Well, a little time off work presents me with the opportunity to give my 10 year old Kona Jake The Snake some love… and make it the ultimate winter road/canal path cruiser for a fat old like like me.

A good starting point:

The plan: upgrade to Shimano 105 11-speed with a much wider gear range, fit mud guards and slightly wider tyres.

Day 1: Inauspicious start. Perhaps unsurprisingly, the pedals and cranks are somewhat reluctant. Manage to prize out the crank bolts, using an old handlebar to get more leverage on the 8mm bolt. But the bolts are not self extracting and a regular crank puller won’t work on the poxy ISIS bottom bracket axle. So the cranks are still firmly attached, for now.

OK, so I think “at least I can get the cassette on the rear wheel. I take the old 9-speed cassette, clean the freehub body, check the bearings (10-year old Shimano hubs – the grease inside looks brand new!) and slide on the new cassette… Only to find that the last sprocket has nothing to slide onto. A bit of Googling provides the answer… 9 speed Shimano hubs are not 11 speed compatible.

Ouch. New wheel required. Plus I feel an idiot for not knowing this earlier…

So, 5 hours after starting, I’ve managed to wash the bike, remove the brakes and shifters, ditch the chain, regrease the headset (it’ll need a new one in the spring) and fit a replacement stem.

Not the start I had hoped for.

A trip to the bike shop tomorrow, then…

Probably better to change the chainset for a compact than upgrade to 11 speed – solves the ISIS problem too.

Yeah, that’s part of the plan. New 105 crankset and Ulegra BB going in… assuming I ever get that BB out!

you can run 10 out of 11 cogs on your wheels.

http://darkspeedworks.com/blog.htm

Hmmm, good hack thombthumb, but I didn’t go into this to run 10 speeds!

It’s done. Needed a new rear wheel and LBS assistance getting the bloody bottom bracket out. And the handlebar tape ain’t pretty. But it’s ready to rack up some miles over winter.

looks good, and ready to be a dependable mile muncher but please sort that rear mudguard out!

Ha! All done now, amedias. Nice and tight to the tyre. But no too tight.