Keep It Rolling – Bike Snob NYC

The holidays aren’t all about new bikes:

So what else are they about? Spending time with family? Well, sure, there’s that. But they’re also about working on the bikes you already have:

Above is the 1989 Trek 1200, which I affectionately refer to as the “Normcore Bike” as a nod to its aesthetic unremarkableness as well as its overall ubiquity. I mean seriously, they’re everywhere. (Fact I just made up: there are fourteen bonded aluminum Trek road bikes for every one person in America.) Here in New York City it’s almost impossible to find a street sign without at least one bonded Trek locked to it:

In fact, for a brief moment last year, bonded aluminum was even poised to make a comeback as the latest custom bike fad:

Though this was scuttled when the builder was unable to build a bike that neither the Desert Hipster website nor the Escape Collective deemed satisfactory. But, you know, tight tolerances or something.

Anyway, the Normcore Bike came to me in 2022 via Classic Cycle. See, I’d had a bike exactly like it Back In The Day…

…so when I happened to notice Paul had one listed for sale on the Classic Cycle website I inquired about it, and before I knew it I was experiencing the bike in all its adequacy once again for the first time in decades, right down to the BioPace chainrings:

[The bike as it arrived from Classic Cycle.]

I’ve always been beguiled by how un-beguiling this bike is, and I rode it quite a bit, savoring its Golden Age of Aluminum glory and lavishing more attention upon it than you’d expect from someone who has ready access to a large number of far “nicer” bicycles. Most of that attention is not evident from looking at the bike, since aesthetically it’s so deeply boring that it has a way of swallowing up any visual improvements like a black hole. However, I can assure you that functionally it was humming along beautifully thanks to my efforts, and was a pleasure to ride.

However, eventually my elder son appropriated it as his school commuter, in no small part due to its extreme anonymity. See, teenagers aren’t looking to attract attention to themselves, especially when they’re already doing something highly unusual, like riding a bike to school. For example, I’d been encouraging him to use the Homer for this purpose, which seemed perfect given its fenders and dynamo light and capacity for racks:

However, he declined, noting that the appearance of the bike was too “whimsical,” and it was then that I realized that stuff like ornate lugs and cream-colored headtubes simply carry no cultural currency for the youth of today. So the Normcore Bike it was, and he’s generally been riding it just as you see in that opening photo of it, except with flat pedals.

Recently though a couple of problems have begun to manifest themselves. The first was the impending demise of the freehub body, which is not surprising given the bike’s age and the fact that it now spends quite a bit of time outside. Eventually it began to seize up, and while I was able to resurrect it via judicious application of premium Dumonde Tech lubricants, it still rumbled disconcertingly while coasting, and clearly its days were numbered in the low-to-mid double digits.

The second problem was that the low-slung drop bars weren’t particularly comfortable for commuting. Granted, as a bike dork this bothered me more than it bothered him, but he did acknowledge it was something he wouldn’t mind being remedied. So that’s what I did:

The bar is made by Nitto, and is what Rivendell used to sell as the “Dove:”

I’ve had it for who knows how long, and it used to adorn the Scattante:

I attained proper elevation by deploying the Nitto Tallux stem that came with the Homer in its original incarnation:

A noteworthy feature of the levers is that you can set them up for both long pull or short pull brakes:

Figuring out how to configure the shim thingy where you anchor the cable nearly broke my tiny brain, but eventually I managed.

But the real challenge was the freehub body. The Normcore Bike is equipped with cutting-edge late-’80s Shimano 105 technology, right down to the Uniglide rear hub, and obviously I wasn’t going to source an exact replacement given that Uniglide is profoundly obsolete. (You’d be better off reverting to thread-on freewheels than pressing on with Uniglide or any other abandoned cassette hub system.) Now, with this particular 105 hub, supposedly it’s easy to simply replace the Uniglide body with a 7-speed Hyperglide one. However, 7-speed is also vanishing, and as far as I can tell the bodies that are supposed to be direct replacements are no longer readily available. So I sourced one that seemed like it should work, but once it arrived I had the hub apart I found it was completely wrong:

I did watch a guy on YouTube who made it work, but it involved stuff like making his own tools, and I watched long enough to decide “Fuck that.”

However, a couple of years or so ago I’d replaced the freehub on a 9-speed-era Ultegra hub, which seemed to use the same spline as the 105:

So I pulled it off that wheel and whadya know, it bolted right onto the old 7-speed 105 hub, no problem.

If you’re wondering why I didn’t just squeeze that same Ultegra wheel into the Normcore Bike despite the different axle spacing and call it good, of course I tried that first, but the dish was way off–like so far off the wheel hit the frame and wouldn’t turn. It was also a little off with the freehub body from the Ultegra hub on the 7-speed wheel, but only by a little, and it was minor enough that I didn’t even have to adjust the brake. (Not having to spread the bonded aluminum frame apart was a bonus.) And with the addition of some spacers salvaged from an old cassette the 7-speed Hyperglide sandwich fit on there nicely:

Is it perfect? No. Does it work? Yes. Anyway, you don’t notice a wheel that’s a few millimeters off center, but you definitely notice a smooth, quiet freehub body and the dramatic improvement in shifting:

While I was at it, I also went to downsize the unnecessarily-large-for-a-commuter 52-tooth big ring, but the front derailleur wouldn’t go low enough for the replacement ring and so I just kept it on there:

And with that, the Normcore Bike entered a new era of comfort and utility:

And thanks to that new freehub body I’m no longer limited to either Uniglide or even 7-speed cassettes:

Take that, Planned Obsolescence:

And I didn’t stop there! I also took the cockpit from the Normcore Bike and grafted it right onto the Faggin, cables and all:

See?

This netted me nicer brake levers and a stem with a slightly better fit, plus I put that second pair of Ultegra brakes on there while I was at it.

It now slots right in to the space once occupied by the Normcore Bike…

…though there’s really nothing normal about it.