March/April 2018 - The ATX Chronicle

Bike News

So it's been a long few months trying figure out how to get the final bearings onto the ATX. After a bit of effort with 6 of them, I was finally left with the last 2 that were locked away behind the stripped thread bearing caps.

I tried several methods to remove them, starting with trying to force a larger starnut bolt into the allen slot. Unfortunately this only resulted in the thread stripping further, making the process all the more difficult. I tried to use some special stripped allen thread tools, however it was too late at this point

Next idea was to fix an allen key within the bearing cap using first epoxy glue (failed) and epoxy putty (failed again)

At this point I realised the allen slot was just a no go, so it was time to explore other options. My first idea was to fill the allen slot with epoxy and use a Dremel to cut a new screw slot. Ambitious to say the least:


I needed a helping hand at this point so I turned to Charlie's Dad to give me a hand. After taking a quick look, he had the better idea drill into the side of the bearing cap and knock the bolt loose with a hammer & chisel; far more straight forward than my dremel idea. To my joy, it worked!


You can see where we drilled into the side. Now comes the best photos:



The old 6 inch plates are back! The best news in this is that the bike finally supports my 15KG weight gain over 10 years. There's still work to be done in getting new bearing caps but at least the bike is back ready to ride with new bearings and plates.
As a final note, take a look at the old vs new bearings:



General News

I wanted to summarise the ATX fix up since it's been such a journey. Hopefully this will lead to more ridiing and more topics for the rest of the news. I did however gain a further addition to the bike family:

Bulla