Nicholas and I are fixing up a bike for Mathew.

     We took everything off the frame, sanded it, strung it up and sprayed it with a thin coat of metallic black. Nicholas should have added a coat of metallic blue this morning.

     We had to hammer the left rear wheel mount straight and deal with a seat post remnant stuck at the top of the seat tube. We tried to pull it out with a long bolt-nut hook, blowtorch, and rubber mallet method, but that failed so we just hammered it farther down the tube. Then our hammer-down device also got stuck in the tube, and we used a rusty-pliers and clamp, blowtorch and rubber mallet method to get it out.

     There's no easy way for us to take the rear wheel hub apart for cleaning and regreasing, so we'll have to accept a bit of grittiness. The front wheel is fine. Both need tubes and tires.

     No anticipated trouble with the fork or handlebars (although the bearings that came out of the headset are old and feeble-looking and probably incomplete, so maybe).

     We have replacement derailleurs and cables, but we broke the frame mount for the thumb shifters. So we're going to try to use the indexed shifters from the Trek, which means we'll have to add an anchor for the cable that will go from the top of the down tube up to the shifters on the handlebars. These handlebars are thicker so we need to find longer mounting bolts for the shifters.

     One of the brakes doesn't spring, so it either needs cleaning or replacement.

     I'm supposed to be coming up with some details to replace the fancy foil "LaPierre" decals.


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