And not because I have done much more writing.
I’d also love to say that I now have a fully working bike, but can’t as I don’t.
While disassembling the rear end of the bike I looked at the UDH hanger and decided it was a little out of true, because this is what the derailleur hangs off it needs to be perfectly parallel to the cassette/wheel and it now wasn’t. The bolt actually said UDH on it but it was a non-standard implementation of the normal UDH, so when I went to Escape Bikes to acquire a new part we both (the shop guy and I) thought that the part was incorrect (the UDH logo not withstanding) it was only later when I reunited the hangar and the plastic shim that I thought was part of the bike and the branded bolt that I had something that looked like a standard SRAM UDH. I hoping that the young member of staff at 3 Peaks Cycles in Settle didn’t know their own stock levels (and their website said they did, but the guy on the phone (who was not the manager/owner) told me that they had no stock. I went there directly and picked it up off the shelf with no direct input from the staff at all. Then they tried to charge me £41 instead of the £16 their website listed it at.
Got home and fitted the new hangar, refitted the derailleur. Was lectured by my father who doesn’t ride bikes that the chain was all wrong and then my sister and her family came to stay on their way to Germany/Austria, my BiL who is a serious cyclist got me my over the final hurdle to get the new derailleur and chain installed. It had looked wrong because I had cut the chain too short, and my dad was talking rubbish as often is the case.
On Monday the Spider finally arrived, the two arm puller had come on the Saturday, but there wasn’t much point in actually pulling the crank off until I had the new spider. I immediately ran into an issue, when the chainring and chainring bolts had arrived I’d added Loctite to the bolts and then to keep them safe loosely put them together, in the four days it took for the spider to arrive these had set so solidly that I was unable to undo them. Eventually I borrowed a tool from Dr. Velo to have even a chance to undo them, as it was they were hard to use. Then I used the two armed puller plus way too many washers to pull the crank off to gain access to the lock ring.
Said Lock Ring had also been Loctited to the axle to prevent it loosening and coming off – which at the time cost ~£15 to get retightened (twice, apparently my LBS doesn’t approve of Loctite, which I now understand) – using the lockring tool I tried to undo the lockring. And tried… and tried… etc
I got to the point where I was lifting the whole rear end of the bike off the ground (while sitting on it) without it budging at all, I have since read that the only ((ed: (later) not the only way, but one of the ways, read the next post to find out why this was in fact a bad idea)) way to loosen Loctite like products is to use heat, so now I have a heat gun arriving today that I hope will end this farce once and for all, I’ve pretty much run out of cash to live on for the next month, will have to borrow some from my mum (she has already said she could) which I’m loathe to do, but I need to eat. Tredz will pay me back the £50 that they have said they’d pay for the chainring/spider. I will also have to return the blow torch I ordered before the heat gun (cheaper) which was given a Wednesday delivery date but isn’t going to arrive till Friday.
I’m not sure if I should hope that this is the last chapter in this saga or expect something else to go wrong. Just sick of not having the use of the bike that I love. On top of that I still need to buy replacement cranks, but hopefully that can wait till next month. I really don’t want to spend the cash on something else new.