Urbana-Champaign Bicycle Commute

The Boring Saga Of Fixing A Gazelle Tyre

You get to miss the parts about gazing at it in rapt ... confusion... and wondering what to do, and posting to the bikejournal forum and getting directions to "take the black ARM and push it in toward the center of the wheel like it would move if you pulled the brake lever. "

Here we go!!!

The Black Arm. Find the Black Arm... there it is... push it in and slide.

Voila! Fewer than ten seconds!@ She is FREE!!
The tyre is off... the first obstacle is hurdled (and no objects have been hurtled!!!)

oh where, oh where, are the tire levers...

... but remember, there was this cute tool kit that the nice man gave you with the bike...

Sioux puts those little hummers in and tells herself, “PRETEND you have muscles and USE THEM” and the tire cooperates.

The rim tape is luxury rim tape. The tube even looks, oh, just more “luxury bike” than other tubes. It's got writing on it that isn't in English.

These are Woods valves?? How to get them OUT??? (p'raps we'll patch on the fly).

There is a fat screwy thing and a skinnyh screwy thing. Fat one comes off first.

Sioux successfully extracts tire.

Sioux successfully changes Road Morph from Schrader to Presta. (Personal Best – First Try!)

Sioux pumps up tire. Thinks she hears hissing. No, it's the computer.

Sioux decides this will not be the first time she found a leak without dunking. She takes the pump off, which takes half of that valve off and all that air is gone. Oops!

She sticks the valve back in. Tries again. Noope. She takes pictures of the valve pieces in Correct and Wrong places so that the tire can see what it should do.

Third attempt...noipe. Fourth attempt revision: we'll pull on the valve, not the pump. Duh :) (However, in ten attempts we'll just put another tube in it and Ask The Man for help patching it. )

Two attempts later... there must be some kind of sproingenheimer that's supposed to keep the valve thingy in there that isn't in the right place to lock it there, or something. We'll give it two more tries...



I don't care, I really want to patch this bad boy, even if I can't pump it up later. So bring the pump and the whole schootchala to the water.

That's not enough ... so we ponder... and say “what can we change?” Let's see if those other skinny and fat screwy thingies can go back.

Voila! Clumsy attempt at immersion in a very large under-bed rubbermaid that we've got tilted over the sink, and Leak is Located, as well as two other disgustingly neat patches. However Sioux is consoled. When she saw that this was, indeed, a Dutch tube she thought perhaps this pristine bike's tubes had not yet been so much as tickled, and that she had crudely abused it. Perhaps abused, but not crudely.

Half an hour spent finding the patches purchased Friday and so painstakingly placed where they wouldn't be lost. ah, well, that bookshelf is neater.

Patch applied.

Now the terrifying part. Will we be able to reconstruct and recover all those sproingers and thingywhoppers? Take fat screwy thing off. Put tube in tire. Remember the order of things and take tube out of tire and put tire half on wheel.

Oh, yes, we did remember to go over that tire and look for compromises, glass, etc. Nothing discernible.

Super Thumhbs!!! We got the tire on there. (No biceps, but adequate fine motor skills and thumbs.

Okay, put fat thingy on, no that ain't right. Fat one came off first. Goes on last.

Skinny thing. Then fat thing. Not happy because it doesn't look like the back wheel at all. Hmmm. Welp, the back tire was a replacement. Maybe different flavor tube, too?

welp, we did some more screwing and fiddling and now the bottom screw thingy is all the way down and it looks like the back wheel.
There is one left over little thingy but who knows which tire of life that came from?

Okay, the other thingies. Oh, dear.

We put the wheel back in the place.
Where does it all go????? There's that arm... it's just a-hangin'. O noingo. that nice picture isn't big enough to show where the danglin' thing goes. One of the doofus's rooles of fixing things is that things aren't supposed to be dangling from moving parts. Christmas trees, yes. Tires, no.

Okay, the other rule is that if it ain't danglin' it musta stuck into something. Is there a place to stick it?

Boomsala! There's a place to stick the dangler thinhg. And oh, my, that little sticking oiut thingy can tuck behind that notchy place and now it feels just like when we were going the other direction! And we step on the brake... oops... let's step on the front brake... and it stops the wheel :) :)

Just a few dozen more little thingywhoppers to go... why doesn't the valve cap fit any more?

Switched with the back? Well, it doesn't fit there, either.

Two tire levers... let's put them and this extra screwy thing in the SIMSON tin where there is another screwy thing so it's an extra extra screwy thing and a spare part, not a left-off part. We feel better.

Okay, where do the washers go? We do our best analytical thinking and stick them on. We will have LBS dude check that.

Where's the last lonely eagle? I mean the last, lonely nut that I gouged with the vise grip, with the cute gazelle on the top... Over there, next to the valve cap... one that fits!!! Okay, that tiny one must be another Spare Part From Another Mother.

Wow... could it be? Okay, where is that adjustable thingy. In the meantime break out Sam Adams. Sweetness! That church key on the bottom of those Reef Sandals works!

And here's the third tire lever right by my side :)

One wrench away from riding back and posting this...

YAY! We found the wrench, we tightened the nuts... we're here!