Inherited a poorly frame from a pal for the price of a crate of beer; it had a solidly stuck seatpost and a mech hanger that was totally bent out of shape.

Step 1: used a hairdryer to heat the (steel) hanger up for 10mins or so and then used an old seatpost to slowly lever it back into position. Worked perfectly

Step 2: inverted frame, removed bb, taped up breathing holes in bb area except the one to the seat tube, filled frame with 17p diet coke from Tesco (other brands are available and equally lethal). Left for several hours. Completely taped over bb shell, inverted frame so that it was upright again. Poked a hole in the tape, slowly let the drain cleaner coke dribble out into a tray (was doing this in the living room of all places). Drilled a 6mm hole through the seatpost, put an old threaded headset bolt through said hole and, using aforementioned trusty old broken seatpost over the bolt for leverage, managed to twist the seized seatpost free.

By this point I was literally giddy with glee; normally at this stage in a bike maintenance evening I’d have broken something, but all was well thus far.

All that remained was to assemble the bike and work out how to tension the singlespeed setup I wanted to run without sliding dropouts or a specific ss tensioner.

I was using a single sprocket spaced onto the freehub to give a good chainline, and had an old mech to tension the chain with. As you know, a mech will spring back to the most outboard position naturally, and cable tension is used to pull it inboard as was needed in this case. Instead of run a cable through and anchor it to the frame somewhere (option 1), I decided to try bodging a fix with an old spoke. Stuck it through the cable entry, anchored it with the pinch bolt, pretensioned the mech by hand to where I wanted it to sit (just beyond actually) and then bent the spoke through 160deg at the cable entry point to stop the mech from springing back to its natural position. Tidied up the free end of the spoke with duct tape to the mech itself (obvs avoiding pivots etc), and hey presto a self-tensioned mech!

You lot must have some similarly smug stories to tell, so come on, out with them..

When i bought my first motorbike off of my mate Bill all those years ago he threw in a set of spanners too. He thought that I’d possibly need them and he was right. It gave me the attitude to give it a go and I did.

Over the years I’ve had a go at cars, bikes, mowers, chainsaws, computers, microscopes, plumbing, wiring, brickwork, double glazing.. and more.

It sometimes goes wrong, but not often anymore. Yes- I have made mistakes but I reckon that the experience that I have gained from the failures have allowed me to get better. And I still have the Kamasa spanners Bill gave me back in 1980.

It is satisfying when a job goes well isn’t it, especially if you ‘rescue’ something like you’ve done.
I recently rebuilt a set of DT ex1750 wheels onto a new set of rims. I was expecting difficulties because the nipples are alloy and the spokes are lightweight bladed aerolites. It actually went really easily, the WTB rims are always nice to build up as they have the nipple seat angled to match the angle of the spoke, and the bladed spokes once held in place with a small block of wood with a groove in it didn’t wind up at all making for a very true set of wheels.

I’ve rescued/repaired many bit’s and pieces.

My favourite story is the rescued Chainsaw in 1999’ish :o)

Found in a skip; not running and rusted to buggery! Completely dis-assembled the entire chainsaw and engine, cleaned the carb’, de-coked the engine internals (it’s a 2-stroke) and re-assembled it in a couple of weeks. Thoroughly de-rusted the 13″ chain bar and fitted a new chain. Then washed and re-oiled the air filter and re-connected some damaged Ignition circuit wiring and fitted a new spark plug.

Turned the choke to full and pulled the cord – it fired after about 10 pulls and has given Stirling service ever since.

I used it 2 weeks ago to fell a small tree for my neighbour!