Despite beautiful weather today I’m sitting at home as our new TV cabinet is being set up. The day is not a complete write-off, though, as I brought Kuroko up to the Workshop in the Sky to check out a couple of things prior to embarking on the Switching to Glide upgrade project.

The first was straightforward. I’m going to need to break the chain to fit the new derailleurs, so I wanted to know if it was worth it to reuse the same chain or if this would be a good chance to replace it. I haven’t been having any shifting issues indicating chain wear. But a quick check with the wear indicator shows 50%. Normally I would still use the chain another 1,000-2,000km, but there’s really no reason now not to replace it during the upgrade. Chains are in stock and not expensive.

It’s a poor workman who blames his tools

The next bit is more of an issue. When I swapped wheels a while back, I wasn’t able to loosen the rear brake caliper to adjust it. I was working with regular hex keys, and the more force I applied to the bolts, the rounder I was making the heads.

I bought a set of Park Tool hex sockets and a breaker bar to give it another try. The first step was to get the frame at an angle that would give me a good shot at the bolts. Alas, the quality hex socket and breaker bar combination was for nought — the heads are already quite rounded.

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Next steps

I’m going to have to try to extract the bolts, and if that doesn’t work, drill them out or hacksaw them off. As they’ll be unusable after that, I’ll hold off until we’re ready to take on the body of the work. (The replacement caliper has its own bolts.) Regardless, this makes it likely the conversion will take more than one day, even if there are no further hiccups along the way.