1978 Centurion, waltworks, other projects and rack building.

Thanks! I'm not huge on the look of threaded to threadless stems but maybe this one will be ok.

Next up was building a rear wheel for the bike. I'd tried to find a white industries hub to match the cranks, but didn't have any luck, so when a friend offered me a no name silver, sealed bearing hub for $10, I jumped on it.
The hub was anodised but looked like someone had a crack at polishing it before but had given up pretty quickly. A polished hub would match the build so I read up about stripping ano and got to it with the oven cleaner. After the anodising was gone, I hand polished using different grits of wet n dry sandpaper and also some stuff called Miracle shine that I'd gotten in Japan. I'm pretty sure it's the same as Silvo and the hub came up a treat. This was a long process and in future i will buy a polishing wheel.
About this time I picked up some work in a bike shop and decided it was time I finally learn how to build my own wheels. I made use of having access to wholesale accounts and got myself a truing stand, spoke keys etc.
I measured up the hub to order spokes and found out that it was 135mm, the whole time I had thought it was 130. The frame was originally 126 but had obviously been used with a 130 at some point in its life as it was now somewhere around 128mm. 128 to 130 would be fine but to 135 was going to be a stretch. I wasn't keen on cold setting out to that amount so talked to a engineering friend and he was willing to have a go at turning the end caps down to fit. With that done and making sure the chain wouldn't run on the frame with a ten speed cassette, I ordered the correct length spokes and built up the wheel.
I spent way to long on the wheel build but was happy with the end result, it was a bit like solving a puzzle and rather rewarding.

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