Now that Summer has finally started in Estonia, I brought my dear single-speed bicycle out of its Summer apartment. I had been really excited for a really long time about riding it again, but after I got on, something didn’t feel right.
Needless to say, when your bicycle has just stood around for almost half a year, it needs some fixing up. But fixing up ain’t cheap, so I thought I would postpone it a bit.
Some time later, I got access to a water hose and as my bicycle was really dirty, I hosed it down pretty good, not knowing that the water would get everywhere and eventually de-oilify and de-grease my bicycle so it became squeaky and crunchy.
I did not want to take my bicycle to be serviced, because it has gotten really expensive, so I thought I would do it myself. I applied some trusty WD-40 to everything (in hindsight, a stupid mistake) and went on with my day. However, the bicycle was still squeaky and crunchy, especially from the back hub.
As I still didn’t want to take it to be serviced, I thought “to hell with it” and just went at it myself. Looking back at my childhood, I loved taking things apart, but never really remembered how to put them back together. This time, I made a bangin’ schematic to remember how everything goes.
I took apart the back hub and found a lot of scary gunk in there. Cleaned it up very nicely and when the time came to grease it again, I did not have the grease necessary for it.
Crap.
I put the hub back together, went to the store and asked for some grease. They didn’t have grease, but the bike mechanic in the store was nice enough to give me some in a small zip-lock bag. Success!
Went back home, took the wheel apart again, put it back together. As good as new!
Right? Nope.
The back wheel a lot of play to it. And I didn’t really know what was the correct way of putting the hub back together. I then checked out some YouTube videos, took it apart again, then put it together again. Didn’t work.
Waiting for next instructions from my brain.