DIY Fork Mount (for bike rack cheap-o's)

1) Go to your garage or LBS (local bike shop) to find a taco'ed bike wheel from which you can clip the hub. Make sure it fits the bike you intend to haul around on top of your car, and find a a quick release skewer that will fit.
2) You better take a break: this has been pretty strenuous so far. Have a refreshing beverage.
3) Get an angle grinder, metal file, gritty sand paper, or use your teeth to make flat spots on the hub where it will rest on the roof rack's cross-bars. If you have Yakima bars (round) instead of Thule (rectangular), then make your flat spots convex to roughly fit the radius of the bar.
4) Go to your garage or LHS (local hardware store) and pick up a U-bolt that will fit snugly over your hub and cross-bar. If the threaded portions of the U-bolt are too long, you can just hack them off with a saw at later.
5) Fasten the hub to your bars with the U-bolt, and tighten it down.
6) Throw your expensive carbon-fiber mountain bike up there.
7) Cruise down the interstate
8) Go back to where your bike fell off and pick up the pieces off the road.
8) Now, back at home, adjust your rear bar so that your bike's back wheel lands on/near it and then get a nylon strap to secure it.
9) Have another refreshing beverage and admire your work.

Refurbishing Leather Bicycle Saddle.

There is a fine line, with worn out leather bicycle saddles, between a fine "patina" and general dysfunction. This old saddle had crossed that line and was no longer usable: it broke the third time I rode it.

New leather bicycle saddles tend to start around $60 (the Brooks Titanium Swallow is $500), and I'm cheap, so I didn't want to spring for a new one. A plastic seat on this bike just didn't look right, so I decided to replace the leather. Here is what I did...

Here's the broken seat.

I pulled the old copper rivets out by unbending their back sides.

This is what the frame looks like without the leather on it. The leather gets stretched from back to front creating a sort of natural 'suspension' system.

Next, cut-out the new piece, using the old as a stencil. After a little investigation, I found that you probably want at least 8 oz. leather (this indicates how thick it is) as a minimum. 10 oz. leather is probably ideal. Most places aren't in the business of selling a single 6" x 12" piece of leather, but if you look around, you should be able to find the right seller, eventually.





Now lay the new leather over the frame and get it into position, making sure it's a good fit. Punch new holes in the leather to align with the holes in the frame (don't worry about prepping the three holes on the little front piece until you have the back part completely finished).







I found these #9 copper rivets at my local hardware store for $.27 each. I got larger washer that would slip all the way down the rivet (the #9 washer is made to stop just a fraction of the way down the tip of the rivet). Push the rivet through the leather & the hole in the metal frame, and then slip the washer on the back side.


Now it's a matter of peening the rivet (no photos for this part!). This just means that you smash the rivet's point with a hammer until it's all mushroomed and disfigured so that it won't & can't slip through the washer again, ever. It's a little tricky to peen the rivets with the seat's rails getting in your way, but you'll find the right combination of tools that were meant for something else, to make it work.



Here is the final result. NOTE: in order to keep the whole seat from flattening like a pancake, I punched a couple of holes in each of the sides and laced them together underneath. This gives the leather much better form & structure.

For more general information on leather bicycle saddles, check out Sheldon Brown's page
This old leather broke the third time I rode it, leaving me without a leather saddle.

Idle Air Control Valve Fix

My 1999 Subaru Legacy Brighton (2.2L EJ22 engine) had an issue with its idle air control valve/solenoid. Over the course of many months, I got a handful of CELs (check engine lights) with a code of P1507: "Idle Air Control System Malfunction". The first few times I just cleared the codes, after all, the car was running and idling smoothly. Eventually though, I decided it was time to address the issue.Simply replacing the IAC valve is quite expensive: for a factory part I'd have paid $350 for the part alone. A local parts store would charge about $180 for an aftermarket version.Most typically, the IAC valve just gets too fouled up with gunk and needs a good cleaning. Here's how to go about it:

Locate the idle air control valve. On a '99 Legacy 2.2L, it is on the driver's side of the throttle body. The factory part will have a blue sticker on it giving the part number (A33-661 R02).
The valve is held on by two screws which have a reputation for mushing to pieces under the force of a poorly placed screwdriver, so make sure you have the right size (use a flat-head, not phillip's) make sure you have a very firm grip and plenty of pressure on the screw head.

I found all kinds of black gunk on the tip of the valve. Before cleaning it off, leave it plugged in to its wiring harness and lay it on the engine in a place where you'll be able to see it from the driver's seat. Turn the ignition key to the 'on' position (not start): the tip of the valve should move in or out, and back again when you turn the key off. If you don't see any movement, then it's likely your valve it either way too gummed up or, worse, the electrical/mechanical components inside have failed. Either way, you'll want to clean it up and try again.
Before cleaning, I removed the rubber O-ring from the valve (you don't want the cleaning agents to degrade the rubber). Next I used carburetor cleaner, rags and Q-tips to thoroughly remove all deposits from the valve. In the process, the spring and seating parts came out of the solenoid - I'm not sure if that is supposed to happen, but I was able to put them back in without problems.

With the valve removed, I also cleaned the air passages in the throttle body which also had plenty of black gunk.
My IAC valve was shiny-clean, so I replaced the O-ring and plugged it back in to the wiring harness to test it. I turned the ignition to the on position and it appeared to move in & out much more freely than before.

After ensuring that all parts were clean and dry, I re-installed the valve. Also, ensure that you have correctly replaced the air box, and that all other air intake components you may have removed are tightly reconnected.

Voila - it again idles smoothly.

Typically, an IAC valve goes bad by fouling, like mine did. However, they can also fail electrically or mechanically. Check for voltage in the wiring harness and continuity between the pins on the solenoid itself. I rule out mechanical failure by cleaning thoroughly and observing actuation of the solenoid when turning the ignition to the 'on' position.