Category Archives: town bike

Shake, Rattle and Roll

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My 1990’s Terry Symmetry is a great commuting bicycle.  It handles well and can keep up with the faster bikes on my regular commute.  But recently I had been hearing an annoying rattle on the front end of the bike.

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Diagnosing bicycle noises while riding brings to mind Dante’s Inferno.  As one’s thoughts spiral through endless ideas and related solutions, the bicycle itself seems drawn further toward complete annihilation, into the concentric circles of hell.  After decades of riding, I have hopefully learned to pay more attention to the occasional odd and unexpected sounds coming from the bike I am riding.  It’s almost always a good idea NOT to ignore them.  Like most cyclists, I love and expect a certain silence from my bike.  Encountering dry, squeaky chains, rattling fenders, and loose fitting luggage on other cyclists’ bikes weighs on my conscience:  should I point out that their rear wheel is out of true or that a little bit of chain lube is in order?  But that’s a question for another day.

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Front end rattles can be as difficult to nail down as noises coming from the center or back of the bike.  In my case, because I had used an unusual mounting system for my fenders, my first thought was that the cantilevered portion of the front fender was bouncing around more than usual.  After holding my hand over the front portion of the fender and hearing no change to the rattling noise, I realized that this wasn’t the problem.  So, I continued my diagnosis while riding by holding my hand over different parts of the front end, to no avail.  Nothing stopped the strange rattling noise.

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As it turned out, the culprit was a broken fender nut on the Bluemels “over the top” fenders that I had mounted on this bike.  I had used all the original hardware on the stays, and paid no attention to how rusted the eyebolts looked.  Finally, one of those rusted eyebolt nuts cracked, and that caused all the rattling.  I didn’t really figure this out until I had:  checked the fork for lack of play (there was none), checked the brake mount for a loose bolt (none), and checked the torque settings on the stem’s handlebar bolt and on the stem itself.  All were in order.  A process of elimination led me to the fenders.  I removed them and discovered the problem right away when one of the nuts fell apart in my hand.  I replaced all the hardware, and then decided to re-mount the fenders using these Velo Orange fender brackets, which are designed for bikes which lack fender eyelets (a sad truth of my 1990’s Terry).  I had been using P-clamps to mount the fenders to the fork.

The Velo Orange brackets, shown above, really clean up the front of the bike, but make front wheel removal more time consuming and finicky.  Fortunately, the rear drop outs of this bike have fender eyelets, so no brackets are needed on the back end of the bike.  I’m glad I took the time to resolve this issue.  A loose fender could have caused a crash.

Paul’s Thumbies

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I pretty much love all the Paul’s components in my collection.  I have used Paul’s chainkeeper, Paul’s cantilever brakes, and now Paul’s Thumbies.  These products were developed here in the US, and the company is home-grown, hailing from Chico, California and founded by Paul himself back in 1989.

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Paul’s components have a distinctly industrial look – similar to that of Mafac brakes.  While some people may be turned off by this lack of “beauty”, I find it charming.

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Nitto Rando bar with downtube Shimano shifters

As I have been recovering from my broken leg last Fall, I noticed that I really wanted to ride in a more upright position on my 1980’s Guerciotti.  I had previously set it up with a Nitto Rando bar and stem, but when I originally purchased the frame, I had set it up as a city bike with upright bars, as shown below.  The only reason I changed this configuration was that my Nitto city bars were recalled and no replacement ever materialized.

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Guerciotti with Nitto city bars which were recalled

So, it was time for a new bar, stem and shifter set up for the Guerciotti.  Since I was going to be using flat bars with this new configuration, I wanted to bring the shifters up onto the handlebar.

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To use Paul’s Thumbies, you need some shifters which don’t have a curved mount to the square boss on the downtube.  That means that all Shimano bar end shifters will work, but that many downtube shifters will not.  The above Shimano downtube shifters which were on my Guerciotti will not work with Paul’s Thumbies for this reason.

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“Pointy” Shimano shifter pods

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Right side shifter mount

So that meant I was going to replace the shifters with some bar-end shifters.  Shimano 8 speed bar end shifters are very versatile, due to their friction mode, which is how I shift with this bike’s drive train.  Once you’ve figured out which shifters you are going to use, you will need to add some shifter pods to the downtube bosses if you weren’t already using bar end shifters.  I found these 1980’s Shimano pods in my parts bin – they are very pointy compared to their modern counterparts, and look fun to me.

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The set up is very simple, once you have chosen the appropriate shifters.  Paul makes Thumbies for both Shimano shifters and Microshift shifters, and for MTB and Road bar sizes.  So, when you order, pay attention to the fine print.

Once the Thumbies are mounted to the handlebar, it’s just a matter of placing the shifters in the correct position, and screwing in the supplied bolt and washer.  You can control the feel of the shifter by tightening or loosening the supplied bolt, in the same way you would do with the Shimano bolt for any bar end or downtube shifter.

