Replacing Cartridge Bearings on a Suntour Superbe Pro hub

I bought the wheels for my Singlespeed project on eBay primarily because they were cheap and came with fantastic Suntour Superbe Pro hubs. I am now rebuilding these hubs into new clincher rims. But first I need to replace the rear wheel bearings as one is a little bit gritty.

The Suntour Superbe Pro was reputedly the first mass production high grade hub to be fitted with “off the shelf” sealed cartridge bearings. This makes them first of all very long lasting and secondly very serviceable. There was a bit of discussion on a web forum I saw a while ago which suggested that the bearings fitted were a slight variant from the standard of that type and that some work would be required to make the generic replacement fit. Well that doesn’t seem to be the case unless it’s already been done on mine which I doubt.

The bearings fitted were IKS 6001RV. Good quality Japanese made bearings. I highly suspect they are original. I looked the 6001 up on t’Interweb and found the FAG equivalent bearings at a decent price at Gap Bearings. If FAG can make bearings good enough for Volkswagens and railway locomotives, they can make them good enough for my bike.

I wasn’t 100% sure I had the right bearings but it was only a few quid. When they turned up I visually compared them and the certainly looked correct. The next hurdle was to remove the old bearings. I’ve done this on cars and it’s simple enough, you either get a puller to fit and pull them out, or you knock them through from the other side. A puller would have to be small and I don’t have one that size. So knocking them through seemed to be the best plan. Unfortunately the hole through the middle of the hub is only just bigger than the axle so it’s hard to get anything bigger through, and also it’s hard to get any angle on it which means you can’t get any purchase behind the bearing to knock it out.

I tried with a longish engineering bolt I had but it kept popping out, it was too springy when hit. I didn’t have a lot of luck so began to think about maybe tackling that another time and just riding it with the gritty bearing, after all it wasn’t too bad (yet).

Specialist bearing removal tools

Yesterday I was tinkering with one of my other bikes and I pulled out my old toolkit from the shed which I keep as a spare set. It’s full of crap from 30-odd years of tinkering with stuff and when looking for a small washer in the junk at the bottom I pulled out an old pushrod. I’m pretty sure it’s from a 1970’s triumph 2500 motor as I used to have a few of these. It is thin, high grade steel with a lovely hardened machined end with a distinct hard ridge. It looked promising.

Just in case that didn’t work I also found an old 7″ galvanised steel nail (more like a spike) which was a type we used to use at my grandmother’s farm for attaching gate brackets onto green timber posts. The head on this looked a possibility but being rounded would have to be ground flat first.

Punching out the bearing

I tried the pushrod first. I had to cut the rounded (tappet) end off it so I could fed the thin part of the shaft through the hub. The rocker end has the flat surface I described and it just fitted through the bearing centre and neatly tucked behind it on the drive side of the hub. This was the gritty bearing so the one that most had to come out. A couple of whacks with my big hammer over some blocks of wood and it was out. Easy peasy.

Now for the other side. The pushrod didn’t fit as there wasn’t enough space behind the bearing for the rather deep head to drop into. So I ground down the head of the 7″ spike to get it near flat and then fed it through. The grip wasn’t as good as the pushrod on the other side but it seemed firm enough. So I gave it a firm hit (as Sheldon once quoted “If brute force doesn’t work, you’re not using enough!”) and it moved. a second hit and it was out.

Out with the old, in with the new...

Great, both sides clear. I wiped the hub down and it was in perfect order. I compared old and new bearings and they were identically sized.

New bearing ready to fit

Putting bearings in is about 10 x easier than taking them out. A block of wood under the hub, the bearing positioned in place, a block of wood on top and a firm hammer hit and in it went. The first knock put it in slightly crooked so I knocked it straight with the second. Once it was flush with the top of the hub I sat the old bearing on top to use it as a drift, put the wood on top of that and knocked it home, a few mm below the surface.

Repeat on other side, wipe it down, fit the axle, job done.

It’s a testament to the quality of the design and finish of the Superbe Pro hubs that the new bearings were so easy to fit.

Knocking the bearing in

As part of the manufacturing process Suntour thoughtfully machined a recess into the top of the bearing housing just fractionally larger than the housing proper. This allows the new bearing to drop into it’s intended location about 3mm or so which means that hitting it the rest of the way home is much more trouble free as it’s definitely in the correct position. So many bearing housings do not have this feature and as a result it is possible to damage the bearings or the housing by being careless or unlucky.

