Bicycle upgrade

Today I finally fixed/upgraded my bicycle.  If you remember from last January and my collarbone accident my chain was starting to slip. It has only gotten worse wince then. I've had the new parts for many months now but always put off the upgrade. My bicycle still worked though not as efficiently as it could be.   I knew the upgrade would take much of a day, would be messy and greasy, and would be frustrating.  Yup.  It was.

I replaced:

• the chain,
• freewheel,
• front crank-arms and chain-ring, and
• the rear derailleur.

All were very worn out.

Because my bicycle is from 1983 none of the original parts are made anymore.  So I had to find replacements that could work.  While I had to make adjustments to get some of the new parts to work properly, it appears all but the front chain-ring was a good match.  The front chain-ring is different enough that my front derailleur only works with two of the three chain-rings.  It will do for now.

The hardest part was removing my pedals from the old crank-arms.  Steel pedals spindles into aluminum crank-arms can corrode and bond together more tightly.  Also the thread pattern is such that as one pedals it works to tighten.  That is why the right pedal is the normal clockwise to tighten, counter-clockwise to loosen.  And the left pedal is the opposite.  If the left pedal was the normal thread pattern the pedal would screw off the bicycle as one pedaled.

Since the pedals had been on the crank-arms for years (maybe decades?!), I had a hard time getting my pedals off my crank-arms.  I had to use a cheater bar on the wrench for extra leverage and a blowtorch on the crank-arm to expand the crank-arm slightly.  Then with effort I unscrewed the pedals.

The bicycle rides very nice now.  No energy is lost while pedaling.  I should have done this a while ago, but I then remember why I delayed the upgrade.