As you know, I recently found myself in receipt of a Surprise Marinoni:
It was clearly a very fine bicycle, but it required an overhaul:
Besides needing cables and tape and brake hoods and the usual stuff an old bike needs, the drivetrain was in an advanced state of wear, due to which it was difficult to ascertain the actual condition of the shifters. Moreover, Campagnolo has long ago abandoned 8-speed like an illegitimate child, and as such it is just about the least-supported drivetrain in existence. So I had a decision to make: do I stick with the evolutionary dead end that is 8-speed Campy and hope it all works, or do I just start from scratch with either Shimano STI or downtube shifters? Ultimately, I opted for the former in the hope that those classic pointy-topped Ergos still had some life in them.
Yesterday’s weather was positively delightful. Nevertheless, I opted to stay in and work on the ‘Noner rather than go for a ride. Having just recovered from a bout of what I suspect may have been food poisoning (but which also could have been prolonged exposure to roadies and/or Spinergys), I figured resting and tinkering instead of riding was a wise choice; however, in retrospect, a ride would probably have been far less taxing. In any event, in the spirit of optimism that naturally accompanies being able to stand and hold down food again, I laid out my replacement parts and got to work:
Naturally I started by stripping the mummified cockpit:
And de-cabling the shifters and brakes:
I remain after all these years a lousy bicycle mechanic, but I’ve still managed to learn a few lessons along the way. One of them is to to always take a picture of where the cables go:
Even though it’s usually fairly obvious, it never hurts to have a reference when you’re putting in new ones:
Another is to always use shitloads of grease on all fittings:
This can save you lots of trouble later on–like when you find your ferrules have seized in your cable stops:
I was not surprised to find this was the case on the ‘Noner:
Fortunately I was able to tap them out without too much difficulty:
Also seized were the adjusters on the downtube cable stops:
I couldn’t get the one on the right moving, and I couldn’t get the cable out of the one on the left at all, so eventually I just replaced them both.
With the cockpit finally stripped…
…I gave the shifters a lube bath:
First I hit them with some Liquid Wrench, then I followed up with some Tri-Flow. I was completely winging it here and have no idea whether or not this approach was prudent. In fact, according to the experts, it was exactly the wrong thing to do:
However, I’ll never actually rebuild these things since the parts are no longer available, and they seem to run through the clicks nicely post-spritz, so maybe I’ll get lucky.
This was not to be an atomic-level overhaul–given the overall condition of the bike I wasn’t going to completely flush every bearing on the bike or anything like that–but I did figure I might as well open up the headset and stick a little more grease in there:
So that’s what I did:
I also pulled the crank and the bottom bracket (English threads, in case you were wondering):
I’d noticed a bit of play in the right crankarm the last time I rode the bike, so I hoped the taper wasn’t damaged. With the bottom bracket cartridge out I also noted that the spindle ran a little rough. Then there were the chainrings, which were visibly worn. Since I didn’t have spare rings or a spare bottom bracket for this crank I considered just replacing the whole thing since I had another crank and bottom bracket that would work just fine, but again, given the overall condition of the bike I figured I might as well just put it all back on and hope I can squeeze a little more life out out it:
When you’re working on a bike it’s always the seemingly simple stuff that ends up taking the most time. Like, given the condition of the bike I fully anticipated having to struggle eternally to get the bottom bracket out or something like that, but I just assumed the cassette swap would only take a few minutes. This was not the case:
Firstly, the cassette came out of the box all loose, which was not a good sign. Secondly, putting the cogs on is really annoying, since while 8-speed Campagnolo is sort of like Hyperglide in that the splines are irregular so you can only put the cog on one way, the irregularity is kind of hard to see so you end up trying to put each cog on like five times until you finally get it. Of course Campagnolo eventually changed this by moving to this deranged spline pattern, which I also find confounding because it’s too irregular:
Then again neither my eyesight nor my coordination are what they once were.
Then once I got the cogs all on I found the lockring didn’t quite seem to engage that well with the Campy lockring tool, so I just switched to the Campy lockring, only to find that when tightened the whole cassette was still loose on the freehub body. Figuring I must have missed a spacer, I found another thin one in the box, but it didn’t quite fit onto the freehub body–like it was a half a hair too small in diameter. Maybe it fits a Miche hub? I dunno, but it was at this point I began to wonder if the cassette was loose in the box because someone had returned it in disgust.
Fishing through my drawers of crap, I tried to find a spacer that would fit, but I came up with nothing. So then I tried the new cogs with the spacers from the old Campy cassette, just in case, but that didn’t work either. By this time I’d put the cassette on like three or four times, clumsily jigsaw-puzzling each cog on one at a time, and lemme tell you with eight cogs that really begins to add up. So finally I took a spacer from an old Shimano cassette, stuck it between the small cog and the lockring where it wouldn’t have to fit over the actual freehub body, and that seemed to do it:
The cassette seems to be snug and despite the extra width the lockring clears the frame, so hopefully that solves the problem:
It was at this point I was forced to admit to myself I was not going to get the bike overhauled in one session, so after reinstalling the cranks I hung up the ‘Noner for another day.
To be continued.