Using old bearing as a drift

If you think about it, it’s an unusual manufacturer that thinks about a maintenance job that is probably a decade away in most cases. With an eye on cost, and a focus on selling new stuff, no sensible company would deliberately add cost to their manufacturing process just to make maintenance down the line easier. In fact they have a disincentive to do so as fixing old stuff might hurt new sales. But Suntour were notoriously poor at marketing and good at engineering. In the end it was their downfall. Where Shimano has a policy of charging what the market will bear for admittedly very good kit, Suntour preferred to sell on a cost plus basis. This often positioned their kit as cheaper than Shimano in the marketplace, which ironically led to it being considered “not as good” as Shimano. In some cases that may have been justified but for their high end stuff they were as good as anyone in the market, and sometimes better.

New bearing correctly seated into housing

Next: disassemble the old wheel and rebuild it with new spokes and rim.

Singlespeed Part 6.1: Wheel Rebuild

Well I bought the spokes. Sapim Race double butted 290mm. I got 32 of them for the front wheel plus a couple of 286mm Sapim Strong (single butted) spokes as I wanted to try them for size on the rear and check the 2.3mm heads would fit in the rear hub. I bought them from Spa Cycles in the end as they offer Sapim spokes with nipples at a decent price. Service was brilliant – next day – and they put in a couple of extra spokes as well which is a nice touch.

So, I got the spokes, the rim and the wheel out. I dismantled the old wheel, put the rim to one side and bundled up the 300mm spokes I had removed. They may come in useful in the future. I cleaned up the hub and it gleamed like a new one. You can really see the quality in the finish of these Superbe Pros.

So, following my guides (Sheldon plus Zinn and the Art of Mountain Bike Maintenance) I started lacing up. I took care to make sure I lined up the logo on the hub with the valve hole. I did my first set of spokes, using the old spoke marks in the hub as a guide as well as the instructions. So far so good, it looked just like in the pictures.

Second set of spokes

Second set of spokes. I dropped them through as instructed, again following the old hub marks as a sanity check. I flipped the wheel over and started to lace. Damn. I realised I had not allowed enough for the rotation of the wheel and the valve hole no longer lined up. Sod it, I thought. Got to do this properly so I unlaced everything and started again, moving the hub 2 spokes around.

So, starting again. This time I added a piece of electrical tape to the right side of the rim as a marker so I didn’t accidentally swap left and right. First set. So far so good. Second set. not a problem. Valve hole lined up about right, won’t really see it till tensioned but it’s very close.

Third set, now we’re getting tension. Hang about, I’m half way round and getting a LOT of tension on the spokes. This doesn’t seem right, they should still be loose. I checked the lacing pattern, re-read both Sheldon, Zinn and various others. Stopped pouring wine and started to worry a bit. I could not find anything wrong with my lacing pattern so the only conclusion was that I was significantly wrong on the spoke length.

I went back to Spocalc and re-checked everything. Yes, there it was, 2 cross, 290mm. 3 cross, 294mm. I’m doing 2 cross right? No. All the instructions are for 3 cross. And 3 cross is pretty much the “standard” lacing and was actually my intention.

So how did I go wrong? Well lack of attention to basic detail I must admit. I looked at my wheels originally and counted the crosses. 1, 2. So 2 cross. But no, I hadn’t counted the little one right close into the hub. I didn’t think that one DID count. Bummer.

So. I have a bunch of used spokes. Spa said they’d exchange unused spoked but these have been greased, twisted and laced in and out of a wheel a couple of times. I don’t believe in taking the piss so I’m stuck with these. OK. It’s a front wheel so why not lace 2 cross?

I Googled 2 cross and sure enough, it’s not uncommon on front wheels in particular, although less common with 32 spoke, more common on 20 or 28 spoke. The Sheldon instructions had some corrections for 2 and 4 cross but were surprisingly unclear on the details. As far as I could work out, on the trailing spokes, instead of going 5 holes around the rim it was 3 holes. So I did that and it seemed to work.

2 Cross - loosely laced

OK, press on. 3rd run, following my revised pattern. 4th run, likewise and looking good. Fantastic, I had done a 2 cross on dodgy instructions and a bottle of wine for my first ever wheel build. Genius. Let’s put it on the truing stand and start to tighten it up.

