In Search of a Cone

 So, I bought the chrome Schwinn Super Le Tour 12.2 for forty dollars at the Santa Fe Bike Swap, and I intended to ride it around like an old forty dollar bike and not worry too much about it, and to, above all, not do what I normally do and spend another eight hundred dollars or so fixing and upgrading things.  The first issue was the front tire was splitting, so, in the spirit of my intentions, I did not buy a new full set of Schwalbe Marathon tires, (my usual go-to tire), but I ordered an eighteen dollar tire from Amazon instead.

I also decided to replace the shorter Nitto stem and the bars that were on the bike.  The stem slipped in a little loose, and I have not decided if it really is the wrong size, or if some strange wear has taken place over the years.  The Nitto technomic stem I had sitting on top of my closet fits the steerer better, and it is taller, leading to a riding position more in keeping with my normal one, which is a much better riding position for a sixty year old commuter. (The commuter being me, not the bike.)  I also had a Nitto Noodle bar, and I plan to use that bar instead of the bar that came on the bike, and I thought I would actually exercise patience and clean the old gunk from the old bar tape off the bar.  Whew!  That takes more patience than I have.  I'll also have to buy some more brake cable housing, but that project is on hold because once I had the bike on the stand, and the old stem off, the headset did seem a little rough to me.  The bearings were actually still covered with good grease and not old dried grease, but I think someone had put one too many bearings in one of the races, because I came out with fifty-three bearings rather than fifty-two or fifty-four.  The consensus of the internet is that a previous owner stuffed one too many in there.  There should be a little space for the ball bearings to roll.  Luckily, both the races seem fine, at least fine enough.

And then there is the front wheel.  When I was replacing the tire, I noticed that, while it spun freely, the hub did have a tiny bit of grittiness to it.  Could I just leave well enough alone? Of course not.  I took the bearings apart, and they actually did not look too bad, but there is the beginning of a little bit of spalling on the cones. I thought I might try my original front wheel from the Rivendell, and see if the reach of the brakes had enough adjustment to go from a 27" wheel to a 700c wheel.  That was when I discovered the fork on the Schwinn has the old ninety-six millimeter spacing instead of the one hundred that is standard now.

That leads me into a digression. I believe strongly in local businesses, and I would love to think that, if I ever had a need for an obscure part, or a bit of advice about some bicycle repair I was attempting that confused me, I could pop over to my local bicycle shop, and the grizzled owner, (why they are grizzled in my imagination I have no idea), would reach back onto some dusty wooden shelf and pull out just the part I needed.  I have become wary of my local bike shops however, and I often wonder if it is unfairly so. Years ago, before I started using the internet, I took my beloved Cannondale touring bike to my local bicycle shop because the shifting was getting bad.  They told me the parts had worn out, and there was no way I could get replacements for them. I bought a new bike from another local bike shop and had a series of terrible experiences with them, among which, the rear spokes kept breaking, almost like clockwork, and the owner blamed me for "thrashing around" on the bike, and also told me that hauling my kids in a Burley Trailer was causing the damage, and he refused to do anything about it.  Our third local bicycle shop, where my wife bought a brand new Long Haul Trucker several years ago, installed the kickstand for her when she bought it.  I watched the bicycle mechanic crank down on the bolt holding the kickstand.  "Boy," I thought, "I never tighten mine that much, but then I always have to retighten every few weeks. He must know what he is doing." But as I continued to watch, a look of horror stole across my face, and I found myself completely unable to shout "stop!" He cranked the kickstand bolt until the chainstays were as flat as pancakes.  To their credit, that bicycle shop did replace the frame.

I do not really consider myself a bicycle mechanic, but those experiences are what have led me to doing all the tinkering I do. If my Rivendell, or the 1952 Raleigh, or any of my other bikes need anything, I just feel a wave of horror and nausea if I think about dropping it off with my local bicycle shop.  That, I think, is a real shame.

So I have these cones from the Schwinn that have a little bit of damage - not much.  I look up online, and in my copy of Cuthbertson's Anybody's Bike Book.  The general consensus is you should go ahead and replace those cones once they show any signs of damage.  Cuthbertson recommends replacing the axle and the washers and the nuts as well, but I don't want to go that far down the rabbit hole.

Shimano cones from the mid-seventies are evidently fairly standard. Wheels mfg, makes some that are the same dimensions as mine, but even they say to go check with your local bike shop.  I thought I would put my past prejudices aside and check around, so I slipped the old cone into the watch pocket of my jeans and began a search.  Since I am down in the Railyard most Sundays, and REI is there, I thought I would check with them, even though I did not expect them to have a big stock of front hub cones stashed in the back.  They at least knew what I was asking for, and the guy went in the back and rummaged around for a little while before coming back out with empty hands and an apology.

Yesterday, I had to take the morning off work to take my dog to the vet for her annual checkup.  I thought, since I was in the car, I would swing by the bicycle shop in my neighborhood.  I know the manager, and he is a great guy, and a great local bicycle advocate, even though he criticizes my Rivendell and Grant Petersen's "backwards" thinking every time I see him. The bike shop has been around since the seventies though, so if anyone had a stock of old cones, I thought they might be the place. I cannot be the only person out there servicing the bearings on their old bicycle can I? In a city this size, there absolutely must be four or five people a week staring at their worn out cones and thinking they should head down to the bike shop to get some replacements, per all the instructions, printed and digital, that seem to be out there. So with some guarded optimism, I walked into the front door.

The only two employees in the shop were two apparent teenagers, (granted they may have been older), with slicked back hair, working on a couple of bikes in the back. They had a style I cannot really place, maybe a little bit ninety's white rapper.  It definitely did not fit my imagined "grizzled bicycle mechanic" look. One of them came out and asked what I needed.  I confidently produced the cone from my watch pocket and said "I need a replacement cone for a mid-seventies Shimano hub."

"Dude," he said, "I don't know if we have anything like that. What is that?" "It's the cone from my front hub," I said, "it's beginning to show a little spalling."

"Dude," his co-worker said, "we might have those in that box back there. You know."

He took my cone back into the bowels of the shop.  While he was doing that, I peered in the other side of the shop to see if my friend who manages the place was there. He was not.

The worker came out of the back with a cardboard box and said, "you can look through there."

Inside was a bunch of rusty nuts, cones that were completely destroyed, and other greasy, old, odds and ends.  

So, my attempt to renew my faith in my local bicycle shops was a complete failure. I've ordered the Wheels Mfg. cones, and I hope that they will do the trick.

Those two cones, plus the shipping, are more than the cost of the bike, but I do think it will be a very nice bike once I am finished with overhauling and changing everything, though my original intention to keep it cheap is quickly eroding.