Cycle Building and Repairing
Contents
- A short publisher's assurance that the treatise is practical and simply worded enough for inexperienced readers, and an invitation for readers to put unresolved difficulties to the Editor of "Work" for a published answer.
- General groundwork before ordering parts: buying a complete set of components from one manufacturer rather than mixing makers, understanding and matching chain line between bracket and hub, approximate build costs (around £6 for top-grade B.S.A./Chater-Lea fittings, Dunlop tyres, Hans Renold chain and Brooks saddle, or about £2 for a cheaper set), choosing tyre size and type for racing, road-racing or touring use, choosing block versus roller chain pitch and width, and comparing free-wheel and back-pedalling brake arrangements (Eadie, Torpedo, New Departure, Bowden, Crabbe).
- Names and illustrates a full set of "Micro"-pattern shell fittings (ball-head, crank bracket, cranks, chain wheel, pedals, seat lug, back fork ends, stay eyes, hubs), compares open-ended cup-and-cone, disc-adjusting and dust-proof oil-retaining hub patterns, gives spoke-count and gauge conventions, explains handle-bar and tube choices including butted tubes versus liners, and walks through making a full-size chalk working drawing of the frame with worked dimensions and a gear table.
- Covers building the wheels first (using an old pair to set the frame), plain versus double-butted tangent spokes, lacing and screwing spokes, truing and tensioning, and fitting rims, as groundwork before the frame is built to them.
- Step-by-step brazing sequence for the frame: cutting and fitting back forks and bridge tubes, brazing the seat-lug eyes and stays, setting fork ends true to the wheel, fitting head lugs, bottom tube and top tube to the head and bracket, punching or drilling brazing-peg and air holes, building up the back triangle around the hub spindle, testing chain-line alignment with a straightedge, and building and setting the front forks and steering tube, handle-bar lug and seat pillar.
- Truing and aligning the brazed frame with a straightedge and calipers (bracket, down tube, cord-and-fork-end alignment, chain-wheel-to-hub-wheel test), correcting front forks and steering, and the general finishing work needed before the machine is fit to ride.
- Full specification and build sequence for an open-back tandem for a lady and gentleman: frame and wheel sizes, tube gauges and lengths for every member, gearing (averaging 60 and 80 gear to a 70 mean), fitting the two brackets, eccentric front chain adjustment, brazing the rear triangle, centre lug and front forks in sequence, and fitting the sliding rear handle-bar lug and pinned seat pillar.
- Building a simply-designed box tricycle with a bicycle-type rear end and a steered fore-carriage on a central steering tube: dimensions and tube gauges, building the wheels and back forks, fitting the ball-head, tension stay and spring lugs for the front axle, making and painting the wooden carrying box, fitting the handle-bar and the twin spoon brakes acting on the front tyres.
- Practical technique for soft-soldering loose pedal pins into crank ends (tinning and sweating with a Bunsen burner and killed-spirits flux) and the general methods, tools (blowpipe, hearth, spelter, borax) and precautions of brazing frame joints used throughout the earlier building chapters.
- Compares wired and clincher pneumatic tyre construction and a dozen named makes (Dunlop, Warwick, Palmer, Fleuss, Clipper, Edlin Sinclair, British Rubber Company), gives wire gauges and lengths for re-wiring a cover, describes removing and refitting a tyre, finding and sugar/French-chalk sealing slow leaks, patching small punctures and repairing large bursts through both tube and cover, and details the Woods, Lucas and Fleuss valve mechanisms and how to inflate/deflate each.
- Explains fitting a free-wheel to an existing hub (removing the old chain ring and lock ring), the roller-friction and pawl/ratchet free-wheel principles with the Eadie hub as a worked example, and the construction of combined free-wheel and back-pedalling brake hubs including the Sturmey-Archer three-speed hub.