On the truing stand I gave it a spin. Yes that looks like a wheel. But not right, yet. Start to tighten spokes working steadily around the wheel. Second time round and some spokes are getting tight. Hmm, well I guess that happens as it pulls the wheel into shape. It looks OK so press on.

No. There’s still something wrong. I looked everywhere for a 2 cross pattern, I must have mine wrong. It looks a bit odd and clearly some spokes are much tighter than others.

1.30 am. Knackered. Confused. Pissed off. Give up and go to bed.

Next day, I got up, made some coffee and though again about the wheel. I had looked everywhere for a decent diagram or image of a 2 cross wheel. There was one right in front of me, on the back of my wife’s Bianchi. Granted it’s a 28 spoke Shimano wheel, But it’s definitely 2 cross.

I took the wheel out, lined it up with mine and scratched my head. I had looked at patterns too long and they all looked like spiderwebs now. I was baffled. I asked my wife to look and she told me yes, the pattern was correct. So why the wonky spokes?

In the end the penny dropped. The wheel had been rebuilt once already, hence the mixed spokes and the Ambrosio rim. On the second rebuild they flipped the hub around and used the opposite spokes. This put marks on both sides of the spoke holes but given the grade of the hub the marks are quite faint. When I laced my second group I missed the correct hole and followed what looked like the correct mark, aligning one side a hole out of sequence at the hub.

So, to fix that I worked out which direction the centre holes had to be moved. It was anticlockwise on the right side. I loosened all the spokes the the last few threads. I then removed one spoke, taped over its hole in the rim and put it to one side. I took the next spoke around (at the hub), and removed it. I then relaced it to the same rim hole but into the vacant hub hole left by the original spoke I had removed. I then did this all the way around the wheel, each time removing the spoke next clockwise around in the hub from the vacant hole, then replaced it into that vacant hole, leaving the next one round vacant, and so on.

Eventually I was at the last spoke. The next one was the one with the tape on the rim so at that stage I replaced that spoke. I then proceeded to tension the wheel evenly, and it trued up beautifully.

Job done.

Completed 2 cross 32 hole 700c wheel

Ron Kitching

Ron Kitching was apparently a big name in UK cycling in the 50’s, 60’s and 70’s. He started as a star racer and ended up establishing a massive cycle components business (“Ron Kit”) which was based in Harrogate, Yorkshire. The Cyclists Touring Club holds an annual ride through the North Yorkshire Moors in his honour. So what, you say.

Well I didn’t know this stuff either but my wife, who also grew up in Harrogate, has been looking for a restoration project as well. She probably got fed up with me blathering on about the Carlton/Dawes/Falcon.

Ron Kitching 12 speed

My wife is quite petite so she has to be picky about getting a really small frame. These don’t come up on eBay every day, but last week we found a lovely little Ron Kitching bike with 20″ frame dating from about 1968-1970 or so. So we did some quick Google searching and discovered all this about the man himself, which, combined with the good price and the size of the bike meant we bought it.

Apparently although Ron wasn’t a frame builder he had the best contacts in the industry so he knew some of the best frame builders. As he imported the best kit, his own named bikes were always very well specified. That alone seemed a good reason to buy one and it’s been a good decision.

Nice lugs!

We got it surprisingly cheap and it’s really pretty good. It’s Reynolds 531 butted tubing (frame, forks and stays). There’s quite a bit of chrome, on the rear stays, the forks and the fork crowns and front lugs, all very nice and in pretty good order. The paint is OK, a bit scratched in places but respectable looking. Likewise the decals aren’t bad either.

Groupset is mainly Campagnolo but some bits have been changed over time so it’s a bit of a “bitzer” at the moment. It has rather tired looking Shimano 105 brake levers from probably the 1990’s, connected to (probably original) Universal single pivot sidepull brakes with a nice quick release arrangement. They work alright but lack the power of a twin pivot brake.

