It’s nearly a year since Dieter moved to Calderdale. This issue of Back From The Dead charts the path of finding new friends, new work, and new mechanical challenges. Yay, bikes!
Since moving to Calderdale almost a year ago now I’ve seen, ridden and repaired an enormous amount of bikes. And while there has been plenty of weird and wonderful bikes go through the workshop there’s one (well three really, but we’ll get to that) that really stood out to me as probably the coolest bike(s) I’ve ever laid my tools on.
It all started not long after we took over the shop when a tall, eccentric American came in requesting to see our basement or attic. We don’t have either of those things in our shop unfortunately, but after pressing this wild yank for further information about his request we learned he was just as much of a retro bike nut as we are at Happy Days, who spends his free time in whatever country he’s in rooting through the dark corners of bike shops for retro gems! A fast friendship was formed!
Our eccentric American kept visiting on a regular (kind of) basis. He’d come in and we’d ramble on for hours about bikes and parts that haven’t been made for 20 odd years, long retired racers or the litany of amazing places and bikes that he’d ridden over the years. Anyway after a few visits our resident American invited me out with the local Tuesday night group ride. The venerable “Ride, Drink, Pie” crew from Hebden Bridge.
I was a bit trepidatious before a ride with a big group that I didn’t know, would I be able to keep up or were they all gonna be a bunch of XC heroes with calves hewn from stone leaving me in their dust?
No, no they wouldn’t. I mean really I should have been able to guess from the name but the whole group were fabulous. There was the “gnarly group” and the “less gnarly group”. Which one you belonged to was decided, it seemed, based on how baggy your shorts were or how droopy your bars were.
Baggy shorts – Gnarly.
Droopy bars – Less gnarly.
Baggy shorts and droopy bars – Charlie.
Then there was Neil. Neil was like me, a recent immigrant to West Yorkshire. Having recently moved from Aberfoyle in Scotland this was Neil’s first ride out with the R,D,P crew as well. and he was riding one of the coolest bikes I’d ever seen: an electric assist handcycle. I exchanged a few pleasantries and maybe got a little emphatic about how cool I thought his bike was and then we went our separate ways, me with the baggy shorts crew and Neil with the droopy bar brigade.
On that ba**ard road climb out of Hebden (I’m still new here and I don’t use Strava so I don’t know what anything is called yet but if you’ve ridden in Hebden Bridge you’ve probably been up it. It seems to be the unavoidable road that leads to everywhere.). Anyway. on that ba**ard climb I had plenty of time to chat with some of the crew, and the descents that followed more than made up for any slow grind up a road built by obvious masochists…
So the ride went on, it was one of those beautiful early summer rides where it’s not so hot you’re constantly on the verge of falling over into a big sweaty mess but it’s warm enough to just have shorts and a jersey on and ride in comfort. A perfect introduction to the trails that Calderdale has on offer, until we got a phone call..
One of the riders in the “less gnarly” group had suffered a catastrophic bike failure mid ride in the middle of nowhere! Even worse it was Neil’s handcycle!
We rerouted our group to meet up with the others and when we arrived we found Neil sat in his handcycle with the seat plate touching the floor, grinning like a Cheshire Cat! “I was kind of expecting it sometime” he said “It’s not really designed for an electric motor and I’ve got a new full suspension one on the way anyway!”
Anyway Team R,D,P had already sprung into action, Hannah (of this parish) was crisscrossing the hillside to find the nearest farmer with a 4×4 that we could enlist to ferry Neil and his broken bike back to civilisation and before you could load up what3words he was loaded up and off down to Hebden.
All that was left was for us was to make our descent back down into town in the fading light, both groups now combined into an unholy mix of skinny tyred, droopy barred racing snakes and balloon tyred, suspension equipped, baggy shorted bruisers, oh and Charlie doing a bit of everything on his Lauf equipped gravel machine…
Fast forward a week or so and I heard through the bike shop grapevine that Neil was getting a replacement frame for his old handcycle. I wanted to be the one to build it! I sent him a message asking if he had anyone to build it for him and offering my services and he quickly replied saying that he’d be happy for me to do it and that in the past he’d even struggled to find people who wanted to work on it. I was pumped and couldn’t wait to get started. The frame took longer than expected, getting caught up in customs – despite Lasher, the manufacturer, sending it within a week or so of Neil’s first frame breaking, which is pretty amazing service for a custom built, custom coloured frame. When it eventually arrived we were finally able to get stuck in to it.
Or so we thought…
As we started stripping the old bike down I discovered a crack in the fork, again probably caused by bolting a motor onto a fork that’s not designed for it and then barreling it down bike trails for the best part of ten years. Luckily there’s a motorbike shop nearby that employs an excellent welder and with waiting several months for a new fork to make its way through customs during the peak of last year’s shipping chaos being off the table, a repair was the only option. So off went the forks for welding and a fresh powdercoat in black to complete the unintentional Dennis the Menace theme of the bike.
By the time the stars finally aligned with all the parts ready to go for me and Neil to get together and build his bike, it was November and Neil had been off his bike for nearly four months! Luckily for him he works for Experience Community CIC who organise and support getting people with disabilities into the great outdoors, so he still had access to more exciting forms of wheels than just his normal chair.
I was sweating the build a bit the day before, I’ve built a million bikes but I’ve never built a handcycle from scratch and seeing the frame laid out without any parts it’s kind of difficult to visualise how it’s all going to go together and make a bike.
The first thing I noticed about the new frame was its startlingly low weight. For such a mass of tubes it really doesn’t weigh much more than your average alloy full sus frame. The next thing of note compared to the original was the quality of the welding and finish of the frame. While the welds on the original were perfectly functional they were a little, shall we say, utilitarian looking. Now I’m not saying that we don’t like a nice utilitarian looking weld in Calderdale… Ahem, but the welds on the new frame are leagues ahead of what was on the original.
Another really nice feature that’s been added – though unfortunately we couldn’t utilise on this bike due to the fork being an older model – is the steering lock. Due to the design of the fork there’s not really an easy way of making sure the wheel stays straight in front of the bike whilst building it, so I ended up rigging up a handlebar holder and a selection of zip ties to hold it in place. Nevertheless, the inclusion of the steering lock shows how much thought has been put into the evolution of the frame.
Anyway that’s enough gushing over Neil’s shiny new frame it’s finally time to get it built. I know none of you can wait to hear me ramble on for far too long about how we built this bike and what little tricks we used but I’ve still got a whole other bike build to cover as well. Sooooo, welcome to Back From The Dead’s first ever two parter!
Will Neil’s bike go together smoothly?
Will it end up with a mineral oil bottle ziptied to it?
And what’s going on with all those reflector mounts?
And with the introduction of an exciting new player, The Lasher ath-FS, will Neil ever even ride this bike again?!
Find out the answers to all these questions and more by tuning in next month for the thrilling conclusion! Same bike time! Same bike website!
