Turns out that it wasn’t the bottom bracket after all, but the bloody freewheel. We didn’t have time to look into it on Thursday, so I spent most of Thursday evening fretting about my options while Penny did a thorough search of the interwebs looking for something that might fit.
She came up with several possibilities, all of which we put on hold until we could determine a course of action - repair or replace.
I met up with Eli at Dizzy Friday morning at 10:00, and after some grunting and penetrating oil, managed to get the freewheel off.
(A confession - all along I thought that I had a complete Campagnolo gruppo; it turns out that the freewheel is, in fact, a SunTour. How embarrassing. But as Eli pointed out, it is an older model, so it’s probably a really good one. Thanks, Eli!)
This is what a Campy freewheel would have looked like:
We pulled it apart, and to our delight, nothing was broken - full of road grit, but the bearing races were all good, and the pawls and springs were intact. A good cleaning, new ball bearings, fresh grease & oil, and I was back in business.
A big thanks to all the guys at Dizzy for their advice and good humour while we (mostly Eli) worked to get my old bike back on the road.
And huge thanks to Eli for giving so freely of his time and skill to get things sorted - I owe big.
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