PDX Klunker - Electra Rocket - ii

Anyone whose heard of the Portland area,

has got to associate it with the bike life.

After living here for a while,

that doesn't mean only granolas or hipsters,

there's just a lot of people who ride bikes.

Compared to San Diego,

it doesn't seem like the bike Mecca,

however SD riders don't ride in the rain,

unless they're from Portland.

During the packing frenzy,

I obviously was going to bring a bike,

but which one?

Without having a home base,

it would be risky to bring a collector bike,

unless money was needed for a fire sale.

I chose the hot rodded-dented frame Rauler,

the perfect mishmash of campy, suntour and beater parts.

This is actually a great riding 70's Italian bike,

that I'd be sad to lose equally as the others.

The van filled up quickly,

but there was still space left on the trailer.

As a last minute thought,

I tied up a newly acquired klunker project next to chief.

(If you look closely you'll see the wheels.)

It looked precarious enough 

that people wouldn't drive too close.

This was one of my summer swap meet scores,

an $80 Electra Rocket from the late 90's.

A cool aluminium cantilever frame,

with similar angles of a typical hardtail mountain bike,

so it rides more sporty then a raked cruiser.

The best part is the Nexus 7-speed hub.

I've always wanted to put one on a prewar frame,

but they're hard to find for cheap.

I cleared out my thin mtb stash,

adding the fatter tires, S-works crank and pedals,

also drilling holes in the brake levers.

Drillium always a priority,

running out of time for the Judy shock.

After a few short PDX rides,

(can ya see the bike in the back?)

the front suspension would be worth the effort.

I didn't trust the 20 year old aluminum fork,

I've smashed my face from a broken fork,

while also clearing junk out of the van. 

One cold night was spent swapping shocks/forks.

The headset was the bigger 1-1/8",

allowing a newer functional fork.

It's tough to find a working shock

for a 1" headset on a true vintage frame.

I also tried to rebuild the sticky Nexus hub,

the internal changing system 

would skip the middle gears.

Way more work for one evening,

I ended up just dribbling oil into the dry hub.

It actually worked much better!

Maybe adding a zirk fitting would help...

The next evening I was ready to ride,

even in the almost freezing 34 degree chill.

The first 3-4 miles were so smooth,

a great way to learn the neighborhood,

until the dreaded back tire pop.

Holey chit.

Typically I'd ride-flat to get back quick,

but the 2.30 Michelin tire wasn't cheap.

It was a brisk walk.

Fixing a Shimano Nexus flat sucks.

There's no quick change for lazy speed freaks,

and there's two cables - brake and shifter.

15mm and 10mm wrenches are needed,

as well as a pump and a rag,

throw in a half hour for adjusting chit.

Not something fun to do on the roadside let alone inside.

The Nexus was showing its flaws,

weight and maintenance.

It took a couple days to rally the flat fix.

In the meantime 

I found a cool clip-on fender by PDW,

designed in Portland... built in China.

$5!!

The seller got it as a work gift.

Thanks Tonya!!

A little blingy but matches the bare aluminum.

A windy saturday finally got the bike fixed,

ready for a perfect evening ride.

I figured I'd jaunt over to the bike shop

and get some overpriced bike lights.

The kinda heavy klunker 

loved the couple inches of crunchy snow.

I wore so many layers I was sweating.

Next time I'll bring clear safety glasses,

the snowflakes actually hit my eyeballs.

Portland is gun shy with the ice conditions,

as a result the bike shop closed early.

Buncha babies.

Now I'd have to ride back with no lights.

I've ridden hundreds of night miles lightless,

in my old age and fatherhood it seems riskier now,

just cause there's more drivers that suck.

I'll prolly end up going cheap and taping flashlights.

On the San Diego Christmas blast home,

Jake, his friend Jon and I took a bike ride to the Point.

He's been getting into riding as you can see,

but wearing the Xmas present helmet

was just not pimp.

We're riding and everything is cool,

other than me wheezing behind these two punks.

Close to the lighthouse entrance,

cars were backed up a quarter mile.

I lead the way slowly,

then some jerkwad in a black shiny truck

chooses to pull into the last cemetery entrance.

The kids thought I did a swell job avoiding catastrophe,

although I smacked his fender pretty good,

and was on the ground in a split second.

It had been a long time since I've had bike road rash!

The best part was the kids won't question wearing helmets...

Ok where were we... the LBS was closed,

I took way too many bike pics,

Oh yea.

So during the snow ride I found this phone.

Back at the house all of a sudden it rang,

and I ended up riding back out to meet them,

which was cool cause riding in the snow is great.

Madeline had lost it while riding her moped.

They were super nice,

and drunk kinda.

Thanks for the beer money M!

Could I write anymore about this?

Yep.

Don't mind the mess on the table,

check out the new bike project.

A 1978 Mercian Vincitore. 

So effin cool those lugs are bitchin.

I'll probably flip some of the speaker hoard 

to be able to fund the parts...

More later!

