I started the morning by purchasing a pair of shifter cables, one with housing, the other without. Bought some at the LBS here in Carson just to support them. Their prices may be overpriced compared to other bike shops around the South Bay, but at least by buying small stuff, that should be enough to keep them in business. =P

$1 difference between the housed cable and the one without it. Figured i might as well finish the job i started, I went on cleaning the front derailleur since the rear one was already cleaned from yesterday. After that was done, I decided to clean the chain too. So much grime. Seriously. The old towel I used is literally covered in black dirt junk from the many years the bike was used. Guess the previous owner(s) never did regular cleaning maintenance. Now was the time to change that and make the bike look fresh how it once was. =]

Soon enough, the chain was almost clean after using some steel wool and the towel with the chain lube/cleaner, thought it was appropriate to clean the crankset as well. With the help of Heather, I was able to get this done rather quickly (even though it did take a good while to clean in between the teeth).

Took off both chainrings with the 5mm allen wrench to clean them. You can easily tell that the inner chainring has been used more than the outer one. =P But even so, both are dirty and need to cleaned.

Cleaned the cranks as well. Rockin’ the Sugino GLP stuff as my crankset assembly. ;] Definitely cleaner now.

Thanks to the steel wool, you can see the difference between clean (left) and dirty (right). The difference is as clear as night and day.

Ah yes, can’t forget to take a picture of my trusty sidekick with her passion to have things super-duper clean. Here is Heather, finishing up the bigger chainring i started earlier with the towel. After seeing her clean the smaller chainring with the towel and chain lube, compared to my method with just the steel wool, the job was actually done faster and cleaner. After doing what I can with the steel wool, I asked her if she could use her special skills to clean in between the teeth. =P Thanks Heather!!! =]

Alas, here is the finished product. Clean the allen screws just to stay true to the cleaning theme of the afternoon. I’m really impressed of how the crankset looks now. Awesome.

Earlier in the day, i was comparing the rear derailleur to the pictures online as reference. I was under the assumption that it was the derailleur that was bent but after intense comparing and contrasting between the pictures (honestly, it took about 5 minutes. lol), i went back to the bike to look at the frame. It’s actually not the rear derailleur that’s bent, but it’s the hangar where the derailleur mounts on. Usually I thought it was the hangar that some  rear derailleurs would have that would be bend but from the looks of it, mine is. Took the rubber mallet and hit it for a good couple of minutes but that didn’t suffice. I need a metal hammer to do the job. I even used a 2.5 lb. weight to hit it. Unfortunately, it only moved to the left (in reference to the picture) just a bit.

Of course, here is my Suntour Cyclone front derailleur. Super clean, but that won’t make up for the joint that’s broken. =T It still functions fine, but I’m unable to limit the movement of the derailleur moving inward (i think?). I plan on maybe super gluing it and see how far it goes. not sure if it’ll be able to tolerate the pressure from the return spring though. If not, i might just use this as is or find another front derailleur to use.

Although I bought the shifter cables, I wasn’t able to install them because I still wanted to try temporarily fix the front derailleur and bend the hangar for the rear derailleur. Plus, I couldn’t find the wire cutters until later on. lol

I’ll definitely keep you updated. Shifter cable installation should be coming up tomorrow (or today now since it’s already midnight).

Didn’t really have much planned today so i thought, why not do something with the bike? If you have been following the blog, you might have read that my rear derailleur is bent and the front derailleur’s limit screw joint is broken. In response to that, I’ve been researching endlessly about the differences between some Suntour derailleurs and trim levels and what not. So I thought, might as well try playing around with the rear derailleur.

Usually the cage of the rear derailleur would run parallel to the gears on the cassette. Unfortunately, not in this case. From the looks of it, the cage itself is straight. Most cases of a “bent rear derailleur” is from the hangar (mine doesn’t use a hangar to mount on the bike) or it’s the cage, but neither is the case for this matter. I believe it’s derailleur itself. Or maybe, the end of the dropouts are bent? My initial solution to this was just to replace the rear derailleur. That’s a no-go though only because EVERYBODY that I’ve emailed so far who has some parts that i need on craigslist.org decided not to reply to my emails. /rant. So instead, I’ve decided just to clean the rear derailleur for the mean time.

Took the rear derailleur off from the frame but it was still had the shifter cable on there. Cleaned up the cage while it was still hanging since i was able to take that apart. In order to clean the rest, I had to separate it from the cable. I’m pretty confident that the cable was as old as the bike by the way it looked so I had no choice but to cut it to completely free the rear derailleur. Since the opportunity is here, I might as well replace the shifter cables for both front and rear derailleurs. Most likely tomorrow though. I have band practice in an hour and most of the local bike shops are closed by now.

The next project for the bike awaits…

Where’s the bike? lol.

