Anyway, this catalogue of mechanical failure got me thinking about really making my touring bike robust. I got some good new Marathon/plus replacement tyres, front and back, and decided that the back wheel was written off for loaded touring and needed replacement. New good quality wheels are darned expensive and the cheap ones (like the ones my Hawk came with) seem pretty awful with zinc spokes and the like, so I started looking into rebuilding it myself.

So followed some months of mechanical tinkering with wheels, hub bearings, and the drivechain of my Hawk. I rebuilt the backwheel with stainless spokes and didn't make a total pig's ear of it (on the upside I think got it nice and true - on the downside the spokes were a bit long and I was afraid would pop the tube from the inside; never happened in the end). I replaced the sticking old freewheel with a 6-speed "megarange" I got cheap on ebay. The required a new rear derailer, and when I measured the stretch in my old chain I was amazed and replaced that too. Obviously the brakes were made safe again too.

This was all done over winter. The Hawk rode really nicely again on some spring jaunts I took it on. I particularly am attached to the megarange freewheel - having one super-low gear, once you get used to it, is really useful (and it's worth it just to see people's faces when you pull away from traffic lights twice as fast as all the other commuters).

But having all the rebuilt stuff on its dead heavy gaspipe frame started to seem a bit perverse. When I saw an unusual large cro-moly steel framed hybrid going cheap on ebay, it definitely seemed time for a new bike. It turned out to be quite an unusual machine - it's an 1980s (I think) MBK (Motobocaine) French hybrid/tourer. It has some odd features - like "Biopace" chainwheels, which seem to be the #1 cause of arguments on bike messageboards, but are liked by Sheldon Brown (I find it hard to feel any difference in truth). It's also pink/purple and white, rather a contrast from my sober black Hawk, although it is growing on me (and is very unlikely to get stolen). Most importantly it's about half the weight of the Hawk.

I decided to use my new "skills" to build a new set of really good wheels from scratch for my new ride - I didn't want any more broken spokes. I build the front first from a fairly standard Shimano Deore LX hub, Mavic A119 hybrid rim and plain gauge spokes. For the rear, I obtained a fancy hub (Campagnolo super record) cheapish on ebay, and built up a (within reason) no-expenses spared wheel around it - A319 rim with nice double-butted spokes. I didn't want any more spoke breakage.

I've got the wheels nice, tight and true, and they stay that way so they seem strong! I then transferred a lot of the "improvements" I'd made to the Hawk to the "Purple Haze". New pedals, marathon plus tyres, megarange freewheel and drivetrain. On went my trusty bar-ends and twist-shifts (personally I really don't like the STI shifters, and indeed the ones on the bike broke on its first outing!). I finally bought a new saddle as my old one, while comfortable, was disintegrating.

After some fine-tuning with the mudguards and the addition of a new alloy rack, I had myself a new (sort of) tourer...