Sunday, January 24, 2010

Deconstructing Lambert

Last night I started stripping the Death Fork. It was amazing the range of tools, all standard, I had to use to take this bike apart. Every part looks like it was hand crafted. All the knobs have custom L for Lambert on the them.



The 52t chain wheel is the only part that mounts to the cranks so I had to take of the 42t and 22t chain wheels. There were a ton of spacers and hex bolts, again, all standard size rather than metric.


Interesting that the bottom bracket is open like this. It appears that when the previous owner went had the bike registered with some law enforcement agency, the owner had his social security number etched into the BB for identification purposes. I don't think you would do that these days.


I ran into two snags: (1) can't get the stem out and thus I can't take the death fork off; and (2) the seatpost appears stuck in the seat tube. I might have to take out the spindle in the BB and see I can get at it from below.


2 comments:

Interstatement said...

My first road bike was a hand-me-down Deathfork-equipped Viscount Aerospace Pro. I rode it everywhere, including some moderately hard off-roading. When I was 14 or 15 years old, I was doing hot laps with the bike on my high schools cinder-surfaced track when the fork steerer snapped in two. Miraculously, I didn't wipe out. The fork broke high enough that it wedged itself against the inside of the head-tube. The bike's wheelbase suddenly increased by a few inches, startling the crap out of me, but gravity held it in place and I was able to safely stop. I didn't learn that it was a "Deathfork" until many years later.

I recently got a Lambert Professional Grand Prix frame which I want to eventually build up with a Sturmey Archer S3X rear hub. Mine has the same triple crank as yours, but I really want the double one with the six big round holes in it like my Viscount had. Very cool looking bikes!

the original big ring said...

that's a great winter project and a cool old bike!

if you go to Sheldon Brown's old site or Harris Cycle, you can find ways of removing stuck parts like seatposts and such (if I remember correctly).

good luck and keep us posted on how it turns out

cheers