WANTED: Gears mechanism to upgrade from one speed! lol

I've just been looking at the shimano 9 speed shifters and derailers to see if I can find them in black to match the bike, do you find that with your setup 7 is enough? Do you find yourself changing up and down quite often?

Oops sorry! X7 is the model isn't it! Just seen a nice black sram 9 speed on eBay that will suit it better I'll look for the rest in sram cheers mate :£

i run a 12-25 cassette
and a 36t chainring
but i only use the bottom (small) 6 or so cogs, if that

you might be different though

did you win the stuff on ebay?
you can get black from either brand

caustic soda is supposed to be bad news for aluminium also


once you buy your setup you can always sell on the ss stuff

With a aluminium frame it would be a very bad idea to use caustic soda. It will eat way at the seatpost but it will also eat away at the frame.
Caustic is fine on steel frames, although it does strip paint too, but it's very damaging to aluminium.

Turn the frame/bike upside down, take out one of the bottle bolts on the seat tube and pour plenty of PlusGas penetrating fluid in so it fills the seatpost area.
If the bike has no bottle bosses on the seatpost (which it looks like it may not) then you'll need to remove the chainset and bottom bracket to pour in PlusGas from there.

Leave it to soak overnight and then try again by twisting the saddle and seatpost. Once the corrosion breaks then it's fairly straight forward to remove the post.

Whatever you do though, don't use caustic soda...

Oh and a 9 speed Deore set up would work fine. Plenty of good functional Deore stuff about on ebay to be had for not very much money.
It looks like your front brake lever and hydraulic hose are damaged too though.

Hey, oh god ok, I must have taken bad advice there I'll go out to the garage now and see the result of the caustic soda uh-oh! It just shows that you can't always trust the Internet!

The deore stuff I bidded on has 5 days left and only 99p each so yeah very cheap at the moment I'll get some plusgas today, I tried Halfords yesterday but they had nothing, I might have to order it online from your link

Thanks for all your help on here this has to be one of the friendliest forums ive joined I think!


Edit- found it in eBay thanks and purchased!!! http://cgi.ebay.co.uk/PLUSGAS-PLUS-GAS- ... dZViewItem

As mentioned Caustic soda is the right stuff for shifting stuck aluminium seatposts from steel frames. The reason being it eats away at the aluminium. Using it in an aluminium frame is a bad idea.

Best bet is the penetrating fluid over a good length of time, with occasional checks to see if the seal has broken.

Just rushed out to the garage in my dressing gown lol to check it! All looks ok, it's just a little bit shinyer on the seatpost

Also yeah thanks my brakes do need a new front cable and pads too I've ordered them also

I'll report back when I've tried the plusgas

Cheers
James

drystonepaul":3w0nc5wq said:

It looks like your front brake lever and hydraulic hose are damaged too though.

Click to expand...

the kink in your front brake cable - (its a hose ), looks like where it has been cable tied to the forks
i think were just at the wrong angle in the pic and it suggests severe kinkiness when in fact its not?

if it doesnt leak from the kink (or anywhere else) it shouldnt need replacing


and the tektro auriga comps, the lever can pop out as its just a semi-tight ball and cup fitting

hey, the lever isnt fixed in, and all i can see in the hole is a cup....
i did however...
find...
in the bag that the brakes came in.... this.....



is it some kind of circlip? it might not be related to the brakes lol! but it looks like it might be a retaining clip of some sort...

im also missing the bolts that hold the brake pads into the calipers



do you know what thread size they are? i searched for "tektro bolts" on ebay but there isnt any, but maybe if i can get the thread size i can sort some

had a really good ride today, even at one speed- went miles and really enjoyed it, wish i got a bike years ago!!

thank you

The seatpost looks low in the frame, so it will be well stuck but on the other hand, you can put a lot of force on the clamp. As well as using the Plusgas I would take the saddle off, then get a very large AJ/wrench/whatever on it and turn it very, very hard.