Broke my fat bike!

 I broke my fat bike!

I took a ton of time a few weeks ago to tune up the fat bike and it was running very smoothly. A few days later it started shifting poorly and I thought it was just because of bad cheap components. Well its not that its not because of cheap parts but it was not the parts I thought it would have been. After a ride where my chain kept falling off I flipped the fat bike over to check over the gears and shift cables. I noticed the freewheel was loose so I took the tire off...

That is when I noticed there was a real bad problem, the whole freewheel just fell to the ground. I have had freewheel loosen up and get sloppy but I have not seen the whole thing just fall apart like this one did. I attempted to put it back on but thats when I noticed that it was far worse than I first thought. If you notice in the first picture there is something missing that needs to be there for things to work. 

I zoomed into the problem part from the mess of cogs on the ground. That little metal peice needs to be in one of the groves in the first picture and there is a ball bearing and a wire that holds things together. Well the ball bearing was gone and that wire was all bent out of shape in such a way that I would not be able to get it back together. The way the whole thing works is there are groves in the freewheel that when going forward that little metal peice hooks into the groves and moves the wheel and when you pedal backwards it flattens down in and allows the groves to pass over it. I am clearly not the best at explaining this but the long story short this freewheel was busted and not going to work at all anymore. With out that little metal peice and ball bareing missing it was not going to move even if I got it back together. There was one last problem now. There was part of the freewheel still stuck to the wheel and I had to take it off. 

I have all the tools needed but even with my body weight, putting the wheel in a table clamp, and a breaker bar it was not moving even a little bit. At this point I was thinking this whole wheel is trash and I am going to either have to buy a new fat bike ( a better built one ) or a new wheel. So I decided to try the trick of heating it up and using a rubber hammer on the wrench. 

To my shock a few hamer blows to the wrench while using my whole body weight plus the heat was enough to break it loose. Once it was loose it spun right off and I just had to check the spokes to make sure I did not damage them when doing this. There was a lot of noise from then when I was hammering down and I really thought that one of them would get busted but nope they were all fine. Now I just had to order a new freewheel and get it on the bike. 

A few days later new freewheel arrived nad I installed it on the bike. I did not need to do much to get it running slightly index the gears and it was shifting perfectly. Now I get to enjoy my cheap fat bike again with out the dork disk. I did not buy an expensive freewheel though. I ride this bike in the winter and mostly just when there is snow and or ice on the ground. I figure I am still going to be beating the crap out of it each ride with all the salt that is on the road before I get to any trails so putting nicer parts on it would have been a bit of a waste. Either way it has the same ratio of gears so it ride the same as far as that goes. I am sure I will have to replace this one in a year or so and I might think about getting a better fat bike at that point but for now I am going to enjoy riding this cheap one through the snow and not care if things break on it. That is part of the fun of cheap bikes I do not have to care as much about things I can just replace parts cheaply and if it breaks fully I can just buy a better bike if I want to. 

As for the exercising

It has been snowy and there is lots of ice on the ground right now being December and all that is expected. Getting the part in for the fat bike took a bit of pep out of my step and I have not been as active as past weeks. I still have been getting in exercise and ran on the treadmill a few times but life has just really been getting in the way of me doing the amount I want to do. Aside from waiting for the parts on my fat bike work has been a bit crazy and there are issues with my mother that needed my attention. Two kids, broken bike, demanding work, and a parent that needs help all combined into me not feeling like I want to do anything exercise releated. I will not stop the journey and will still be exercising, I mean winter riding has been my favorite time to ride so I want to get on the bike as much as I can. With all of this though its slowing down for a little bit and I have noticed it in my waist. I have not lost any of the ability to ride or run and that is nice but less exercise and a little bit of over eating again has caused my loss of weight to bounce back to gaining weight again. I am now close to 170 again. I am not happy about this but at least this time I am not as round as I was before. At the start of this I was upset about not fitting into work pants and right now they still fit and I am not going to get to the point where they don't fit again. I have to get past this small chapter in my life and get back into the dieting and cycling no matter what is going on. With that this is still a journey and there will always be some setbacks and some gains so I am not feeling like this is a lost cause just becuase I gained weight I am still happy about all the progress I have made and will continue to make over the course of this journey. 

I am off to relax and think about where the journey is going to take me. Thank you very much for reading and have a wonderful day!