Today was a day of progress, secured at the last minute from the perceived ashes of whatever’s the opposite of progress.

I got up at 6am, after a night of virtually no sleep thanks to wifebot(tm) not feeling well, and went down to the wrongRoom(tm) eager to make a dent in my project, SO TO SPEAK. FORSHADOWING. ALERT.

So I decided to start with the obvious: The bottom bracket. Working carefully from my bike repair book, to keep everything fresh in my mind, and thinking not only about what everything looked like coming off originally, but also about the tips in my book to keep the BB spindle straight, to put the fixed cup in first, to align the threads carefully so as not to, you know, screw up your frame, etc… and after some effort, actually got the thing installed! I could not believe my successeds! Thanks to my BB spanner and lockring wrench, I finally had the right tools for the job I didn’t have during disassembly. Awesome!

But now what? More begged to be done. I decided to proceed with my sweet, sweet chrome Sugino cranks. First odd thing: my allen crank bolts I was so hot to use? DOES NOT WORK. I’m sure I’m missing something totally obvious that Lung will point out directly, but these crank bolts? They are male. like giant screws. The bottom bracket spindle is a giant male, so to speak, so when the cranks are put on, you basically have a male protrusion to cap to tightly. Hence, the normal crank bolt is a female nut. So I was stymied. Additionally, Lung’s BB length issues started to worry me too. In the absence of the rear end of my drivetrain, is MY chainring too far out??? Although it did occur to me, when you have an asymmetrical bottom bracket, you could always try reversing the direction to get a shorter distance from the frame on the drive side… anyway. Searched the wrongRoom(tm) top to bottom, couldn’t recover the old crank bolts that came with Vista’s original cranks. Dammit,tole!

I decided to switch to the headset. "Vy nott?" as my mother-in-law would say. So i assembled, disassembled, reassembled to test, to make sure I was picking up what my bike repair book was laying down. First concern was that my top and bottom headset cups are of different depths and shapes. At the time i took them off the old frame, I put them on a rag, like all of the other components, in a true assembly extrusion to keep things straight. In the future? I’ll PHOTO DOCUMENT this, because it was only a few days, if you recall, before wifebot(tm) tapped the thing with the MINI while parking it and I found all the pieces parts on the floor. Anyway, after some trial and error I concluded that the larger headset cup goes on the bottom, and the smaller headset cup goes on the top, because it fits the guts of the rest of the assembly best that way. But then I remembered the rub about headset reassembly: seating those cups! I don’t have a headset tool. I read about the various homegrown methods for getting these on back whan I first started this and was researching how to get them OFF. I sent a note to Lung, to inquire if it was a good idea to hammer them in, using blocks of wood to keep the impact uniform, as some people described online, but he wisely cautioned against it. He has a homegrown tool of the wiser design, a threaded rod with washers you can slwly force the things on to the frame by screwing it. So to speak. Realizing I want to keep moving on this project in an effort to actually go on a ride with Lung on the completed bike before I leave for vacation, I decided to see if a bike shop will tappity tap those on for me.

But I was kind of bummed, because I wanted to complete the task, and couldn’t. And the bottom bracket felt incomplete now that I couldn’t secure the cranks. Dammit, tole!

Right on cue, wifebot(tm) showed up, and checked out the frame on the stand, with cranks on, etc. I spun the crank in showing her what i HAD accomplished, and she was dutifully, if less than interestedly, impressed. Then she moved the non drive side crank arm, and the chainring crank arm flew off to clatter all over the bike stand base and the wrongRoom(tm) floor. She felt HORRIBLE, and I blew it off, no big deal. I now have a divot in my new crank arm and scrapes on the chainring. But what can you do? Rocks and curbs do same, and certainly the way I ride. Plus, accidents happen. So it’s forgotten. However, it added to my general malaise.

With a little more time to kill, I mounted the new seat on the seatpost bracket, and that on to the seat post. Fiddle-faddled with my mystery forks for awhile, then put the frame in the car to take in for headsettery.

At the last minute, after I loaded the frame up, I decided to take one more pass through all my old Vista parts in their box, to look for those old crank bolts. It’s so unlike me, who loses many things (including a brake pad and allen skewers, hello) to lose crank bolts because when I take stuff like that off, I electrical tape them to the other stuff. So I went through, and sure enough, on the inside face of the old cranks? Crank bolts taped!

So I was able to secure the cranks onto the frame after all. Now I feel like I accomplished something!!!

Next up, headset and forkery.

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