Malmesbury Bikes

The freehub on my mountain bike seized several times over Christmas - the pedals went round, but the wheel didn’t because the freehubs’ rachets wouldn’t engage - so, rather than replace the whole, I opted to replace the freehub body. This is a relatively task, apart from two issues:
1 - The bike’s hub must be pushing ten years old, so there were some compatibility issues with the new Deore hub that I used as a source for the new freehib.
2 - Getting the freehub off of the wheel was easy (using the wheel for leverage), but getting the freehub off of the hub was a different matter. I’m not sure how cycle shops resort to a two foot long plumber’s wrench to mend bikes, but it worked a treat on this little task.
I’d love to say that the result was perfect, but it wasn’t and has resulted in the bodge from hell to get me out this morning:
A - the cassette wouldn’t sit back on the new freehub, so I resorted to some inventive addition of some old sprockets and spacer - the smallest ring is now the second one in!
B - the brake set-up wasn’t quite right so, after the first few miles of feeling like I was on an exercise bike with the friction set to max and no adjustment available, the rear brake blocks were discarded to free up the wheel. The bike ran like a dream after that. . . just didn’t stop very well.
So, moral of the story - don’t mees around with old bike components, just replace the bits in bulk. . . is that an excuse for a new bike??

Managed to get the bike out on Friday. The roads outside were treacherous, but I needed to drop down to school and it seemed a good chance to test the bike. All went well down the hill but, whether the freewheel is a bit stiff or the temperatures got it, once I hit the flat the pedals spun without turning the wheels - which made for a walk back up the hill. . .  ho hum.

Anyway, it proved that there would have been enough grip to cycle properly - I didn’t crash for a change - and the new Wellgo V8 flat pedals worked a dream.