Recent content by jim haseltine

I will normally utter a greeting such as 'morning' or 'afternoon' depending on the time of day if I've got breath when either passing somebody or being passed. People or groups heading towards me will get a wave or a raised hand even though I'm a pretty fair judge of who I'll get a response from...

Huret mechs are bomb-proof until they get damaged so try giving them a deep clean, fit a new chain and freewheel, new cables and some metal gear levers as those plastic ones were never really any good. If the brake calipers are Weinmann or Dia-Compe then cleaned up, lubricated with new blocks...

Depends. If the teeth on the chainset are still in good nick and the rear mech isn't shot then just replace the freewheel and chain.

You can/will get galvanic corrosion with Au alloy and titanium. I'd use a quality anti-seize between the Ti, the cup and the head tube even if it's just a bike to hack around on.

Not all Chinesium stuff has long delivery lead times. A lot (well, some) Chinese students 'attending' UK universities run off-shore distribution for companies that also trade on AliExpress and Temu. Additionally, don't believe company names and web addresses. Normally I'm careful about stuff but...

No, Look at the top of the picture - compared to the rest of the hub there's a thinner slot at the 12 o'clock position and then a wider ridge to the left of it, I'd say that's 8-speed EXA-drive.

I've had my wrist slapped - the name of the shop is actually 'Moser Cicli', not 'Cicli Moser'. It's not unusual for me to transpose words in my native English so it's no surprise that I do it with a language in which I have no formal training. The great Francesco's vineyard is Villa Warth which...

Moser is a common surname in the Tyrol region of southern Austria/northern Italy. There is Cicli Moser and there was Cicli F Moser, both originally in Trento. The first was a shop opened in the 1930s by Ermanno Moser after he retired from professional racing while the second was a bigger...

My SOP for a new-to-me frame is to firstly run a round file vertically down the inside of the seat tube against the clamping slot to chamfer the edges of the slot. I also never, ever, use grease on an alloy seat pin, I always use a medium or heavy oil because I've seen the wrong sort of grease...

Stripped mine with a 'wonder how this comes apart?' approach, laid the bits out in the correct orientation and sequence then put them back together with the Haynes 'Refitting is the reverse of removal' method and a bit of fiddling.

When more 'fashionable' continental rear mechs made Benelux models less desirable a lot of frames had Cyclo dropouts trimmed to enable fitting of newer designs. If you were to remove the forks there's a possibility that there is a tubing roll-stamp visible on the steerer - only a slight one...

The slightly asymmetrical lower edge to the righthand rear dropout suggests to me that a gear hanger was cut off at some time. Wasn't 26.8mm one of the seat post sizes for 531 plain gauge, or am I thinking of 26.4?

I suspect that would be rather awkward to change gear and possibly dangerous should the rider have to dismount forwards in a hurry.

Info about the different Campagnolo freehubs here. I think there's something strange on that Ebay. It's certainly a 1990s hub as the axle is threaded but the the curved valley freehub spline pattern looks very much like the later 9/10/11 pattern that was introduced sometime after 2000. It's...

As far as I recall, the drive side bearings on Campag 7&8 speed freehubs weren't shielded as the freehub body did the work. Later 8 speed hubs had a drive side bearing shield and (I think) a different O ring. The early O-ring code is #7100083. Later O-ring (which may be the same - who knows?) is...