Post-modern Dog

Sunday 28 October 2007
Exciting day today. Spent all morning stripping the chassis of the new bike down to its bare bones. As it has always been a race bike, as apposed to a converted road bike, there was not a lot of road grim and oil to deal with. The front forks had already been removed and stripped, so the main focus of todays exercise was the rear suspension and especially its linkage. I took plenty of pictures prior to starting the work as its very easy to get carried away and end up with a big pile of bits and no idea how to put them back together again. As I was only dealing with the beam frame and the swinging arm it was easier to work on by putting the whole lot on a bench, upside down. I didn't have any workshop manual to work from but it was a very logical layout, and as long as I keep all the bits in separate containers it should (famous last words) be easy to re-assemble. I was very pleased to find, after first testing for any obvious unwanted movement, that it was all very tight and un-molested. I had previously noticed a few rounded nuts and the use of inappropriate tools on other bits of the bike; but I suppose its to be expected on a sixteen year old bike thats been around the block a few times. All of the nuts, bolts, spacers and bearings were in very good condition. There was only one bolt that was slight problem to extract but the application of plenty of WD40 soon had it moving. So now I have a gleaming pile of alloy parts and the extracted suspension unit. The suspension unit, of unknown origin but having adjustment for damping, rebound and pre-load, is going to be refurbished by ******** and should do us for a while. That only left the removal of the swinging arm itself and the chassis was stripped down to its major components.
Upon inspection all of the suspension bearings were in very good condition, and although it had been my intention to replace them all I think I will just grease them and re-assemble.This will at least keep some money in the fast depleting bank balance, which I'm sure will soon disappear elsewhere.
I called this entry Post-modern Dog as I think the bare frame looks like a dog!