After another hectic month at Happy Days I’ve finally got a spare few minutes to get some of the highlights down on electric paper, there’s been loads happening so we’ll get right to it!
Our Happy Days family got a little smaller this month when we learned that our longest serving, most dedicated volunteer Noah (@bicyclesorcery) would be leaving us!
Noah first approached us to volunteer just a few weeks after Jonny and me took over the shop just over two years ago now. He was fairly inexperienced when he first started but super eager to learn. He progressed super fast, absorbing information like a sponge, If there was something he didn’t know I would show him how it was done and wouldn’t need to show him again. He also loves a bit of homework, constantly researching parts and tools, always arriving at the shop with fresh questions.
Within a month or so of Noah working at the shop I could confidently leave him with any fresh donation and within a couple of hours he would turn around a shiny(ish) new(to its next owner) bike that was ready to roll right out of the shop!
Noah’s attention to detail is second to none, almost to a fault sometimes, he’d spend ages cleaning every speck of grime off the super basic Tourney level derailleurs fitted to Sports Direct bikes that would ultimately end up selling for less than the labour time he was committing to them. But Noah appreciates that each bike is going to be someone’s next favourite bike, and he always strives to do the very best job possible for every bike regardless of value so I was happy to indulge his fastidiousness!
As well as being a fast learner he is also well aligned with our political and social beliefs, his tofu fit right in the fridge next to ours if you will. Not only that but as a gay, trans man Noah added a much appreciated slice of diversity to our otherwise cis white male run shop. He even started running a free (or pay what you feel) maintenance class for women, trans and non binary folks at the shop after hours so people who might feel intimidated or uncomfortable in the normally very straight, male dominated environment of a bike shop could learn some skills in a safe, welcoming environment. That went down a treat, so much so that he’s still regularly running the classes from his new house over a year on!
So as you can imagine, to hear he would be leaving us was a massive loss, but he’s moving on to bigger, brighter but also kind of similar things! He’s running a scheme with Friends of Hebden Bridge Picture House to provide bikes to refugees so he’s still knee deep in good vibes, charity based bike mechanics!
He’s also just bought himself a rad little Cotic Rocketmax so I can’t wait to hit the trails with him REAL SOON!
I’m gonna take a sec here to thank Noah for his insane dedication over the past two years:
So Noah, THANK YOU! THANK YOU! THANK YOU! Not just for your amazing work at the shop, but for being an awesome new friend right when I’d moved somewhere new and didn’t really know anyone. I hope you take the skills you’ve learned working with us and keep building on them forever! It’s not often I’ve met someone with your dedication to understanding every aspect of bike repair that’s willing to put the time in outside of work to learn, but I know you’re “proper bike people” so I guess it’s to be expected! So when you’ve finally finished with your endless generosity drive and do get a job in a “real bike shop” you can expect the most gleaming reference ever written from me!
Wherever you do end up will be incredibly lucky to have you and we’ll always be less for not having you anymore.
See you soon dude! X
As well as Noah leaving last month I also spent a fortnight without Jack in the workshop as he went for his level 2 Cytech evaluation in Stafford. After spending an age trying to book a solo stay in a hotel for an under eighteen year old resulted in flat refusal from every local establishment, Jack’s dad came to the rescue with his offer to drive their caravan there and stay the week with him.
Despite his outward sense of bravado Jack definitely seemed a little apprehensive before leaving but I was totally confident that he’d smash it and, of course, he did. After his first day I called him and he was brimming with excitement. His teachers were all really friendly and they had so many tools! Things we don’t have, things he’d never seen before, parts washers a charity bike shop can only dream of!
He was a bit miffed at the amount of Campagnolo stuff that he had to work on but he was thoroughly enjoying himself. It turned out his final assessment for level 2 was a strip and rebuild on an 8-speed hybrid bike. Now I’m not saying this should be super easy for Jack, but If Heineken made an assessment for a charity bike shop apprentice it couldn’t be more perfect than that – eight speed hybrids are our bread and butter at Happy Days. Jack has probably been working on at least one every day since starting with us. If there’s any bike he knows properly inside out and upside down it’s an 8-speed hybrid. So Jack passed with flying colours and returned to the shop buzzing with newfound confidence, and eager to try out his new skills.
