Introducing: The Mule

As promised, this is the first of the Velogs detailing my stable of bikes. I currently use two. One is primarily for commuting and the other is for good weather commuting and cycling events.

For this installment I am going to focus on my commuting bike – The Mule. So named as it has been built using bits from various other bikes, is generally used as a commuting/hack bike and ridden in just about any weather the U.K. can throw at it.

What is it?

The Mule was gifted to me by a friend who needed it out of his way. It was built using the frame of a Btwin Triban 500SE road bike. When new, it was an entry level, aluminium road bike of Decathlon’s own brand. By the time I got hold of it the only thing it was going to be entering was the tip. It was a state.

What were the issues?

The bike itself was complete in respect of it having wheels, shifters, saddle etc but all the cables were snapped or missing, the shifters and bartape were scratched, worn and filthy. The saddle was torn, the tyres were flat the frame looked like it hadn’t seen soap and water EVER and there were after-market reflectors and all sorts stuck all over it. However, the frame was straight and the wheels were true. There was, however, a problem and a not insignificant one. A pedal was missing from the drive-side crank and had stripped the thread from the crank arm itself.

The Triban 500SE came with a 3x8 Microshift drivetrain and trying to source one crank was going to be a nightmare and expensive. No drama, a 2x set up would be easier to source but I hadn’t taken into account the left shifter is set up for 3x so the ratchets and pull ratios are wrong and it won’t work. Not only that but it also used an Octalink bottom bracket. I won’t get into the annoyance of not having a standard BB but this was even less common than normal.

Fixing it

I got to work dismantling the bike. I got it in the stand and took the wheels out. The tyres and inner-tubes were taken off and the wheels were given a full, deep clean. As I said the wheels were in good order. No grumbling, they were true and once cleaned up they looked almost as good as new. A couple of new tubes, two new Vittoria Zaffiro tyres and finishing up with a clean and degrease of the cassette and I had a good set of hoops back.

The frame was given the same treatment. Once it had been given a good clean I was pleasantly surprised to find the frame in very good condition. Bearing in mind the forks are carbon, there wasn’t a mark on them and the frame only had the normal little scratches you would expect to find. I got my partners hairdryer and got to work on the stickers and they all came off with minimal fuss too. There were a couple of frame bolts missing which I had spares lying around and I also had a couple of (non matching) bottle cages too, which quickly found themselves bolted on.

Although the saddle was perfectly usable, I wasn’t prepared to put a torn saddle on what was turning into a nice looking bike. I tried to sell the old one on the internets but didn’t have any interest (unsurprisingly). However, I did find someone selling one in the exact colour-way of the bike. I threw my £4.90 at them and installed it on the day it arrived.

All in all, things were looking good as was the bike. However, I was still stuck with what to do with gearing etc. My searches of selling groups/pages, ebay, Gumtree and Schpock etc threw up loads of stuff. However, entry level components are used to death and binned and stuff worth selling are very expensive. Prohibitively so. On a whim I put the feelers out within my cycling club and a member came back to me with my dream solution.

Essentially he had a Ribble bike that he had turned into a TT bike and left over from that build was a drop handlebar with Shimano Claris 2x8 shifters and bartape already attached and a Shimano Claris 2x chainset with both cranks which were Octalink compatible (you could dream up better good fortune). Second best of all was the price: £25. First best of all was the fact they had never been used. In fact I don’t think they’d ever been outside.

I bought some new inner and outer brake and gear cables and for safety sake some new Clarkes brake pads and got the bike all buttoned up and found the shifters worked ok with the Microshift derailleur’s. The rear was a touch twisted and the front was for a 3x but I managed to tune the position to work the 2x set-up ok. The only function not working was the “half click”. This is where you could half push or press the lever to alleviate chain rub on the front mech when in the extremes of the cassette (cross-chaining). Almost certainly down to mismatched components, I was happy to tolerate this as the expense of new mechs was not manageable at that time.

The old handle bars and shifters were listed for sale and I managed to recoup about £25. I appreciate I was very lucky in terms of expenditure building this bike but all told (up to this point) the bike owes me about £35.

If you want me to go into detail about how I carried out different procedures, let me know.

What’s happened since?

I have been riding the bike for about a year now and it has served me well and encountered some truly shocking conditions. I even attempted to ride to work in the snow last year….turns out skinny road tyres are rubbish in snow and ice. Who knew?!

All was good with the world until I had an issue with a grumbly rear wheel. Further examination showed the bearings were dry and needed some TLC. Armed with some tools, ambition and the internet, I had the rear wheel hub in pieces.

I had managed to retain all the bearings and having given them a clean, they seemed in order. I re-packed the race with grease and rebuilt the hub. Following this the hub was quiet and all seemed well until the freehub started skipping and the wheel wouldn’t spin freely. It turns out that the hub was probably beyond repair and a new set of wheels were required. Back to the buy and sell sites turned up a set of Mavic Ksyrium wheels (older ones mind) which I stole for 20 quid. All was good again until very recently when the front wheel hub completely collapsed…

…at 30mph+…

…going downhill…

…new pants required!!!

There was no amount of home mechanic-ing going to help with this. It was proper f*****d. For £60 I managed to source a set of Shimano RS31’s off've Facebook, which came with continental tyres and a 10sp cassette and then sold the working components and the bits I didn’t need for about £30 and also managed to source a Shimano Claris front and rear mech for the princely sum of £15 (Ebay), so now I have a fully matched drivetrain with shifters.

I have used the RS31’s on Noble Steed 3 and the Mavic Aksiums (from Noble steed 3) now live on The Mule. All told, I have a pretty decent spec commuting bike for about £80. I built this bike to use and abuse and it’s served me so well it gets treated just as well as Noble Steed 3 and because it has less gears and weighs a little bit more, it also doubles up as a good training bike - winner, winner

And that is where we are now. I give you The Mule.

The Mule - as of 15/02/2019