Next step: ride

I finished the big-kid bike today. Turns out that when I reassembled the hub I put one little piece in upside down. Oops. That made the hub a freewheel, instead of a coaster brake, and it broke the 2-speed feature. And it exposed some bearings weirdly. I had to un-assemble and reassemble the hub a couple times to figure that one out. I feel pretty good now about overhauling and reassembling a Sachs Torpedo 2-speed kickback hub. 

An unidentified employee at REI squeezed the rear fork ends down to 117 or so. He even aligned the front forks. Nice unidentified guy that he is. 

I took the bike for a quick spin in the dark and it seems fun. I may have to fuss with the stem. It's got about  100 mm on there now. But with the semi-swept back space bars, I may want a tad more reach. Maybe I'll just lower the bars a bit and see if that does it. 

It will be fun to get good at using this hub. Liza rode the old Raleigh 20 quite a bit when this hub lived on that bike. She got pretty good stopping, then being in the right gear for take off. 

I'm running 36/17, which gives me about a 56" low gear. That puts second gear at about 76 gear inches. While I won't win the tour with that gearing, it's pretty perfect for cruising and getting up just about any hill in town. And it will be fair for trail riding.