Squeak, squeak

My legs are out. It must be Spring.  

And a nasty, pale-looking pair they are too,  hiding from the elements all winter.  Nothing that a drop of St Tropez won't cure.

The evenings are getting longer as well.

My Condor's developed a squeak.  One of those annoying, elusive squeaks that sound as though they're coming from somewhere around the bottom bracket.  Which probably means they're actually in the headset. Or the rear hub.  Or your ankles.

I've had two steel frames crack on me, so I take squeaks seriously.

I've eliminated the seat post, the cranks and the pedal-cleat interface.  I've also eliminated the wheels, because I've changed them.  And in the process, discovered an extraordinary piece of cackhandedness by an anonymous Condor mechanic.

I normally build up my own bikes, or slowly replace every bit on them anyway so, like Trigger's broom, they're a different bike.

But the Tempo is pretty much as it left Condor's, except for new Mavic Pro's, and rectifying a bizarre build oddity.  Condor use horizontal forward-facing dropouts on the Tempo frames, because "it's hard to change wheels with mudguards and track dropouts". It's not, but we'll let that pass.

The mechanic who assembled my bike had secured the mudguards to the bottom seat stay bridge with a 1.5 cm bolt, in a chrome sheath (actually a campag seat pin bolt).  And in the process made it literally impossible to get the wheel out.  The wheel could not go forward more than three-quarters of the way along the dropout, even with the tyre completely deflated.

It took me a while to work out how he'd done it.  But clearly, he'd put the wheel, with the tyre deflated, as far back in the dropout as possible before installing the mudguard, inflating the tyre, moving the wheel forward to within a milimetre of the bolt and sniggering at the thought of what would happen in the event of a puncture.

Eventually, I managed to extricate the wheel, but only after loosening the retaining bolt with a round- headed Bondhus Allen key at an extreme angle, and removing the entire mudguard.

The guard is now reattached with a straightforward water bottle boss bolt, and wheel removal is more straightforward.  Top marks for the Condor mechanic and his evil plan.

STOP PRESS:  The squeak stopped when I took my overshoes off. Is this significant?