A few more little brake adjustments, air up the tires, and it's time to go ride and take some glamour shots!

There are still a few little things I'd like to fix/upgrade on this bike, but I'm really happy with how it rides now. My original idea was to take it all apart and paint it, but the original silver has really grown on me, plus the bike deserves to get some miles!

#ThisOldBike #Bikes #MastoBikes

With that, the wheels were spinning pretty good, time for tires!

Actually, no, it's time for rim tape! Never forget rim tape! (ask my how I know)

You can still get the special cloth tape that was traditional for the era, but I went with these stretchy plastic rim strips already cut to size. They fit very snug! It was actually a bit of a pain to maneuver the valve stem hole into place

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Next little fix: remember how I said the 700c wheels are a bit smaller? Well, now the brake pads are off by exactly that much. This is a good thing to check beforehand, whether the caliper arms have enough reach.

#ThisOldBike

The simplicity of these older bikes makes them easier to work on in some ways. No indexed shifting means no need to re-index the derailleur. Job Done!

I did have to adjust the limit screws, which are very easy to find on this derailleur: see that little screw preventing it from opening further?

#ThisOldBike

Eventually I should take apart the axle and put that little spacer underneath the locknut, but it does it's job just as well on the outside.

I have the QR skewer installed on the wrong side here, which I fixed right after taking this picture, but you can see that the chain clears the biggest cog - success!

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I was hoping it'd be a drop-in replacement, but unfortunately the new freewheel was bigger and jammed up against the hub when installed!

After a bit of research and a couple days of waiting, these handy little axle spacers arrived to save the day

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Quick terminology note: any bike that coasts needs to have some part that "freewheels", IE allows the wheels to turn while the pedals stay stationary.

Older bikes tend to have the ratchety-clicky parts in the rear cog itself, while most newer bikes have a "freehub" that ratchets and attaches to a fixed "cassette" of cogs.

Easy to install, just grease the threads and righty-tighty with your hands. They do need a special tool to remove, though

#ThisOldBike

The old freewheel was pretty gummed up, so we'll replace that while we're at it. I found a new one with the same size largest cog (32 teeth), intending to keep the same chain, but I *think* I could get away with a (now more common) 34 in the future.

I'm also sneaking in an extra cog in the back, turning this 12-speed bike up to 14!

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Luckily, it's still pretty easy to find new wheels that take a threaded freewheel and fit into the smaller 126mm spacing of these old steel frames. And check out those fancy cartridge bearings!

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Here are the old wheels, still mostly OK. So why upgrade? Well, I don't trust the existing (quite old) tires on longer rides, and they're an outdated size - 27 inch. Moving to a 700c rim gives me much better tire options, and new aluminum rims hold tires more securely and provide a better braking surface. As a bonus, slightly smaller rims means a bit more tire clearance

#ThisOldBike

Just finished upgrading the wheels on my early-80s Bridgestone steel road bike, and love how it turned out! I'll post process/details in a thread here, but first, here's the finished product

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With all those little fixes and adjustments made, the only thing left to do was give #ThisOldBike a ride! Got to the library to pick up a hold right as the sun was hitting the windows for a fancy photo

And it rides pretty well! The biggest annoyance right now is the freewheel is a little gummed up on the rear wheel. It could probably use a rebuild or replacement, but I'm planning on replacing the wheels anyway so I'm going to live with it for now

The 8mm side of that wrench is also perfect to loosen this little lock nut and adjust the cable tension on the front derailleur. This is easier with a Park Tool BT-2 "Fourth Hand Tool", but I made do with a little finger gymnastics with my three normal human hands

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Also picked up this adorable little Park Tool 10mm/8mm wrench, which makes centering these caliper brakes a breeze. This is one of the little tricks I learned at FreeBikes4Kidz - it's much less complicated than it seems if you know which nuts to twist.

I mean, umm, I'll let my friend Calvin explain it: https://youtu.be/UOrIVc5lG-k?t=509

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Bike sizing has come a long way since the 80s - my Bridgestone was likely designed for someone a little shorter than me, although the standover height is about the max that I'd be comfortable with. Frames were designed to have a very long, stretched out rider with few accommodations to different body types.

For me though, riding a 58cm with a longer seatpost results in a comfortable ride on a vintage machine.

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My new-old-stock seatpost came in the mail! That's clearly the big news that everyone's been excited about, right?

Make sure you apply a layer of grease before installing, aluminum-on-steel can stick horribly through galvanic corrosion and be a total nightmare to get loose

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Okay, we're way down the rabbit hole now, but one more tidbit from #ThisOldBike . These brakes are made by Dia-Compe, who would later buy the patent to the "Threadless" headset that made it much easier to adjust and change handlebars on modern bikes. Dia Compe's USA division was in North Carolina, and eventually split off as "Cane Creek", still a huge manufacturer of headsets on nice bikes: https://cyclingtips.com/2017/08/origins-how-the-aheadset-threadless-headset-changed-bikes-forever/

Oh, back to Bridgestone for a second. I should have mentioned how much the modern history of the bicycle is connected to the Pneumatic rubber tire. Inflatable tires made bicycles much more comfortable and led to a huge boom in their popularity. They were also big business! Goodyear used to sell branded bikes, and the origins of the Tour de France are closely tied to the Michelin tire company #ThisOldBike https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/L%27%C3%89quipe

The other big name in Japanese bike components is one that I haven't found on this bike: Shimano . It would be a few years until a combination of marketing savvy, engineering advancements, and a favorable USD/JPY exchange rate would allow Shimano to sweep the global market for bike components #ThisOldBike https://sheldonbrown.com/japan.html#flighttaiwan

This bike features cranks and handlebars by Sakae Ringyo and shifters and derailleurs made by Suntour. The two companies would later merge and the resulting "SR Suntour" brand is still found on value-oriented bike components today, particularly mountain bike suspension forks
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