The front derailleur is Shimano 600 onto some 80’s vintage Italian cranks that are OK but look a bit tatty. The bottom bracket is new but looks wrong. It is way too wide and looks like Shimano from the spline pattern. That would be a JIS square taper and chances are the Italian made cranks are ISO square taper, so they’ll not be sitting properly on the Shimano BB. The whole thing works but looks wrong and probably has a bad chainline as a result. I wonder if this is anything to do with the fitment of the obviously wrong Shimano front derailleur as more reach would have been needed for the cranks. This in itself has had a knock-on effect as it’s got a typically Shimano high mounted clamp, which is therefore on top of the seat tube decal which has suffered as a result.

Campagnolo components

The rear derailleur is still campy and looks original and in lovely condition, as are the hubs, gear levers and cable clamps (embossed and chromed). It has a Cinelli stem and probably Cinelli bars also, and some sort of Italian made alloy seat post but it’s tired looking so we can’t tell what it is.

The headset (1″ threaded) doesn’t quite fit properly so we can only assume it’s been changed at some stage. Basically it’s a few millimetres too tall for the fork so the lock nut only gets onto a couple of threads, so it doesn’t really hold. We may be able to swap it with the one I bought for my Falcon if that is any shorter.

Mavic wheels

Wheels are 700c Mavic rims on unidentified but matching alloy hubs (possibly Mavic also?). The front rim seems to have been replaced (or maybe the other way round). Both are Mavic and look decent. Tyres are nice traditional looking gumwalls in good condition. The 6 speed freewheel block is Sachs-Maillard in excellent condition.

Overall the bike was an utter bargain. It even came with (oldish) Look cleated pedals which happen to take the same cleats as my wife’s other road bike, her Bianchi (yes we have 2 of them).

She had to do some reassembly and bolt tightening today before she could take it out for a first ride. One surprise was the AF standard Allen keys, it’s been years since I saw these. All mine are metric (haven’t done anything AF for years) so we’ll have to get some. In the meantime she managed to work around it using near equivalent torx head sockets. No big issue as the allen head bolts are a bit bashed anyway, clearly others too have been using metric tools on them. However we’ll pick up an AF Allen key set for it and maybe fit some cleaner bolts eventually.

So, the test ride. Once the seat had been moved forward (it was right back, clearly someone too tall had this bike before), it was comfortable enough and she has just enough standing clearance over the bar. After a couple of short runs and some adjustments she took it out for a half hour ride and returned apparently pleased with it. She tells me it is very smooth and supple over bumps, even compared to her Bianchi which has carbon forks and stays. It bodes well for the other projects we have on the way.

Now I have to get back to my projects and leave her to this one…

A bit more Kitching info: http://www.classicrendezvous.com/British_isles/MKM/MKM_main.htm

Singlespeed Project: Taking Stock

Right… it’s all got a bit mad lately. What with drunkenly buying tandems, rescuing bikes from trees, plus giving the commuters some TLC before winter hits us I almost can’t keep up. On top of that the bike I thought was a Carlton, then a Dawes is actually, really truly, a Falcon. The more I think about that the more I like it. I just find Dawes as a brand to be a bit bland and unexciting. The lovely frame I had seemed an unlikely Dawes indeed.

The Mavic Open Pro rims arrived from Chain Reaction today. They look stunning in silver and I now see what they mean about the double eyeleted spoke holes. The eyelet extends through the outer skin of the rim and attaches to the inner skin. This means that the spoke will pull directly on the inner and outer skin together, probably twice as strong as just eyeleted to the outer skin.

Anyway, so where am I with the project? I have:

1. Frame + forks. In need of paint stripping and a respray, plus the rear brake bridge is a bit squashed out of shape but should knock back to round. But fundamentally sound.
2. Hubs. Suntour Superbe Pro 32H (still attached to tubular rims). Separated from freewheel and set up with a fixed 14t sprocket and locknut.
3. Cranks. Suntour Superbe Pro. Still attached to worn Sugino double chainrings but in excellent condition.
4. Bottom Bracket. Campagnolo. Correct thread for frame and confirmed correct taper for the cranks.
5. Rims. Mavic Open Pro 32H silver. Brand new and ready to assemble.
6. Stem. 3TTT 1″ threaded alloy stem (NOS).
7. Bars. Dawes alloy drop bars. Confirmed correct fit for the 3TTT stem and already assembled.
8. Headset. New Cranium alloy 1″ threaded headset. Already loosely fitted to bike.
9. Seatpost. Fluted alloy seatpost – came with bike. Probably not original but looks nice. Keep.
10. Brakes. I have the Acor long reach rear double pivot brake and also an Alhonga front brake which looks similar (got it very cheap on eBay).
11. Brake levers. Old Weinmann alloy levers.
12. Stainless steel inner brake cables.

