistance of my flatmates rather large arm muscles to help me out. Thus began 3 hours of muscle flexing, confusion about clockwise and anti-clockwise turns, and endless spraying of WD40, until I finally had everything taken off.
Once I'd finished stripping it down, I spent a wee while just cleaning it all up, getting rid of the rust and the special black soot covering all the nooks and crannies which is a combination of grease, chain oil, dust, grit and tarmac. She looked like a different bike all together once I was done. What a brilliant way to spend my Saturday !
January came and went, and I didn't really come across the parts that I was looking for, in the price range that I wanted. I began contemplating just giving the bike to halfords, and they would replace all of it with cheap parts, and the bike becomes functional again. However, this would deprive me of hours of fun in the garage getting messy, and so although I dwelled on the idea, I never went through with it. So the bike continued to gather dust in the garage. That was until I stumbled upon this brilliant kit on Wiggle:
This made me think, why not convert it to a single speed. There is only one hill on the way to work, it would be a completely different challenge, and maybe I would finally be considered "trendy". So I acquired a few other parts to make it all happen. They were as follows :
A beautiful Sturmey Archer F26 48 teeth silver chainset:
And finally a cheapo chain tensioner:
Once all the parts had been delivered, work began on that weekend. The first task was to strip and clean the Apollo of its old rusty parts. This was easier said than done.
Rust is like equivalent of superglue for metal. If efforts aren't made to keep rust at bay, parts tend to just join together to form one brilliantly integrated part, perfect in its place, but impossible to remove. Since barely anything had been serviced on the Apollo for a few years, the bike was now just one solid mix of aluminium, steel, grease and dust. The pedals had fused into the cranks, the bottom bracket had become one with the frame, and the cassette and the wheel were just one integrated unit. WD40 on its own self was not going to be enough. I had to employ the additional assistance of my flatmates rather large arm muscles to help me out. Thus began 3 hours of muscle flexing, confusion about clockwise and anti-clockwise turns, and endless spraying of WD40, until I finally had everything taken off.
 |
| Stripped down |
 |
| Rusty ! |
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