W
whitedog
Guest
I shoulda stood in bed...
Today was one of those days. It started at about 2AM when one of the dogs jumped on the bed with me. Normally, this doesn't bother me but this time her landing spot happened to be my stomach. In the process of evicting said dog after attempting to catch my breath, one of the slats on the bed broke. which started a chain reaction resulting in my sleeping the rest of the night on a mattress on the floor. Not a restful night.
I knew that I would have to go to the hardware store to get some plywood to fix the bed but decided to see if I'd need anything else for the bike project first. I have the sprocket fastened to the rear wheel stretched the chain across to the motor and around the drive gear to check alignment. As it turns out, with the teeth of the rear sprocket towards the wheel, the chain rubs the tire and I have plenty of clearance between the chain and the frame. I think that I'll have to turn the sprocket over. Oh, joy. I get to fish nuts through the spokes one more time.
While I had the chain on the bike, I marked where I had to break the chain to shorten it to the right length. I then clamped the chain in a vise and used a pin punch to knock the pin out of the link all the while muttering the mantra "Don't cut the chain too short...don't cut the chain too short...don't cut the ...." You can guess where all this is going can't you? Yep. I was off by half a link. I could add another master link and everything would be fine. I then went to the lumber yard to pick up the wood to fix the bed slats and to pick up another master link for the chain. Home Depot, Lowes and several other hardware stores and motorcycle shops resulted in exactly no help. The hardware stores sent me to motorcycle shops. The motorcycle shops sent me to bike shops. The bike shops sent me to hardware stores. The devil with it. I'll order it on line from one of the group's sponsors and endure the wait.
In the meantime, I did want to sleep tonight (without dogs jumping on my stomach, thank you very much. I had told the guy at Home Depot to cut the sheet of plywood to the size I needed. I know that the saws at the lumber yard aren't exactly precision instruments but do you think that they could cut things to the nearest inch or so? I had to recut everything when I got home. At least they cut it too big rather than too small.
The bed is back together and the wheel is off the bike so I can flip the rear sprocket tomorrow. I had hoped to get the bike done this weekend but I guess that it was not to be.
Stay tuned for our next riveting episode whenever I get a new chain and some extra master links for it.
Today was one of those days. It started at about 2AM when one of the dogs jumped on the bed with me. Normally, this doesn't bother me but this time her landing spot happened to be my stomach. In the process of evicting said dog after attempting to catch my breath, one of the slats on the bed broke. which started a chain reaction resulting in my sleeping the rest of the night on a mattress on the floor. Not a restful night.I knew that I would have to go to the hardware store to get some plywood to fix the bed but decided to see if I'd need anything else for the bike project first. I have the sprocket fastened to the rear wheel stretched the chain across to the motor and around the drive gear to check alignment. As it turns out, with the teeth of the rear sprocket towards the wheel, the chain rubs the tire and I have plenty of clearance between the chain and the frame. I think that I'll have to turn the sprocket over. Oh, joy. I get to fish nuts through the spokes one more time.
While I had the chain on the bike, I marked where I had to break the chain to shorten it to the right length. I then clamped the chain in a vise and used a pin punch to knock the pin out of the link all the while muttering the mantra "Don't cut the chain too short...don't cut the chain too short...don't cut the ...." You can guess where all this is going can't you? Yep. I was off by half a link. I could add another master link and everything would be fine. I then went to the lumber yard to pick up the wood to fix the bed slats and to pick up another master link for the chain. Home Depot, Lowes and several other hardware stores and motorcycle shops resulted in exactly no help. The hardware stores sent me to motorcycle shops. The motorcycle shops sent me to bike shops. The bike shops sent me to hardware stores.
The devil with it. I'll order it on line from one of the group's sponsors and endure the wait.In the meantime, I did want to sleep tonight (without dogs jumping on my stomach, thank you very much
. I had told the guy at Home Depot to cut the sheet of plywood to the size I needed. I know that the saws at the lumber yard aren't exactly precision instruments but do you think that they could cut things to the nearest inch or so? I had to recut everything when I got home. At least they cut it too big rather than too small.The bed is back together and the wheel is off the bike so I can flip the rear sprocket tomorrow. I had hoped to get the bike done this weekend but I guess that it was not to be.
Stay tuned for our next riveting episode whenever I get a new chain and some extra master links for it.
