Two tiny bicycle projects

I like projects. You may have noticed. After the Proflex 854 was done, I took on another 1990s bicycle project. More on that soon.

One of the most fun things in the Proflex project was taking sad-looking parts, and making them happy again. Sometimes that was just a quick de-grease and polish. Sometimes that was multiple evenings after work.

And so, here are some tatty DMR V12 pedals. I bought them from eBay for £22.

On the outside they look like scrap pile finds, but inside they were almost perfect. The internals only needed a strip-down, clean and re-grease.

I took care of the outside with various abrasives.

There aren't really shortcuts for this, other than the ultrasonic cleaner which I don't have. Wire brushes took off the loosest of the corrosion, Brillo pads got them about 95% of the way to shiny, and Silvol polish got it the rest of the way there.

The studs, as you can see above, were made of steel, and were rusted. I could have just cleaned them up and screwed them back in. Or I could have got any other boring M4 studs and put those in. But I was very happy with how the red anodised studs looked on the Proflex's pedals, so I went one step further.

Beautiful! Or what teenage me would have called "wicked" (younger readers should note that this predates the invention of "sick fam").

Here's a sad-looking bicycle seat which had been sitting outside for a very long time.

It is a Setlaz saddle from the early 2000s. I think it is a copy of an Azonic Love Seat. They were ludicrously comfortable for the occasional rider. This one should have gone in the bin, and instead I thought I could try and save it. I've never re-covered a bike seat before, and it looked like a fun challenge.

I stripped it back to the foam. That showed most of the foam was still intact, and may have given me at least five diseases. You can see black areas below; that is where I filled in the small foam losses with flexible plastic filler (this was after the application, but before sanding it back).

I stretched 2mm-thick purple neoprene over it and glued it with fabric-friendly spray contact adhesive.

That actually looks alright! Though the colour shows off every imperfection in the underlying foam just like paint does on a car. Lesson learned: be really pedantic with the filler next time.

I added some hard-wearing Kevlar corners to it (actually a blend of Kevlar and something that isn't Kevlar). I cut these using the original Kevlar corners as a loose template, and glued them on with McNett Black Witch adhesive because I'm about 30 years removed from any time I knew how to work a sewing machine.

It looks OK from a distance! I, being biased, think it's not bad for a first attempt at this. But purple is probably the wrong colour. And maybe Neoprene, which I chose for its stretchiness and waterproof qualities, was the wrong material. I made the mistake of handling it after stripping the drivetrain of the bike. Obviously I washed my hands first, but you never get all the grease off, and purple Neoprene shows up every fingerprint.

Oh well! It's my first attempt at re-covering a seat, as I said, so I'm not ashamed of it at all. Nobody who matters is scoring it on appearances. You don't feel any of the imperfections when you sit on it, and when you're sitting on it you can't see it anyway. Now that I know what mistakes to not make, my next one will be better!