I need to get:

1. Spokes. I need 64 new spokes. Probably Sapim, about 35p each. Also need brass nipples. That sounds all wrong…
2. Chainring. I’ll get a 44t 1/8″ polished alloy VeloSolo track chainring 130mm BCD.
3. Sprocket. I used Sheldon’s calculator to work out that with 44t on 700c rims I probably want a 16 or 17 tooth rear sprocket. I’ll buy one of each in cheap steel from VeloSolo (about £4) and try them out. When I am satisfied I’ll probably get a better one.
4. Chain. Get a SRAM or KMC 1/8″ chain. Probably. There seem to be some specialist chain producers in this niche that get a following.
5. Saddle. I’d like a Brooks but for now it may be a cheapie.
6. Tyres. Still got to get these. I fancy gumwalls for the retro look. I have loads of spare 700c inners although I may want to get some “puncture proof” ones with goo in them for commuting.
7. Cable housings. Need front and rear cable housings for the brakes (need a rear too as my fixie isn’t a proper locking one). Might go for coloured or white, probably depending on handlebar tape.
8. Bar tape. Not decided on colour (depends on frame and saddle).
9. Paintjob. This will be last… I’m gonna build it as it is, rinde it a bit and get it all completely sorted, then strip it back, do the frame and reassemble.

Not too much to get now…

The perils of eBay and wine

Vintage Tandem frame

On Saturday my wife and I had several glasses of wine and browsed eBay looking for a road frame for her to do up, possibly as a tourer (note to self, I haven’t got a tourer either – yet). In the process we stumbled across some tandems and joked about building up a classic tandem as a really beefy tourer. We saw a few tatty old tandems and a lovely vintage one at a pretty huge price. None really appealed.

Not that we were seriously looking anyway, mind.

Our next discovery was quite interesting – a 1930’s or 40’s track tandem frame built with either Reynolds or Accles & Pollock tubing according to the seller. It was much more attractive to my inexperienced eye with lots of parallel lines and quite a vintage racing look to it. It reminded me a lot of this image at Classic Lightweights UK. It is a singlespeed track racer – built for two.

Ugly Tandem Frame

So then we got into the aesthetics of tandems… many have a really wonky look with a front crossbar in traditional format then a wierdly dropped rear crossbar to allow for the often smaller female “stoker”. Some frames do this well but many seem to have been thrown together at random, like the image on the left. No two tubes seem to be parallel which to me looks ugly.

We kept looking around but few others stood out. We found a lovely frame for my wife (a Graham Weigh) of about 20 years old and small size, but in the end we missed out as the bidding went mental.

Tandem Side View

Missing a few bits…

In the meantime, we looked again at the old red tandem frame. It really was frame only, the wheels and bars were just as a demonstration of how it could look (they worked). The seller had it on at £39.99 starting bid which seemed insanely cheap. There were no bids yet so, on a whim, I put a bid of £40.00 on using my wife’s account. It wasn’t much and it was listed as being not far from here so a pity not to have a go. Anyway I knew at least one chancer would bid more than that. Or so I thought…

By sunday night we were nervously checking the eBay stats. Nobody – absolutely nobody – appeared to be interested in the tandem. All someone needed to do was bid £41 and we’d be off the hook. Nobody ever wins something on eBay at a penny over the asking price except in last minute snipes.

Well the time came and nobody did bid. We are now the slightly startled owners of a classic racing tandem frame and forks. It might double as a useful girder in the roof of the house.

We’ve now been in touch with the seller, who sounds like a lovely old bike nut called Stan. It’s growing on us…

Singlespeed: The Chameleon

Well… first it was a “Franco-Suisse”. At least that’s what the eBay seller said it was. Then I thought it was a Dawes. Now it’s a Falcon…. yes… a Falcon…

Mystery Head Badge remnant

I’ve been baffled a bit by the head badge ever since I got this frame. It’s been completely bare-metalled and repainted in Hammerite using some sort of blunt instrument, so there are absolutely no identifiers on it other than the broken off head badge. When it arrived we quickly realised the bike was not a Carlton (Franco-Suisse) as their head badges are riveted left and right not top and bottom.

