August 16th, 2018 ----------------- A long and frustrating but ultimately pretty successful session at the co-op today. I fixed the kickstand issue mentioned previously, that's all good now. I also shortened the front brake cable that I installed previously, as it was really a bit too long, it looks much nicer now, and should perform better too. Installing the rear Mafac caliper ended up not being the mission impossible I was fearing. It was quite straightforward to remove the little vertical-mounting adapter which was bolted on there. When being mounted horizontally, you are supposed to use a special washer, which is flat on one side (which goes up against the caliper boss) and curved on the other (which fits snugly over the brake bridge). Obviously my vertical calipers did not come with these, but I found some generic ones in the bottom of a big bucket of random brake parts, and they seem to work. Perhaps one day if I really feel like I will buy the original Mafac bolts off eBay, but there are enough other parts of the bike which are a bit kludgey that I can't really consider this a high priority. With the rear caliper mounted, the only thing left was to install the cable. This should have been pretty quick and painless, but turned into one of those unbelievable cascade-of-problem situations which drag on for hours. I mentioned previously that the rear cable hanger I was given was a strange pulley thing unlike any other hanger I'd seen. As soon as I held the thing up to the seatpost clamp bolt to think about how to attach it, I realised something was wrong. I just couldn't for the life of me see how to attach it in such a way that the cable would enter and leave at the appropriate angles. I embarked on a very thorough search of the brake parts looking for other hangers, but succeeded only in finding a whole lot more of the the very same pulley part. The staff member assisting today couldn't figure it out either, and only after we eventually resorted to having a look at the restored old bikes that are sold on Sundays did we find an example of one of these things correctly installed which answered our questions: the pulley hangers are for mixte frames! Because the top tube of a mixte slopes downward and intersects the seat tube below the rear brake bridge, you have to run the brake cable *up* the seat tube, around a pulley and back down to the calipers. There's just no way to use this part on a standard diamond framed bike. At this point I was really confused about the total lack of suitable hangers. This place has piles and piles of old Weinmann centrepull brakes and they were obviously very commonly installed on bikes sold around here back in the day. It's inconceivable that *all* those brakes were scavenged from dead mixtes, which are relatively rare, so where the heck are all the hangers? At one point I dejetedly thought I was going to have to buy a new one (not that I would mind dropping less than 10 Euro on a new part, but it would delay the project yet further), but after heroic searching I found *two* hangers, in some random bucket that was *near* the brake stuff but not really with it. One boring rainy Sunday I'm going to go in and spend a day resorting all the random tiny parts at this place. Anyway, this hanger was very clearly designed for a different size and type of bolt than the one seat tube clamp, and changing my bolt proved to be difficult because the clamp had actually slightly deformed around the eyelet, under the pressure of the (over?) tightened nut, and getting a new bolt all the way in or out of it was extremely difficult, so I ended up having to drill it out ever so slightly. Eventually I got everything together, and installed a brake cable, but I was running out of time and didn't have a chance to properly tighten and adjust the cable. So, the rear brake is now at about the same status as the front brake was at the end of last Thursday. Astonishingly, unbelivably, infuriatingly, my Kool Stop brake pads still haven't turned up, even though they arrived in Helsinki a week ago. DHL's online tracking is totally useless, so I have asked the eBay seller to inquire with them directly. We'll see what happens. The best case scenario now is that the pads turn up early next week, and I can spend a leisurely session at the co-op next Thursday installing them and fine-tuning their positioning, cable tightness, etc, and get the brakes all nice and set up. That's really all that is left to do. Next week, I'll walk there instead of ride, and bring my 70 Euro with me, with the full expectation that I'll be able to ride the thing home. Hopefully it doesn't fall apart halfway there., with the full expectation that I'll be able to ride the thing home. Hopefully it doesn't fall apart halfway there.