Bicycles

After moving to Lancaster University from East Linton I decided to use a bicycle as my means of getting to work. At Edinburgh I was getting through over £1000 in fuel alone, and these days, with elevated fuel costs, the bicycle policy looks even better as simply getting to work from East Linton would be costing about £1500 per annum.

Lancaster Council are pretty amienable to bicycling, although nowhere near as the Dutch, and are apparently a bicycling demonstration town. This means the Council has all sorts of bicycle friendly policies, and it shows by the extroardinary numbers (for Britain) of cyclists you see on Lancaster's roads and cycle paths. These individuals are mostly from the middle-aged sections of society who see cycling as a good way of getting to work, enjoying the countryside around Lancaster, and getting a bit of all too necessary exercise, in one simple package.

Daily rider

Image of Carrerra Subway bicycle
Image of the gearbox of the Carrera
Image of the front brake of the Carrera 		The first bicycle I had at Lancaster was pulled off the metal scrap heap at North Berwick Recycling Centre. It was a men's mountain bike with a crossbar too high for my legs, worn out derailleur gears, and conventional bicycle brakes which use the wheel rims as a friction surface. The crossbar had obvious problems, I could only get about five gears from a potiential fifteen, and the brakes didn't work in the wet, which with the Lancashire weather was dangerous. I never took any photographs of it, but as soon as it became obvious that I would be cycling on a daily basis I went looking for a new bike.

What I wanted was a low crossbar, proper gears, and brakes which stood a chance in the rain. The lycra gussetted brigade who staff Lancaster's boutique bicycle shops seemed fixated on carbon fibre racing machines with derailleur gears, high crossbars, and brakes which acted on the wheel rims. I was told that a bicycle of my specification did not exist, and indeed could not exist. After pointing out that several perfectly good braking and gearing systems were availible for bicycles I was told that there was no demand for such abominations.

Finally I went to Halford's Bike Hut on the off chance they might have something sensible in. They did, only one mind, but something which fitted my specification. It was a Carrera Subway, and cost about £400 which is about the minimum for a worthwhile bike these days. It has a nice low crossbar, Shimano roller brakes, and a Shimano Nexus 8 speed gearbox on the back.

The only maintanance has been the odd squirt of lubricant into the brakes and onto the chain, and the annual re-indexing of the gears, which is really easy. This bicycle gets ridden everyday come rain or shine, and we get a lot of rain here, so I tend to use spray on Waxoyl on anything likely to corrode. It looks terrible, and you don't want to touch it, but the treatment works really well. I have also had to take apart the roller brakes, these are a bit of a job. Here is a reassembly guide.

Moulton bicycle

The roads leading up to Lancaster University are a little rough, and those on the Campus are terrible. So much so that riding a bicycle without suspension gets dangerous. Suspended bicycles exist, but tend, as with most bicycles in British shops, to be aimed at sporting use. What you actually need is a couple of inches travel on both back and front. In addition, if you have suspension you can run hard tyres, and have small wheels to get the rotating mass down a bit.

I was going to build something, but, as it happens, such a machine already exists. The Moulton is a lovely little machine. Unfortunately a new one costs about £1400, and you would have to spend a fair amount to get a proper gearbox and brakes on it. However, they have been in production since 1962, and old F-framed ones can be bought for £50.

The photograph to the right shows the dismantled Moultion MkI I bought from my cousin. It is not in good condition, but after nearly 50 years, and from the wear of the wheel rims it has been used for a good deal of that time, one wouldn't expect it to be. A great guide to the F-frame Moultons can be found here. 		Image of a MkI Moulton in pieces

Front forks

Image of Moulton front forks
Detail image of Moulton front forks
Image of the front forks of the Moulton with new components 		The Mk.I Moulton F-frame front suspension, and in fact all Moulton F-framed bikes, had an arrangement of sliding splines to allow movement and steering. The exact components for which are featured in the topmost photograph to the left.

The guide to the F-frame front suspension is accurate, and gives good advice. However, for the very early MkIs what appears to be a slotted machine screw holding the steering tube and rebound spring in is not a screw at all. I don't know what it is, nor have I any idea how they got it in there, but it is not threaded at all. The only way of removing it is to drill it out. I used an expendable drill silver soldered into 12" of hex bar, and a guide bush made from some scrap brass to keep it on the non-screw head.

This allows you to separate the steering tube and forks, but the drilling process makes a mess of the rebound spring guide tube. As that is welded in the only option is to drill that out as well. I used a 16mm long masonary drill in an SDS drill, and just used it to remove the guide tube. This leaves you with a severly mangeled assembly seen here in the centre photograph to the left.

Designing new components, and machining them up, is relatively easy compared to getting it all apart. The replacement rebound spring tube was machined from solid, and is seen on the bottom photograph in the top left corner. Reassembly is a pain as it has to go back together in exactly the right order, but it will go back together if you follow this guide, with additional information from this guide.

The only problem I now have is which grease to use to lubricate the rebuilt forks. In there is steel, aluminium, rubber, and nylon, so the lubricant has to be something which won't rot the rubber or nylon. The guides recommend Molyslip, or some grease used for car CV joints. I may try some formulation such as Morris K76 Red Rubber grease.

Rear swinging arm

The rear suspension was in a slightly worse state than that of the front. All the problems of seized bearings, and fatigue cracking seen in this guide were present. So far I have silver soldered a patch across the fatigue cracking to spread the loads, and so act as a repair, and I have added in some 3mm plate to spread the suspension load further across the arm. The Mk.Is were brazed, and so I stuck with a compatible method for attaching more metal. You might have problems if you tried to weld and didn't remove the pre-existing braze, which in the case of my swinging arm would entail dismantling it completely. Image of a MkI Moulton swingarm
Detail image of a MkI Moulton swingarm