Boo-O-8

I took my new pride-and-joy out for a peddle today. I had some tinkering to do on it over the last few days and I knew that it was not 100% but it should have been road worthy. I had it on the stand last night and ran it through all the gears and adjusted the wheels and brakes so that, even though I knew the wheels weren’t 100% true, nothing rubbed and every thing worked as it should. I have a fancier model Peugeot that I rode around for quite a bit last year despite the fact that it was much, much too small for me. I guess I had too high expectations for this lowly UO-8.

Something was ticking. Front wheel or back, I couldn’t quite figure this out but I think it was the front. Last night I found a big divot on the back rim that caused one tire to blow out and another to almost explode. I used a pair of channel-locks to ease that ding back into place but it wasn’t a 100% fix so that was my immediate concern. I got off the bike and tried both wheels and they spun clear with no rubbing or real wobbling.

Secondly, there was something wrong with the peddling. As I would peddle through the 12 O’Clock position it would “click” on the left side. I have heard this noise before. I had hear this noise before. When I was ten. The kids with the crappiest bikes made this noise when they were peddling about. It was obnoxious then and it was obnoxious now. Of course, when I dismounted the bike and tried to re-create the sound by hand I was unable to do it.

The bike stopped poorly and handled poorly. It made noises that made me fear that it would explode or fall apart. It was nowhere near the ride of my PRN and certainly not even as nice as my Raleigh Marathon. I could pour a lot of work and money into it and I am sure that it would be a better riding bike! Sadly, I don’t have enough knowledge to diagnose these symptoms , nor the tools to fix most of them. I have a UO-14 in size extra-large that also rides nicer than this turd. That bike I got for free. I’m gonna slap a set of fenders on that and ride that as my winter beater. Perhaps I will make the time and money investment to make the UO-8 special but for the time being it seems as if I made a bad call with this one!