Realized that between mountain biking last week and commuting this week, I hadn’t been forced into dealing with the nail-through-tire on the Quickbeam. But, this weekend is shaping up to have some decent weather, and it appears that my schedule will allow a “longish” ride on Saturday. Since I washed my hair earlier this week, there was nothing more invigorating to do on a Friday night than clean and prep the bike. Goodness me, I need a life, sometimes…
The nail still poked happily through the edge of the tread and sidewall of the tire. After removing the wheel from Quickbeam, I thought it would be a simple thing to pull the nail without tools. Granted, I probably don’t have the most monster vise-grip manly-man fingers in my neighborhood, but it suprised me when the nail actually resisted a reasonably concerted effort. Luckily, I do have tools, and some of ‘em are good for grabbing things.
Sharp little sucker…
The damage to the reasonably new Pasela TourGuard Kevlar-bead 32’s was pretty danged minimal. I could find the holes with a metal probe, but there didn’t seem to be damage to the threads. So, I took a little “Zap-A-Gap” (which is a Krazy-type glue which fills gaps, where Krazyglue itself needs a smoothly mating surface to work) and daubed it into the holes. It seems to cover things pretty well, but didn’t harden immediately. I decided to retreat to my one of my earlier tires - the Pasela wire-bead which came stock on the Quickbeam. My plan is to let the pierced tire dry overnight and then see how well the holes are plugged.
While everything was apart, I recalled that the chain was still original equipment. Running the “low-low” gearing now had the rear hub pretty much at the edge of the fork end. As the chain was lying out, I measured it…
Starting with the zero point on the edge of the rivet, by the time we get to 12 pair, it oughta be sitting right about 12″
Um… that’d be a “no”. (Dig the groovey “Scooby-Do” paper towel backdrop!) So, the Quickbeam gets a new chain. I’ll have to see what kind of mileage that last one managed. It’s a pretty big beefy thing, and I’m replacing it with an 8 speed SRAM from the pile - using the SRAM link, too. After installing it, the hand-cranked test felt pretty smooth - not that it was chunky before, but it seemed a bit lighter in getting things up to speed. We’ll see how it holds up. (I’ve been using the SRAM 8 speed chain on my fixed and singlespeed bikes, as well as the 8-geared cross bike.)
That’s all for now.