That's an easy job ...

[whitestone]

The indexing on the bike wasn't right. No problem thinks I.

Get the stand out and mount up the bike. Go through the procedure: smallest cog; barrel adjuster wound fully in then out a complete turn and then flick through the gears. Except there'd be one gear skipped going one way and a different gear skipped going the other. Hmm, I wonder if the hanger is misaligned (the hanger was bent when I received the frame so had straightened it when I built up the bike).

Off with the mech and out with the hanger alignment tool and it's way out. so a gentle ease to get in line again and ... snap! Great At least I bought a spare after straightening it last time. Looking at the break point on the hanger not all of the scar is fresh so it was probably not long for this world anyway - at least it happened at home.

Dig out the spare hanger - of course it wasn't with the bike and its toolkit was it? Eventually found it. Hmm that looks different, there's three screw holes and the one on the bike only has two. Yes, there'd been two versions of the frame that year and I'd ordered the hanger for the wrong one On to the web and order the correct one (and spare).

Now I've just got to get the hanger stub off the frame. But the Allen key doesn't fit. