Way back a while ago, I told my buddy that I'd fix his daughters bike for him. A year went past and then we mentioned it again. I said sure, bring it over. So he did. Yesterday. I'm moving this weekend and I knew that if I didn't get it done right away, it'd be a while so I decided to put in a late one last night to get this off my plate.
I was told it was a bent derailleur hanger. No biggie I thought. I twisted it (with incredible precision I must add) back to straight and went to put the derailleur back on.
Precision adjustments look just like this
This is was it looked like. Completely twisted! Unusable. No biggie there either, I dug around my parts bin and found one that would work with the Shimano grip shift and off we go.
Just a bit of a twist huh
Mounting the wheel was a breeze. Give it a spin, and holy crap! 2" of wobble in one specific spot! Off it goes and up on the truing stand. After getting no-where with it, I thought I'd fight fire with fire. I loosened off a select few spokes, propped it up on a two by four, and jumped on it. Then I stomped the liven crap out of it. To my surprise, it was pretty close to good. Back on the stand and we have an uber straight wheel again.
Once again, everything going back together and while I was trying to dial in the shifting, I notice that there was a certain spot that the chain seemed to jump like crazy. After looking down it, I saw a major twist in a couple of the links! What's more, the cassette had some bent teeth! I've never seen a bike damaged like this from anything other being run over by a car!
I was able to remove the bad links and end up with correct chain length as the derailleur I installed was shorter and had much smaller idler wheels. I took a hammer and pin punch and tapped the cassette teeth back to straight (cassette off the wheel of course) and it actually worked!
After re-adjusting all cables, brake pads and lubing up the chain, I was absolutely amazed at how smooth this thing ran. Once I realized everything that was messed up, I wondered if it was even salvageable. Especially being a Raleigh Matterhorn, which is pretty much a BSO.
Pardon the mess, I'm moving
After letting him know that it was done, I found out that indeed, it had been run over by a car while backing out of the driveway. Good thing I didn't know that when I started. I probably would have decided that the bike was unfixable.
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