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After all the riding around near my grandparents house and at Stony Creek a bunch of times this last week my bike had become pretty dirty. The area inside the rim around the spokes looked particularly bad. While it really wasn’t that bad compared to some I’ve seen photos of, the built up crap in the cassette and wheels and down tube (and everywhere else, it seems) had me wanting to wash it. So, I did. A bunch of time was spent with car wash soap in a bucket, brushes, some diluted degreaser, and a few rags to get the bike nicely clean. After concentrating on the frame and various other bits I gave the drivetrain itself a detailed cleaning.
After the rear cassette was shining brightly and the chain properly oiled I took the rear brake caliper bolts out one at a time and applied some Loctite Blue to hopefully hold them more solidly. I’d rather not have the problem I had last time, or the inverse, where my rear brakes would have simply stopped functioning. (Because of how the front calipers bolt on, this can’t really happen there.)
The rear frame was then put back on, and I was actually able to identify the source of the extra noise while riding over bumps. It seems that it wasn’t the bag / rack, but instead the place I had chosen to put my pump was rattling against the rack itself and had even worn a small hole in my bag. I repositioned the pump into the middle of the bag and wrapped the extra tools in two rags to both take up space and give me useful rags. A test ride around the neighborhood up and down some curbs (and managing to slightly bunny hop a few times) I didn’t hear anything more than chain slap, so I guess things must be better. (I do need to build a chainstay guard to eliminate this, but that can come later.)
If things go as planned, tomorrow