I was also super stoked to have him back not just to congratulate him on a job well done but also just to have him back in the workshop helping out. Two weeks working solo in a busy workshop during the early summer rush is not something I’m hoping to have to go through again soon.
Jack’s return to take care of some of the day to day jobs in the workshop is also much appreciated as it gives me the chance to concentrate my attention on some of the more eclectic jobs in the shop. You know, the stuff this column was supposed to be about before it became more of a diary of vaguely bike related rants…
I currently have a few different customers that I’ve been helping out with a few bits and pieces that are at various stages of building their own homemade cargo bikes and trikes.
First we have Andy (@topbuzzfabrications) who’s building what looks to be a cargo bike to survive the apocalypse. Made with some rather industrial box section steel, lightweight is not what this machine is being built for. We supplied him with a few scrappy bikes to use as donors for frame and fork parts and I get an excited update every few weeks on how the build is going.
Next up in the home-brewed cargo sector is Nick who is apparently building the antithesis to Andy’s overbuilt beast a lightweight carbon E-cargo trike, with an entirely homemade carbon frame this is without doubt one of the most ambitious home-builds I’ve ever seen. When it’s finished Nick is going to use the trike to carry all the equipment needed to run his Thai food stand on Hebden Bridge Market.
The problem with a trike though, particularly one with two electric motors in the rear wheels, is slowing it down. How do you transfer braking force to three wheels with only two levers? There are off the shelf products available that can run two brake callipers off one lever. Hope has a beautiful CNC’d option with a price-tag to reflect that quality, Tektro also has a pretty cool (if decidedly more plasticky) version that seems to be all but impossible to find this side of the Atlantic.
For a machine like this though, not only would either of these options break the budget they also wouldn’t fit with the trike’s home-brewed vibes. I decided I was gonna have to get a bit creative to sort Nick’s braking issue out.
Delving into the nest of snakes that is our used disc brake box I managed to wrestle free four ancient Avid Juicy brakes, all in various states of corrosion. With a little love and a lot of scrubbing, cleaning and bleeding I managed to combine four non working brakes into two perfectly working brakes, each fitted with an enormous 2.5 meter length of brake hose ready to fit the trike.
The next issue was combining the levers to both pull together. After a bit of high precision eyeball measuring it was time to release the Dremel and get slicing.
I realised that by removing one side of the bar clamp and adding a couple of washers to take up the space I could stack the levers so that all the bolt holes/pivots would line up perfectly. This allowed me to stick a big ol’ M5 bolt right through both lever clamps in one. Also thanks to Avid’s flip flop lever design all of the clamp holes are treaded meaning that the whole thing can be clamped on and off just as easily as a normal brake lever.
After that all that was left to do was replace the separate lever pivots with one more big ol’ bolt and tidy the lot up with a bit more Dremel and file action.
I found a couple of front derailleur washers that had a relief cut in one side of them that when stacked with the reliefs facing outward wedged in between the hose end of the levers perfectly. Secured with a bit of locking wire this helps prevent any flex between the two levers.
Finally I tied the hoses together tidily with my patented cable end hose tidies and it’s a good to go! If you want to see it in person Nick’s hoping to have it up and running banging red curries all over Hebden Bridge Market before the summer is out!
Meet Back From The Dead’s Dieter!
Dieter is going to be heading down to the Malverns Classic with Hannah and Fahzure (and Hannah’s Kid2) for a right good enthusiastic drooling over all the retro bikes and other bike goings on. If you’re heading that way, be sure to look out for us and stop us for a chat! If you’ve ever seen Dieter raking through a box of donations and getting excited about some retro Onza WITH PACKAGING then you’ll have some idea of the level of jabbering joy you should be prepared to witness. Bring your enthusiasm pants. Maybe we’ll have a little Singletracker meet up too… at the airbag maybe? We’re just having a chat with the organisers about a discount code for Singletrack Members, so stay tuned!
For those looking at a family festival trip, under 12s are free, and there are lots of free things to have a go on as well as watching the races. For kids to have a go at all the things (like airbags, and trials courses, and the race tracks) they need to pay £5 for a number board – so that the organisers have got their contact details with them if they crash while you’re off perfecting your dance moves. Once you’ve got that number board, they’re set for the weekend. Apply suncream before you send them off to play!
