Today I took my newly-built old Trek on a joyride. Well, I also intended my journey as a shakedown ride, to see what needed changing or fixing. But, as often happens, business mixed with pleasure.
Before setting out, I made a few small adjustments to the saddle and handlebar positions, and topped off the tires. I also made use of some leftover handlebar tape:
My trip took me through some familiar haunts: Astoria Park, Randall's and Ward's Islands, the Bronx and upper Manhattan. The bike, as I've set it up, seems streetworthy: I can accelerate and maneuver it quickly, but it doesn't seem too delicate for the almost-lunar texture of some streets I rode.
Some of the ride quality may well have to do with the tires. They're Panaracer Ribmos, though not the same ones as I have on Helene. For one, the tires on Helene are all-black, in contrast to the white sidewalls and red tread on the ones I rode today. More important, the ones I rode today have non-foldable steel beads, in contrast to the foldable Kevlar beads on Helene's tires. Also, the red treads and white sidewalls seem to be thicker than the black ones, although the width of each tire is the same. What the beads and thicker rubber mean, of course, is that the tires I rode today are significantly heavier than the ones on Helene. But, I would also expect them to be more durable.
Today is the first day of fall, at least officially. However, the weather made it feel more like the first day of summer: Warm and somewhat humid, though not unpleasant. But, some of the leaves are starting to turn, so it is starting to look like the season. And, the brick buildings of the Bronx industrial areas (which were entirely free of traffic, as they usually are on weekends) and the Concrete Plant Park always look rather autumnal. Somehow the bike looked like it belonged.
And I felt almost as if I belonged on the bike. It doesn't fit like my other bikes, but the size might actually work for me. I have had other similarly-sized bikes, and rode them gingerly. Also--I've actually ridden both Arielle and Tosca in a skirt. I think I could do the same on the Trek, as long as the skirt isn't very close-fitting (I have a couple of skirts like that, which I've never worn on a bike.) or long. I think about that because I have envisioned using this bikes for errands and as a sometime commuter, as well as a winter bike. (On winter joyrides, I'll probably be wearing wool tights or sweats, depending on the weather.)
And, yes, I'm getting used to the coaster brake.
As you may have guessed, the wheel Marley "helped" me build has found a home--for now.
Yes, it's on the Trek 560 frame I "rescued." Today I took it out for its first run--a visit to the doctor's office, with a stop at the Donut Pub on the way home. The trip is about six miles each way.
About half a mile from my apartment, I had to make my first stop, for the traffic light before the entrance to the Queensborough Bridge. I had to think for a split-second: I don't ride coaster brakes regularly, so I had to "re-learn" the impulse to pedal backward. Obviously,it's very different from stopping with a handbrake, but it's also not as much like coming to a halt on a fixed-gear bike as one might expect. On a coaster brake, you backpedal for about an eighth of a crank rotation. Once the brake engages, you can't backpedal any further.
On the other hand, when you want to stop your fixie (without hand brakes), you actually tense your legs up and shift that tension backward and downward, toward your heels. You can't really backpedal unless you're unbelievably strong or are willing to live with two broken legs for a long time.
Once I got used to the backpedaling motion, it wasn't hard to control my stops: The Velosteel brake works quickly and smoothly.
As for the bike itself: The jury is still out. Not surprisingly, it's accelerates pretty quickly, as the wheelbase and chainstay lengths are about the same as those of Arielle and Tosca. However, the frame is made of heavier tubing and, more important, the seat tube is about 1 cm longer, which I noticed somewhat on dismounting the bike. The most significant difference, size-wise, between the Trek and my diamond-frame Mercians is that the top tube is about 2.5 cm longer. One consequence of that is that I'm using a stem with a shorter extension, which makes the steering less sensitive than it is on any of my Mercians except, possibly, Vera.
I have no doubt this could be a very good errand, city or winter bike. I just wonder how comfortable it will be for me. And, of course, I will have a more difficult time riding in a skirt than I would on Vera or Helene.
Whether or not I keep the bike, I'm going to hold onto the wheel I just built, as well as the front one. I'd also probably take the saddle, and possibly the handlebars, off the bike before I sell it or otherwise give it up. But I'm not going to make that decision before I ride it at least a few more times.
Now I'm going to tell you a little more about the wheel I was building--and Marley was "inspecting."