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I was concerned that the bar end shifters I mounted to Paul’s Thumbies might be “ergonomically incorrect”, in that they weren’t designed to be used on the top of the handlebar.  Fortunately, they were very easy to use and felt at the ready with a simple touch of my thumb.  They needed no fine tuning after an initial rainy commute.  While some people may balk at spending an extra $50 bucks or so to move your shifters to the handlebar, in my view that is better than throwing out your shifters and buying new ones.  And, if you ever want to go back to your downtube or bar end shifters, you can easily do so.

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When in Doubt, Accessorize

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Late 40’s/early 50’s Mercier Meca Dural, as originally acquired – with incorrect 700c wheel size and various missing parts.

To counteract the too frequent headaches and setbacks on the mechanical side of bringing this Mercier Meca Dural back to life, I decided to focus on the “extras” that are often regarded as nonessential accessories – chain guards, lighting, and racks.  As fashion experts know, it’s the extras that really make one’s ensemble come together.

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Baffling chain guard hardware.

Mounting a chain guard, however, proved daunting.  I had a nice aluminum Rigid-branded guard from this same era, which fit well around the 46T Louis Verot chain ring.  But, one of the odd things about this bike is that all the frame mounted braze-ons and brackets are missing.  I had this chain guard hardware set, shown above, that included a baffling assemblage of clamps, threaded bolts, and numerous nuts and washers, but I couldn’t determine how to make this hardware work on this bike and with the Rigid-branded chain guard.

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Creative chain guard mount – spotted in downtown Portland.

Fortunately, while downtown waiting to catch a train a while back, I spotted this wonderful Raleigh Sports with an interesting chain guard mounting solution.  I snapped this photo with my iPhone so that I wouldn’t forget what I saw.  Meanwhile, I searched the internet for chain guard mounting lore.  Velo-Orange came to the rescue, with a nice discussion of different kinds of frame braze-ons for chain guard mounts, as well as how to configure hardware when your frame lacks such mounts.  You’ll note in the photo above that this cyclist has mounted the chain guard using eyebolts on the guard, which make it easy to adjust the chain guard when used with the long threaded bolts – with the threaded portion attaching the the frame clamp.  Using these ideas, I anticipate that I’ll get the Rigid chain guard mounted properly, but I can see that I’ll need a bit more in the way of hardware.

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Luxor 65 headlamp.

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Creases at back of lamp to hold cables in place.

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Very pretty branded Luxor stem clamp.

Moving on to this bike’s lighting system, I re-installed the front Luxor 65 headlamp back on to its Luxor branded stem mounting bracket.  Luxor lighting is very well thought of, and there is even one enthusiast who loves Luxor 65 so much that  the cyclist machined a copper heat sink for their beloved Luxor light so that LED’s could be used with this system.

I don’t plan to go that far, but I am impressed with the quality of this light.  When I was setting it up, I noticed creases at the back of the headlight shell that I thought were caused by the shell being dropped and dented.  But once I had the light mounted, I could see that the creases were in the perfect position to hold the front brake cables in place.  I don’t know if these dents were a fortunate mishap – but it works for me.  You’ll note that I used red cable housing for this build.  These housings are vintage from the 1970’s – they are a darker red than the new red Jaguar cables, and match the dark red color in the Mercier head badge.  Hopefully, the fashion police will agree with my choice.

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Installing the lighting meant coming up with a fork mounted dynamo, which this bike would have originally had (as there is no dynamo mount on the seat stays).  I located a vintage dynamo fork bracket, and installed it on the fork blade over some black cloth handlebar tape, to protect the steel fork.  For now, I have set up this very lightweight and free spinning Soubitez Argil dynamo, which is not from this era, but dates probably to the 1960’s.  If it works well, I’ll keep it.  If not, I’ll source a dynamo from this era.  You’ll see that the fork bracket includes a grounding set screw in the middle of the bracket.  This provides the electrical ground for this system, so it needs to contact the steel fork. But, you don’t want to screw it in too far, as it could damage the fork.

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Finally came the ideas for a rear rack.  I have had this interesting 1940’s steel rack in my shop for awhile.  I haven’t found the right project for it.  I dry mounted the rack on the bike and found that it seemed to fit well.

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This steel rack is reasonably light weight and features fully adjustable stays, so that it should fit on pretty much any configuration.  It is a bit rusted and needs to be cleaned and polished.  It’s not the strongest rack out there, but should work well for this bicycle, which was designed for city riding.

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One of the fun things about this Mercier Meca Dural, is that it served as the inspiration for Public Bike’s Champs-Elyisees d8i bicycle. The above photo provided their inspiration.  When I have completed the restoration of my Mercier Meca Dural, I hope to be equally inspired, and inspiring.