Big problem. Giant Cadex CFR1 crabon fribe (thanks BikesnobNYC) composite frame from the 1990's with an immovable bottom bracket fixed cup. Even worse, it's not my bike so if I break it, I have a lot of explaining to do. It belongs to a colleague who came by the Giant frame, fork and Shimano WH-R500 wheelset and gave me the job of making it into something rideable. I originally built it as a singlespeed as requested. After my friend went on a Sunday ride and just about killed himself coming home into a headwind he decided that derailleur gears would be nice. The centrepiece is to be a $22 Shimano 105 crankset which was probably cheap because it needs an Octalink V1 cartridge BB. I'm not concerned about the tiny bearings because the owner will not be riding 20,000km a year.

The adjustable cup and lockring come out okay, revealing that it has a Campagnolo 112mm spindle. The cups are Dura Ace 7400. However, the dinky little wrench flats on the fixed cup offer hardly any purchase to 40 mm headset wrench or big-ass crescent wrench. Freezing with Loctite Freeze and Release has no effect and I dare not heat it, the frame being crabon fribe tubes bonded into aluminium lugs. I'm more or less resigned to putting it back together and cobbling a 52/40 square taper crankset together out of the parts box. The Dura Ace cups, Campy spindle and ball retainers are in good condition and have a long life ahead of them if serviced every so often and nothing awful happens to the immovable fixed cup.

As a last resort, I get onto the Interweb and Google for "stuck fixed cup".

AUSHTA!

No, not a sneeze. It stands for As Usual Sheldon Has The Answer. God, how I miss him. Over 26 years ago Sheldon Brown wrote an article for Buy-Cycling magazine which he later republished on his website.

http://www.sheldonbrown.com/tooltips/bbcups.html

The article has instructions for making and using a fixed cup remover tool and after a trip to the hardware store I come up with a pretty good copy.

Top pic is the raw materials and the finished tool. I used a 70x14mm bolt, a matching nut and a 14mm threaded sleeve normally used for joining building tie rods. The sleeve is counterbored with a 19mm drill in a bench lathe so it screws right down to bolt head. As Sheldon said, the bolt head mustn't be inside the fixed cup cuz you need to hold it with a socket wrench while tightening the nut. Bottom pic shows the bolt with a stack of ten spring washers which you'd use if you didn't have a sleeve or the tools or the motivation to counterbore one. Flat washers are too wide to fit inside the cup so use spring washers. Also shown is the tool assembled in a fixed cup.

The nut turns to the right to t-i-g-h-t-e-n which is the direction that an English fixed cup unscrews, s-o-o-o....

The nut tightened up snugly with a socket on a 300mm bar and the fixed cup moved shortly thereafter. Talk about an anticlimax...

The cup was quite unscarred inside or out by the experience. If you were freeing an adjustable cup or, God help you, a French right hand thread fixed cup you would apply a socket to the bolt head inside the bottom bracket shell. A long bolt places the bolt head right over where you can see it.

Anyway, I've acquired a new tool and learned an effective way of freeing old style BB cups. Good stuff!

What the world needs. Another bike blog. But the blogspace is free, I have something to say about cycles and cycling in tropical Australia and there's an audience out there so away we go.

Above is my latest creation which I freely admit is a piece of junk. This isn't surprising because it was literally built from junk. I'm a regular visitor to the local garbage tip recycle shop where I look for new additions to the accumulation of bicycles. It can be a depressing experience. Dozens of decrepit Cyclops's, Repcos, Speedwells, Huffys and Roadmasters. A vista of rusty steel rims, broken galvanised spokes and corroded orange chains. Maybe someone loved them once but now they are unrideable and have found a final resting place in the bicycle boneyard. About one visit in four I'll see something interesting and a complete bicycle will become mine in exchange for as little as $5. A pair of Shimano 7 speed indexed down-tube shifters for $5 with a whole bike attached is not to be passed up if you happen to need them.

When I felt a sudden desire for a single speed roadster with drop bars I discovered that my accumulation of dead bicycles had reached critical mass and I was able to piece a bike together with junk parts from no less than seven other bicycles plus a few new parts I had anyway.
















The donor frame was a white 56cm Shogun Selectra 14 speed which was actually the bearer of the Shimano shifters I mentioned. From online research I date it to early 1990's and that was kind of confirmed by a mid 1991 date stamp underneath the plastic Taiwanese saddle. The paint and decals weren't good enough to preserve but the decals did say that frame and fork are Tangaloy, a bottom of the line Tange CrMo tubing. Frame has very plain looking lugs but brazed lugs nonetheless while the fork is a unicrown type.


















Nice forged dropouts which, very importantly are semi-horizontal. The slots aren't all that long but with the new blue Redline BMX chain tugs there's enough range of movement to adjust the chain.

The freehub is a 7 speed Hyperglide type. I pulled a couple of old cassettes apart to get a collection of cogs and spacers. One cassette was a Shimano IG type with cogs innocent of ramps and odd height teeth. All they had was twisted tops on the nice tall teeth so an unworn 16 tooth IG cog became my rear cog. I sandwiched it between a couple of 17 tooth cogs and spacers to discourage the chain from jumping off and retained a 12 tooth top gear cog on the outside of the stack to give the grippy cassette lockring something to bite on. A combination of eight and nine speed cassette spacers and a 4.5mm allloy spacer got the chainline just right. I suppose I could have used 19 or 20 tooth cogs with the teeth ground off for my guide plates but you never know when I'll need them again as cogs. Are my guide plates a dumb idea? I don't know but I copied the Wheels Engineering singlespeed freehub adaptor kit which has anodised alloy ones.
















Several cranks and an alloy chainwheel came from a box of BMX detritus at the tip shop. $2. The 39t chainwheel was slightly sharktoothed but I turned it over to present the unworn face of the teeth to the chain rollers.
Cranks are alloy square taper CPI brand, 165mm long on a cheapo 110mm BB cartridge. The 39/16 combo on 700x23 tyres works out to 64 gear inches. Yes, I'm trying to improve my spin and this bike fits the bill because I can't grab a higher gear.
















These calipers, front and rear, were a lovely find on a $5 no-name bike with a crumpled front wheel and forks, bent Cinelli drops and a Stronglight needle roller headset. It might have been quite a good bike once with these Shimano 600 sidepulls which I believe were what Ultegra used to be called back in the mid '90's. Took them apart, lubed everything and put them on with new cheap BBB pads and they stop fine. The crumpled bike also supplied the rear wheel, with Shimano Exage Sport hub, a black anodised single wall Araya rim and stainless spokes. Not a great wheel by modern standards but it beats paying a small boy to run along holding the rear end off the ground. Yet another $5 no-name bike supplied a nearly matching front wheel and the not very wonderful IRC 700/23 tyres, plus a fluted alloy micro-adjust seat post that fitted. The wheels on the second bike were bronze anodised with Oakley stickers that look original so I surmise it was some long forgotten Oakley promotional bike offer.
















The cockpit. Hsin Lung alloy drops from a not very old Giant Peleton 7000 and Tektro R200 aero levers. The Tektro levers and Scott tape are among the few new parts and I put them on this junker just to try them out. The bars are rotated up quite a bit because I like a flat run to the hoods. These very cheap Tektros work well. Lots of bang for the buck. The Giant also provided a Selle Italia XO saddle.

















It has to have a name and because Shogun decals are unavailable, this is it, courtesy of a Dymo labeller with 19mm tape. Paint is a very low class satin black rattle can job. It has the advantage that minor scrapes are easily touched up.