lannguyen.me

Bulb fail and fenders

After dissecting all the light bulbs from the three headlights, I went to Home Depot to find replacements since all of them looked old or totally burnt out.

Each bulb had a specific voltage and unfortunately none of them matched what Home Depot offered.  Bulb fail!  I’ll have to look online, but wondering if I can’t easily find it in stores, should I do some type of LED mod like Boston Retro Wheelmen?  I’ve decided to see how much light these bulbs will emit and if it’s not bright enough I’ll still use the casings but convert them to LED.

My aluminum fluted Velo Orange fenders came, @ only $28 for the set (orig. $55), I couldn’t pass it up.  Immediately I noticed how light they were.  They will replace the stock cream painted steel fenders on my Linus mixte.

It came with a lot of parts and lets just say the VO directions were not… very specific or even in a numbered step by step format.  I took them out, saw all the pieces, got hesitant and put them all back. 

Then finally last night I decided to go for it (during a mini marathon of The Kennedys, great story btw).  What’s the worst that can happen, don’t put my bike back together properly? No biggie. Disclaimer: not particularly mechanical, but if i have pretty descriptive instructions and plenty of time, i can get it done.

What I realized in starting this project:

1. You definitely need the bike to be placed upside down.

2. The wheel definitely needs to come off in order to switch out the fenders.

3.  When the instructions calls for a specific tool like a hacksaw or bolt cutters, you definitely need to have them.

So although I pretty much have the new front fender on, I can’t complete it until I trim the fender stays with some cutters.

*definitely: Yes, i tried to work on the fenders with the bike upright, tried to manuever the fenders around with the wheels still on, and didn’t really heed the part about trimming the fender stays.

oh, and here are the parts (and a few tools) left after one fender up. hm, still looks like there’s quite a bit of pieces…

a suivre!