Time for a face lift

My old livery on the van has been almost 10 years now. We changed our logo last year so time to get the van livery updated with a bit of a face lift. Hope you all like it.

Trek Rail 5 rear linkage service:

Tried out the Lebycle bearing puller but it was not suitable for odd shaped frames, which most full suspension bikes are. Designed with curves for the look not serviceability. So needed to use the Enduro Bearings kit instead. The Noble wheels bearing puller and even punch and hammer for certain bearings. This job can be tough.

But once the new set of bearings are put in, courtesy of @aire_velo_bearings,the rear linkage comes alive. There was a knocking my client noticed and it turns out a spacer in the main pivot was missing.

Nipple Holder: I finally got to use my (ahem) nipple holder by @chrisheerschap

I love Chris's 3D printed designs and this small tool I had wanted to use for a long while now. Was gonna use it on the Campag Levante wheel rebuild with the SON dynamo a month ago, but there were too many nipples, but I only had one nipple holder and the Campag nipples were 13G not 14G that this is made for.

Anyway a wheel came in with a wonky spoke so perfect chance to use it. Worked like a dream,are replacing a spoke much easier and not having to take the tyre off.

New tool day: Lebycle bearing puller tool. This was a AliExpress purchase. Comes in a half decent small briefcase. Made of stainless steel with some chrome plated collets of various sizes that covers most bicycle bearing inner diameters. It is more for hubs than say frame bearings or even BB bearings as the collets range from 6-20mm only.

I say it isn't so useful for frame bearings is that the receiving cup is quite wide and most full suss frames do not have such wide flat area around bearing for it to work.

The tool can feel a little finicky to setup, the collets are reverse threaded (left hand), use 10mm spanner to tighten. Insert the tool with collet through bearing. Then use a 5mm lone hex wrench to drive a pin through the middle of the collet to expand and grip the bearing.

Then wind down the inner handle and put the receiving cup in place between the handle and the bearing. Tighten down a little then start turning outside handle and it will wind and pull the bearing in, simples... But can be tight.

The tool has an extra feature that can change the collet to a 3 prong pin collet to grip outer bearing cages, for those moments when the bearing breaks apart.
I was going to show this feature in a video however it didn't work out. I actually ended up losing one of the pins I needed for the small bearing I did break! It's around somewhere, just so small that I can't find it....

This is a decent tool and if it was made for a bigger brand like say Park tool or Abbey it would cost a lot more than through AliExpress. I do wonder when I will break the collets though....

City on Fire: en route to Breakfast club this morning

SON dynamo front wheel rebuild with Campag Levante rim. Light installation.

SON edelux lights are brill but the Brother Kepler frame was not ideal for this. Bike packing bike with mudguard was not fully designed to have dynamo light setup. The fork had a port at the bottom for the wire to be internal but no port higher up for the wire to come out. The mudguards used a bolt to hold the top up and had a big rubber and steel washer to hold it tight without scratching the fork or mudguard. However it stopped the wire coming out to the light mounted on the fork crown. So I cut a channel out of the rubber washer to allow the wire through between the crown and washer. One light solved. Also had to cut the coaxial plug from the wire to feed it through the port, then resolder the plug back onto the wire.
Next the rear light arrived, this time the rack version not the seat post one.
The tumble weed rack has a nice port next to the light mount and wire can run out through the end of the tubing. Nice. But then there was no nice was to run the wire to the front, no ports.
The non intrusive way was to wrap the wire around the top tube. But that looked terrible, but risk of damage. So I had to drill ports into the top tube to internal route the wire. I almost drilled 2 holes on the seat stay to hide more of the wire. But didn't want to drill small tubing.
Had to set the frame upside down to gain position to drill on the underside of the tube. Stepped up the drilling from 2mm to 7mm using 0.5mm increments. Bit of filing with rotary tool to clean up the hole. Then used Di2 wire grommets to hole the wire and stop crap getting in.
Then crimped on some connectors and voila all done.

Really wished Brother had designed this in, hate having to drill a frame to do internal routing but needs must. Turn out nice though. Had to use some coloured tape to hold the wire between the rack and top tube, but heyho.