Date: 28th January 2012
Trek 1200 SL maintenance day

Today was was the first time since buying the Trek 1200 SL last weekend that I was able to get out in the garage and assess the state of the bike that I bought at an admittedly bargain price.

I had already clocked the worn headset and bottom bracket last week as I could feel loads of play in both areas but decided to start with a bit of soap and water. The bike wasn't too dirty but washing it again highlighted that the frame it quite badly scuffed and scratched and showing the signs of poor maintenance and a hard commuting life.

After a good wash the first thing to focus on was the bottom bracket. I removed the 105 chainset and gave this a good clean and then focused on the bottom bracket to assess the current state and sure enough one side of the bearings are really notchy and need replacing. Why is it by the way that it's always the non-drive side bearings that go first?

I'm looking on Ribble Cycles site and they have some good prices for 105 bottom brackets so I will buy a whole new BB rather than replacing the bearings using the bearing puller I share with Huey (come to think of it I haven't seen it for a while. Here's hoping that Huey has it...). The chainset teeth are looking fairly worn too but there's a few more miles in them yet before need of replacement.

So I have left that dismantled for the time being and the next thing was for a degrease of the chain and cassette both of which were absolutely black and caked with grease, grime and general road detritus.The cassette was proving a tough one to clean and so I took it off the hub for a thorough clean.

Uh-oh! I thought as the cassette lockring was only on hand tight and I could feel play in the rings and then the largest 7 rings wouldn't come off. Turns out Matt my old buddy has been riding the bike with a loose lockring for a while and the individual rings have bitten into the hub leaving a lovely castellated appearance with sharp ridges (and you don't see the word castellated often enough nowadays).

Not much for it but to file the ridges down and after a thorough clean I replaced the rings and tighten securely. It certainly looks the D.B's now but may prove troublesome if I use it in anger.

Finally it was the turn of the headset and I was hoping I could get away with a service but those tell tale signs of rust coloured stains coming out of the bottom of the headset and heavily pitted cups suggested it was worse than that and it proved to be true. Totally dry loose bearings many of which were missing from the bearing holder mean that this too has been left dismantled. I was considering just replacing the bearings but I think it's going to be easier to replace the whole thing so I popped out the bearing cups using my enforcer tool and I will put in an order for a bottom bracket and headset some time this week as soon as I can figure out what the best replacement for the unbranded aheadset is.

So for the time being having bought a whole bike I am left with a dismantled bike scattered around my garage. But it's on the way to recovery and it's a good job I have two other road bikes to commute on.

Deficit Denier 2012
My annual target is 12000 km

My daily target is 32.88 km

My target distance for today is 1150.68 km

My actual distance ridden is 1165 km

This means: I am ahead of the target distance by 14.32 km

Previous years ridden:
2011: 10,927km
2010: 8,000 km
2009:c. 6,000 km

	Web www.diaryofamountainbiker.com

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