on 5/30/09 6:30 PM, EricP at ericpl...@aol.com wrote: > Where luck changed. Parked the bike and waited for garage door to > open. Big gust of wind came up. Knocking the Hillborne over on the > drive side. Ouch. Heard an ugly crunch. Besides everything from the > saddlebag strewn about, the rear derailer was at a bad angle. Like > touching spokes. Not good. Then saw the rear hanger. Owie. At that > point, tears did well up for a few seconds. Figured the frame was > damaged beyond repair. > > Put bike away and headed inside to tell wife the bad news. Also to > think. Five minutes or so later decided to head back out to assess > the damage. Put the bike in the stand and, well, actually not so > bad. Hmm. Maybe I could even "fix" it. Take rear derailer off. > Grab 6mm wrench. Carefully insert in hole. Carefully exert > pressure. Hanger bends back. To about the correct angle. Derailer > back on. Shift. Thankfully friction. Everything seems to work. > Adjustments still good. Probably not perfect. Hopefully good enough > to ride for a week until I take it into the shop.
There's a specific tool for checking der hanger alignment that most shops have. But, eyeballing it (with rear sprockets as a visual guide) got me well close to vertical many a time. Thank goodness for steel. The alignment tool will show any twisting that took place, as well as provide a good way to cold set it back to position. I wouldn't as a practice bend it by the threaded hole for the derailleur. You can ovalize the opening or gank the threads. My tool of choice is a set of parallel jaw pliers or a wide crescent wrench set tightly to the thickness of the hanger, up from the bottom of the frame, covering as much of the hanger as possible. Go easy and smoothly. Eyeball it from directly behind with no der mounted. You can also have someone hold a straight edge to it to extend the angle. Eyeball it from the top down to check for twisting. Check the range of motion and confirm the limit screws are still correct. That's about it. (Worst case scenario is you snap off the hanger - which is reasonably tough with steel. As horriflying as that sounds, any competent framebuilder could replace the dropout.) > Haven't done a ride on it yet. That will come tomorrow. Still too > close to the "incident" to feel fully comfortable taking a ride > tonight. A really serious scare. Have had bikes tip over before. > Never had that happen. I've done it more times than I'd care to admit, and mtb-ing tumbles seem to do that pretty regularly. Maybe _that's_ why I ride derailleurless so much... > > A few photos here: http://tinyurl.com/kubbdv Great pix and writeup! - Jim -- Jim Edgar cyclofi...@earthlink.net Cyclofiend Bicycle Photo Galleries - http://www.cyclofiend.com Current Classics - Cross Bikes Singlespeed - Working Bikes Get your photos posted: http://www.cyclofiend.com/guidelines "Maybe a bike, once discarded, pines away year after year for the first hand that steered it, and as it grows old it dreams, in its bike way, of the young roads." -- Robert McCammon, "Boy's Life" --~--~---------~--~----~------------~-------~--~----~ You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups "RBW Owners Bunch" group. To post to this group, send email to rbw-owners-bunch@googlegroups.com To unsubscribe from this group, send email to rbw-owners-bunch+unsubscr...@googlegroups.com For more options, visit this group at http://groups.google.com/group/rbw-owners-bunch?hl=en -~----------~----~----~----~------~----~------~--~---