TP

critical mass thrash

Last weekend Jaxon & I fixed up our fat tire cruisers.
It was a little premonition of things to come.

dago cruiser power trio

I pulled the red shelby out of hibernation,
and put the black fendered shelby into hibernation.
Jax swapped his aluminum donkey dick handlebar stem
for an old schwinn stem that was lying around.

postwar schwinn DX - dago style

The blue bike has been the main grocery getter.
It's a good rider but the random aluminum crank had been bugging me.

crank removal tool

There's a trick axle conversion that makes it possible
to use a 3-piece crank instead of the one-piece unit.

cruiser 3-piece crank axle

Even though my goal started out more aesthetic
by swapping in the fluted campy knock-off crank,
the other benefit was the 49 tooth chainring with stock drillium.
It's only a 2% change from the 50 but it should help,
as we live in a hilly area.

campy sucks - klunker style

Yeah it's a prissy change but what the heck.
Another cool thing is they make the rubber block pedals with the larger thread,
so it's still possible to ride barefoot.

Schwinn Dago style 

Here's the potential of what this bike should do...


I could watch that video a million times.

Schwinn partial klunker

So anyway last night we figured what the heck,
let's do the Critical Mass ride.
We hadn't ridden it since earlier this year.
It took a couple minutes figuring out which bikes to ride.
Me blue, Jaxon white.

Jaxon's too big for the tandem,
especially with his long hair other riders think he's a girl.
I told him he needs to pen in a moustache or beard.

homeless bridge

So we rode out to Balboa Park from the house,
which is a good 40 minute ride on the cruisers.
Showed him the finer points of San Diego
like the sketchy Front St homeless bridge.

critical mass san diego september 2012

We missed getting to the fountain but at least crossed the bridge.
The first part of the ride is always an exciting mash of riders.

critical mass san diego september 2012

Even though this wasn't his first time,
I'll admit I was concerned if he could hold his own with the frenzy of riders.
Critical mass is like driving in really bad mexican traffic.
Even with our single-speed cruisers,
we managed well with all the faster bikes.

Jaxon - critical mass

The lucky thing for us is 80% of the time the ride goes near our neighborhood.
This ride was a little longer in the North Park/downtown area,
so by the time we rode up through the airport we hung back a bit.

san salvador ship - san diego

Way more relaxing to ride up Harbor along the bike path.
We even got to check out the $5,000,000 construction of the San Salvador,
the replica of Juan Cabrillo's flagship.
Weird how it looks like pictures of some of the stuff at Burning Man!

We made it home without a hitch.
A great excuse for a full moon night ride.

TP

bike time 29 - 80's tweaker schwinn

It's been too long since a biketime post,
so let's do it.

schwinn klunker

To most of us this doesn't look like anything special,
but this old bike had a cameo on the first blog post.
perich brothers (and sister): got to start sometime...
So for that reason it is special.

perich brothers & sister 2010
jaxon, macey & jakob

The tweaker formula is simple,

take a stripped out 70's or 80's cruiser frame found in a canyon,

and add all the parts from a  couple clapped out mountain bikes.
Voila!
Worry not.
This bike isn't stolen goods,
because the tweaker formula
is very similar to the retired old man in a garage formula -
throwing together any parts lying about that fit,
than ride around with a road bike helmet that is too small.
Funny thing how it unintentionally resembles the old KLUNKER bikes.

vintage double crown - triple tree bike fork

A retired firefighter friend (Chris)
from Ventura donated this to the Perich cause long ago.
For some reason his own son wasn't interested in it,
either that or he ditched it as there were no brakes on it.

The old bike had some heavy use back then.
I unearthed some old 8mm silent footage from back in the day - 2007.
This bike is the "bunny hop special".

junk wheels

Fast forward to now,
and the bike had signs of disrepair.
The front hub had somehow shattered,
(not from bunny hopping!)
and the bike sat for a long time.
Luckily,
a couple months back we found this ditched front wheel
in the Ace Hardware parking lot.
A true rim - perfect!
Who doesn't love free chit.

worn axle

Well there was a reason the wheel was tossed.

Even though it spinned smooth,

the bearings in the hub had dislodged,

to the point that they wore a hole through the axle.

Of course I didn't see this til I had swapped the tire.

Fortunately the axle from the old cast hub interchanged.

seriously worn axle

After a short nights work the bike is back in business.
Here's even more of it's finer details.

comfy style

The hard bmx seat was replaced with a fat cruiser seat (for now),
and the seatpost was laid back a bit.
Gone also is the baby seat from that old 2010 picture.
Really hard to bunny hop with her in the back.

drillium

One of my earlier attempts at drillium here.
May try to find a working derailleur someday too.

schwinn cruiser

Gotta love the triple clamp mountain bike shock.
Hard to find these with a 1" steer tube,
even with the whopping 1.5" of travel.

Well that's about all I can wring out of this old bike.
Don't fret,
there's an exciting post coming up soon.
Just take me out of my misery if you I'm riding around
with the too small road bike helmet.

TP