After a really long hiatus, the bike that was bought to restore has come a long way, In between the paint had been stripped back to bare metal, and now has a new paint scheme.…

Gemma has kindly offered to put on a wheel building clinic. The original wheels I got with my Apollo have nice rims and hubs, but the spokes were showing their age.

Enter the issue with rebuilding them for the Apollo. The Apollo was a 14 speed bike, with an old style cluster, the last sprocket screws to the outside of the freewheel. Quick check on Sheldon Brown's page (rest his soul) and confirmed that transplanting was viable. My Shimano R500 rear wheel gave up it's freewheel to be…

Work has begun in earnest to prepare my Apollo for blasting and respray. Only thing left to do is remove the bearing cups from the headset, and off to the blasters for paint removal.

Pictures here

Backed up Fridy's efforts with another 89km today, cut short by Colin trying to nudge the earth out of orbit with his shoulder. Lucky it was only a broken collarbone, large 4wd was watching the road and stopped. No less than 3 motorists offered assistance.

193 total for the long weekend, feeling a little sore today, but did try a couple of sprints from largs to outer harbour (both ways)

53km last Sunday, headed up gorge road towards the dam, didn't make it but went from there into the city and home again.

22km Monday riding to work and home again

104.8 Friday, it was a good friday (despite getting soaked first and then burnt after)

total for the week 179.8 and it's only saturday

Yesterday I went to Trak cycles to have the cleats set up properly on my shoes and to check bike setup. Good news is my cleats were out of position (a reason for my problem) and bike setup was good. Interesting setup. The fore-aft fit of the cleats is done by hand with ruler and texta, the angle and float of the cleat is done by the pedal/computer.

The computer in the bottom of the pedal detects the neutral position of your foot as you pedal, then it calculates the devation from this.…

Got some disappointing news this morning. After my knees being in pain all week from my ride on friday night and failing to even make any attempt at Norton on sunday, I went to the doctor. He has diagnosed me with Chondromalacia Patella. At least 2 weeks off the bike, maybe some physio and worst case scenario surgery.

Up until april last year I cycled with no pain whatsoever…

No i'm not entering the nude bike run, this is another instalment in the chapter that is the Apollo Concorde.

Just got off the phone with John at glass bead technology. A quote for the abrasive blasting of the frame and forks. He recommended garnet as the stripping media to be used, as it yields an extremely fine surface profile, allowing the new paint to adhere properly. So over the weekend the list of jobs…

Friday night, 5 pm. Pacing the stands at Edwardstown, contemplating getting changed into my gear.

5:15: I get changed, get my bike out the car and proceed back to the stands where the registration desk is. I sign in as a come-and-try entrant and pay my money. I am number 9. Turning my jersey around I pin my number on (and am corrected as to its positioning). I reposition it and put on my cycling shoes and helmet.

I take my bike to the gate and using it to prop me up, I sit on…

This pic just shows the chain…

The pump

As the pump was one of the easiest things to remove from the bike, I thought I would check this out first. The first thing I noticed after taking it off was that it had water in it, a pump or two of the handle removed that, and extending the handle all the way revealed a…

Original Pics

Well this is the bike as purchased. Biopace chainrings, alloy pedals with toeclips, downtube shifters (with SIS on the rear), Exage derailleurs, 700C aluminium wheels, Exage brake calipers and levers, and a white and magenta colour scheme. It was also fitted with a Tefal frame pump, without locking lever.…

Intro

This blog is going to detail the current shape and the piece by piece restoration of the 51cm white (with magenta accents) Apollo Concorde I picked up from the 'Bikes for Refugees' garage sale.

Background

I've always wanted a steel frame bike, something to run up to the shops on, something for a little resistance training on my normal routes, something that is a little different.

Next task is to resize and put up the pictures I have of the…