As you may be able to see, the appendage hanging from the hub is a coaster-brake arm. (That's the kind of brake you backpedal.) The wheel I built with it is going on the rescued Trek frame.
I don't know what possessed me to go and buy the hub--one of two new parts I've bought for the bike--or to decide that it was going on the Trek frame. After all, I haven't owned a bike with a coaster brake in about 40 years.
At least I know that I will end up with a very simple bike. In fact, the only way I could make the bike simpler would be to use a fixed-gear wheel in the rear--without brakes, of course. I had such a bike in my youth, and rode it on the streets. There's no way I'll do that now!
Anyway, the hub is a Czech-made Velosteel. From what I understand, the owners of Velosteel purchased the machinery used to produce the classic German Fichtel-Sachs coaster brake hub before SRAM bought out Sachs.
Three things are immediately noticeable about the Velosteel hub: the weight (definitely more than a Shimano coaster-brake hub), the shape and structure of the shell, the lush chroming and the way the cog is attached.
On most coaster brake and internally-geared hubs, the cog is splined, slides onto the hub body and is held in place with a snap ring. In contrast, the cog screws onto this hub in the same way as a track (fixed-gear) cog. Another feature this hub has in common with a track hub is the reverse-threaded lockring. In other words, the cog screws on one way (clockwise) but there is a second set of threads on which the lockring attaches counterclockwise. This prevents the cog from unscrewing when you backpedal or do a "track stand".
And, yes, you can use track cogs and lockrings--as long as they're not Campagnolo or Phil Wood.
While looking at the above photo, I'm thinking of the very first fixed-gear bike I ever had: a converted Peugeot UO8. In those days, very few people (at least here in the US) were riding "fixies," and I couldn't find any instructions on how to do such a conversion in any of the books or magazines I owned or borrowed. (Remember, we didn't have the Internet in those days!) So, I screwed a track cog onto the Normandy hub that came with the bike and tightened a bottom-bracket lockring as hard as I could against the cog.
I got away with riding it for about a year before I did an unintentional "track stand" while stopping for a light. Whomp! I just-as-unintentionally found myself spread over the frame's top tube after the cog unscrewed and my legs imitated those of a collapsible table!
But I digress. The Velosteel cogs and lockring look to be well-machined, if not as nicely finished as the hub. Another interesting feature of the hub body is that it's cast as one piece, as the better road and track hubs are. Most other coaster-brake hubs have flanges that are pressed onto the hub shell. I once had a rear hub (non-coaster brake) with pressed-on flanges that collapsed into each other. While this may have been an unusual occurence, I've never heard of such a thing happening to hubs with one-piece shells.
And one-piece construction makes for a more elegant shape, and allows the nice chrome finishing you see on the Velosteel.
I built the hub onto a Mavic rim that had previously been laced to another hub and sat in my closet for I-don't-know-how-long. It has the older grey "hard anodized" finish which, to my knowledge, Mavic no longer uses. So I had no "mate" to this rim, which is one of the reasons it's been entombed in my closet for so long.
To mate the Mavic rim to the Velosteel hub, I used Phil Wood spokes. Guy Doss of Elegant Wheels--from whom I bought the hub as well as the spokes--recommends Phils for the Velosteel hub because, like other steel hubs, it has thinner flanges than alloy hubs, so spokes designed for alloy hubs (such as DT and Wheelsmith) won't fit as well. If you build a steel hub (whether Velosteel, Shimano or an old Sturmey-Archer, SunTour or Sachs three-speed hub) with one of those brands of spokes, you should use spoke washers under the spoke heads.
In time, I'll find out how the hub works and lasts. For now, I like the look of the wheel and it seems to fit nicely into the old Trek frame.
By the way: I highly recommend Guy Doss. He's very helpful and personable, and can also build you a wheel from a Velosteel hub if you've neither the skills nor the inclination to do it yourself.
N.B.--Apparently, Velosteel offers a coaster-brake hub with a cog that slides on and is held in place with snap ring: the same configuration most other coaster-brake hubs, and most traditional internally-geared hubs, use. However, I don't know whether Velosteel's slide-on cogs and snaprings are interchangeable with those of other brands. At least the "track" configuration I bought can use cogs and lockrings from a number of other manufacturers.
