What a beautiful day today. A fine day to not go to work. Nursing my hangover, I went back to work on my winter bike. For a million obvious reasons, I don't like driving my car. I much prefer riding my bike, and plan to ride throughout the winter. For such a task, I needed a new bike that I could fully destroy in bad weather. I recently came across a couple bikes that I think will do quite nicely.
While riding home from downtown, I noticed a couple bikes sitting outside my neighbors house in a pile of garbage. I brought my road bike upstairs, and went back down
to take a look at them. Upon closer inspection, I decided both were worthy. Flat tires and a lot of rust, but they looked like they were worth a shot. One, a full suspension missing a front tire, and the other a fully functional 15 speed mountain bike with two flat tires and a lot of rust. The 15 speed is a Nikita Highlander ATB II. I googled for a while, but didn't come up with any information on this brand. Anyway, Her name is Nikki. They were both dusty and cobwebbed, so I figure that they sat in the shed for a few years. I brought both upstairs and promptly filled the tires up.
The next afternoon Nikki's tires were still full! She had good tires, she had just been neglected for so long. I am not interested in sinking much money into this project, so this was a good sign. I took her apart and cleaned both wheels. They were filthy. Stickers were stripped, and the whole frame and fork cleaned up nicely. I also took apart the brakes, cleaned them up and rebuilt them. Most of the parts were in pretty good shape, I just changed out a few bolts and cleaned the nasty parts. Next, I took the chain apart and cleaned the derailer, cassette, and sprockets. Steel wool made short work of the rust on the sprockets and handlebars, and cosmetically, Nikki is pretty clean.
Today is a week later, and I just took the bike on her maiden voyage. The wheels are quite true, and the brakes work well. No funny noises. The only problem I have is that the shifting isn't working smoothly/properly. I can shift through all the gears, but it has some issues with the lower gears. I am going to have to dismantle the shifters and learn how this old shifting system works. Hopefully I can do it all on my own. All in all, I am pretty excited. I saved this bike from the landfill, and it's going to have a lot of use and value when the weather gets cold. It was a nice gift to receive.
