Positive Change

The bike that is, not anything more fundamental. The ride in was most pleasing this morning. When I clicked the rear shifter the click was followed by a solid, positive clunk and the new gear was in use. I imagine you are saying to yourself Well, duh!, but this was not the case previously.

My bike is an old bike. Yes siree. This is my 3rd mountain bike, after the other 2 got nicked (oddly, 1 year apart to the week) and was probably purchased around 8 to 10 years ago. It has none of your fancy suspension and has a paltry 21 gears but it’s solid, reliable and does the job.

It was out of use for a long period of time, and when I started using it again was in need of some TLC. So over the last year or so bits and pieces have been replaced. One thing that has needed looking at for a while is the drive chain. Front gears are fine, but changing the rear gear resulted in a few clunks and then a 75% chance that the chain would move to the right cog, with a 50% chance it would stay there.

A change of chain and cassette was in order, as the previous cassette had a splendid set of shark teeth, and this was undertaken on Sunday. A quick trip to one of the ample local bike shops and I returned with the require parts and tools (which cost more than I envisaged - sigh). After accidentally taking the freewheel apart (Oops. I should probably have re-greased it before putting it back together) things went smoothly. A quick re-adjustment of the rear derailleur and everything was looking good.

Now, you’re expecting me to say everything went wrong, and the bike fell apart when I took it out for a test run. Well … it didn’t! So ha! See … some things I can be bothered doing right …. usually ones that don’t involve computers.