I totally got owned. I need the bike chain tool in order to take it out. LOL You can tell that i made an attempt in trying to remove it. FAIL. It’ll be chillin’ on the side for now though…

The rear derailleur cables and both front and rear derailleurs. Gotta finish up cleaning the rear one the move on to the front one for kicks before i replace it later on. Hopefully cleaning the chain will extend the life for the chain just a bit longer too.

Until next time.

Here’s an article about the bike hardware company, SunTour.

Origin of the SunTour company

The Maeda Iron Works Company was founded by Shikanosuke Maeda in 1912 in Kawati-Nagano. Maeda made freewheels and sprockets for bicycles and agricultural machinery. Maeda was owned by the Maeda and Kawai families. A few months later, Maeda moved to Sakai. The original sprockets and freewheels were called 8.8.8.

It was a good time to start a bicycle component business. WW-I ended bicycle imports into Japan. Osaka was a center of Japan’s small arms production. After WW-I, many of the Japan’s newly established small arms factories started producing bicycles. Similar swords-to-plowshares transitions took place in Saint Etienne, France and Birmingham, England.

In 1931, Mr. Taizo Kumagai married Shikanosuke Maeda’s daughter and changed his name to Taizo Maeda.

During WW-II, Maeda Iron Works merged with eleven other small factories. The new company was called Toa Seiki Kosakusho. Taizo Maeda was elected President. The merged company was taken over by the Japan’s military government in 1943. It became a subsidiary of the Kure Military Factory and produced ammunition.

On July 10, 1945, a major B-29 raid on Osaka burned out the Maeda factory. The factory was rebuilt after VJ Day and by 1946, 58 employees were producing freewheels at prewar volumes. Twenty-five year-old Junzo Kawai joined Maeda Iron works in 1946. He moved ahead rapidly and became President when Taizo Maeda passed away in 1975.

At the end of WW-II, there were about 7 million bicycles in Japan. The Japanese bicycle industry was centered in Osaka, which had been heavily bombed. The industry slowly rebuilt after WW-II. There was a large demand for basic one-speed bicycles to provide transportation for a Japanese population that had few motor vehicles and little money for gasoline.

Japan’s pre-war experience with multi-geared bicycles had been with British Sturmey Archer and BSA three-speed hub gears. Very few derailleur bicycles were imported into Japan in the early years after WW-II.

In 1949, Junzo Kawai visited Europe. He brought back samples of freewheels and derailleurs. He concluded that Maeda should make derailleurs and multi-speed freewheels.

The company name changed from Toa Seiki back to Maeda Iron Works in 1949.

By 1950, Maeda Iron Works had 122 employees and annual sales of about forty million yen ($110,000).

You may read more by clicking the link.

After searching endlessly on Ebay for a new candidate to retire my front derailleur, I wondered to myself why some front derailleurs had some clamps while others didn’t. I personally thought it was just missing a piece or can easily swap parts around but they’re actually different. On one of the posts on Ebay, somebody had the word “braze” on their item title. Unfamiliar with the term, I decided to use my “googling” skills and see what i get. First on the list as the search results is this thread from bikeforums.net titled Braze-on VS. Clamp-on. Alas, everything makes perfect sense now.

The first reply in the thread after somebody asks the question is:

Braze-on style front derailleurs are made to mount to a metal tab built into the frame. In the case of a classic steel frame, this tab is brazed onto the frame, hence the origin of “braze-on.”

Clamp-on have a metal clamp that wraps around the tube of a frame that doesn’t have a built-in mounting tab for the front derailleur.

Braze-on derailleurs can be mounted to frames that don’t have a mounting tab, using an adapter. The practical advantage of the braze-on style is that it allows the frame manufacturer to make a non-cylindrical seat tube if they want, or use a non-standard diameter at that point on the frame. Some would say it is more aesthetically-pleasing too. The drawback is that it limits the derailleur-positioning options more than a clamp-on derailleur, potentially a problem for those wanting unusually-sized chainrings.

Pretty much self explanatory. Since my bike is older, it uses a clamp-on front derailluer rather than a braze-on. Here are some pictures for references that show the difference between.

One that is brazed on rather than clamped.

One that is clamped on rather than brazed.

Here are more terms with definitions from Sheldon Brown’s website that will help explain further about the alternative way of mounting a front derailleur.

• braze-on – A small fitting permanently attached to a frame. On traditional steel frames these attachments are held on by brazing, but the term “braze-on” is also used for fittings that are welded, glued, riveted or molded onto frames of other materials. Typical braze-ons include cable stops and guides, water bottle cage mounts, shift lever bosses, cantilever brake bosses and cable stops, pump pegs, etc.
• brazing – Brazing is the joining of metal parts by melting a different metal (of lower melting point) which bonds the parts together. Typically, brazing involves joining steel parts with molten brass. Soldering is a similar operation, using lower temperatures and different filler metals (with a lower melting point). In brazing and soldering, the filler metal penetrates inaccessible areas of the joint by capillary action.

In a nutshell, I need to find a front derailleur with a clamp. =P

Until next time…