Also it shows a distinctly recognisable bunch of flames – the top part of an Olympic torch. I trawled head badge images and was convinced in the end it was a 1960’s Dawes badge thus identifying the frame as a classic Dawes. But I could not find an image of any similar Dawes frame on t’Internet nor anyone who recognised it. In particular I never found a Dawes with the wraparound rear stay like my frame has.

Undeterred, I managed to buy a “flaming torch” Dawes head badge on eBay to replace my broken one but it didn’t quite line up. I assumed it was a slightly different vintage but it seemed very believably similar.

Tonight, after slightly too much wine, my wife was trawling eBay looking for a classic bike frame for her and we saw an old Falcon, beautifully done up as a singlespeed. I spotted the head badge and it was this…. unbelieveable. It really is exactly the same from the top rivet up as my snapped off badge. And Falcons seem to go in for the wraparound rear stay on my bike that I think is so attractive.

Wraparound stay - Falcon Olympic

So, on the whole I’m OK about that. I had wanted a sporty frame with attractive details and it is that – Falcon evidently have a rather sportier heritage than Dawes anyway.I have now trawled further and found a set of photos on a forum that, at last, clearly identifies my frame. Evidently it is a Falcon Olympic, probably from the early 1970’s (although the year is not yet verified).

The bronze coloured one here is the same frame, same lugs, cutouts, everything. Funny thing is, I was originally thinking of maybe a bronze or a gold colour for it when I get it painted. I might just copy that colour.So, I now know that the Falcon Olympic was apparently manufactured with straight gauge Reynolds 531 tubing, hence it is not as light as a butted 531 frame (which I had already figured). But still a reasonably light and strong steel frame, which seems to have been specified with good quality compoents if not the absolute top end. And I really like the lugs…

Falcon Olympic – frame detail

I do have some slight disapppointment as I had wanted to get a bike older than me and this one is not. And the Franco-Suisse (Carlton) dating from around 1960 seemed to be reminiscent of a more bygone era. But this bike does seem to date from Falcon’s peak which was early to mid 1970’s so that’s quite something. But hey-ho. This will be a fun project and I’m just going to make it a good bike rather than bothering with authenticity. It’s been too much stripped and unloved for that. At least now it has its identity back.

Singlespeed Part 6: Wheel Rebuild

Embarrassing to admit, I hadn’t appreciated how different a tubular rim is to a clincher before. The wheels I got for the “Dawes” are tubulars and really I need a reliable everyday rider that I can repair easily. So I’m going to take these rims off and rebuild the Superbe Pro hubs with clinchers. I should be able to sell the tubulars on eBay as they’re good rims (Ambrosio Synthesis Superpro and Mavic GP4).

Dunno if the old Rubino Competition tubular tyres are saleable though…

I have read online advice, spoken to friends and had a good look about and I’ve now ordered a pair of 700c Mavic Open Pro silver rims. Now I need to get some spokes. According to Spocalc I need 290mm spokes for this combo. I’ll probably order Sapim double butted online from www.sdeals.com or from SJS Cycles.

Just browsing about and found this blog about wheel building. There are a few useful pointers in there maybe. UPDATE: Or probably not….

It’s All about the Bike

Just finished reading It’s All about the Bike by Robert Penn. What a fantastic book for a bike anorak like me (thanks to my lovely wife who bought it for me).

In a nutshell the author has done a lot of cycling on many different bikes including round the world via some pretty hard core routes. He decides to build a bike, his perfect bike, from scratch. He has a steel frame hand built by a master craftsman and then travels the UK, Italy and the USA not only sourcing the components but meeting the master craftsmen behind some of the finest components available. On the way through he weaves a brilliantly compelling story about the history of cycling and the history of each of the technologies that make up the modern bicycle.

Totally recommended.

Singlespeed Part 4: Cranks

When I was thinking of going 10 speed on the “Dawes” I had a rush of blood to the head and bought a set of Suntour Superbe Pro cranks with double chainrings. I had been thinking of getting something older like Williams steel cranks or similar, but I saw the Superbe Pros and thought they were beautiful. So I bought them. From New Zealand.

