[Sportsandrec] My 20 year old bike

[Keith Christian]

Hi,

I wanted to say thanks for the encouragement and advice on fixing up my
old bike.  I appreciate all of them.  The bike is actually in excellent
shape.  I have been riding it around with my kids on the front and me in
the back.  It does need a bit of a tune up which I am working on doing.
I can do brakes no problem, but I am not sure how to work on the gears
and all that.  I just apply oil on the chain and the moving parts on the
derailers and all seems to be working pretty well.

When I was a kid, I use to repack my bearings in the crank case and the
wheels.  It is probably time to do that.  Hopefully things are not any
different from when I was a kid.  It was pretty easy back then.  The
most problems I had as a kid was the rear brakes on a bike where the
brakes were applied with backward pressure on the peddles.  That is not
the case with this bike.


Something that has  me curious is the positioning of the cranks.  I have
always put them at  opposite angles.  It seemed better to be on your
power stroke when the other rider is not.  When I purchased my bike
originally, the peddles were in tandem and I hated it.  I hope that
makes sense.  Our peddles were in the up or down position at the same
time. 

My handle bars are pretty much straight bars.  I am interested in
learning about other styles of bars. The style of pars that have been
discussed here lately seem to resemble 10-speed bars.  Is that right?  I
actually never liked the straight bars that were on it.  I felt like I
was hunched over a bit the entire time.  Something else to look into.

Thanks,

Keith