Suntour Superbe Pro Crankset

They ended up costing just under £60 delivered so not terribly cheap. I could have bought cheap one piece Stronglights for half that, although I was considering 10 speed so 2 chainrings were needed. But in the meantime I had also bought the wheels with Superbe Pro hubs so there is a bit of a classic Suntour theme developing here.

Anyway when they arrived they were indeed as beautiful as they looked on the eBay ad (damn you eBay). But the original Sugino chainrings have clearly done a lot of miles and look quite sharkfin like. One had even been put back on wrong way round. It must have changed like a pig.

But by the time they arrived I’d made the singlespeed decision so I needed to fit a new chainring anyway. I’ve been half looking about and today found the chainring I want. I stumbled across Velosolo‘s web site a while back and had meant to go back and look at their chainrings when I had a chance.

Velosolo Chainrings - photo by Velosolo

I reckon these look fab. I probably prefer the gold, the hint of “bling” is possibly just the right touch and may go nicely with the metallic light blue I’m considering for the frame. I think the black may look a bit heavy and out of place as there’ll be no other black apart from the tyres and even they have yellow gum walls.

I wasn’t sure which size chainrings I should be getting but Velosolo have an excellent FAQ section which in turn linked to Sheldon’s B.C.D. explanation – clear and succinct as ever. I now know that the Superbe Pros have a 130mm BCD based on the spacing of 76mm between adjacent chainring bolts.

I like the styling of the Velosolo chainrings and I also like the look and evident quality. And they are British made. Their kit has had a lot of positive comments online and it’s a bit exclusive. But surprisingly, not expensive at a flat £29.95 + £2.50 postage.

After reading their advice on chain widths I’m now considering that it may make sense to go for the wider 1/8″ chainring rather than 3/32″ as it has more driving face and will therefore wear better. I haven’t yet bought rear cogs (or a chain) so I could do this, and maybe the rear cog matters less anyway, it’s cheaper to replace.

So, I’ll muse on this and order the chainring soon once I have decided how many teeth. Then I need to start playing with chainlines and make sure the bottom bracket I have is the right spacing. Luckily (and it was luck not planning) it seems that Campy bottom brackets are the correct taper for Suntour (ISO or near enough) whereas Shimano use JIS, a different taper. Nice one. That means there is a very good chance my “free” BB will do the trick.

Gah… just noticed that Velosolo also sell these little beauties. Another fiver but what a stunning chainring. Less bling, more class I reckon.

A further footnote… I just weighed the Suntours. With double chainrings still fitted they come in at 610g. That’s 50g LESS than the Campagnolo Centaur double crankset I just fitted to the Bianchi. Not bad for 20+ year old technology.

Bianchi Upgrade

The Bianchi really irritated me on the Dunwich Dynamo, the chain was clicking, the shifts were rubbish and the chain fell off once. As I said it’s my own fault, I never properly stripped it down and set it up from scratch as I should have, and it hasn’t been touched in 2 years so I think the chain must have dried out. It hadn’t really done enough miles to wear it out but that was how it was acting. And yes, I did lube it.

So I thought, sod it. I’m going to replace the chain and anything else that needs doing. In the back of my mind was an idea to upgrade the groupset as I’ve never really liked the black painted Campagnolo Xenon / Mirage groupset as fitted. They look cheap and downgrade the look of the bike. So I took a look on eBay (bad idea) and ended up buying the following:

Campag Centaur 10sp Crankset + BB	£36.00
SRAM Chain PC1050 Chain 10sp	£24.99
Campag Centaur 10sp Front Derailleur	£5.50
Campag Centaur 10sp rear derailleur	£31.77
TOTAL	£98.26

OK I know I was only going to do the chain and maybe get a better derailleur, but all this lovely stuff was going so cheap.

Before I fitted them, I weighed the new and old components to see how much I was reducing by. That was my rather thin excuse for getting shiny bits for my bike, although I did want a full size 53t chainring (did have compact 50t).

Relative Weights	Xenon	Centaur
Crankset	724g	660g
Bottom Bracket	412g	350g
Front Derailleur	125g	106g
Rear Derailleur	254g	230g

My wife just pointed out all this makes me a total massive loser. But being a blogger is a bit loserish anyway….

She also pointed out the total weight reduction is probably less than a pint of beer. But the way I see it that’s another half pint I can enjoy and still carry the same overall weight.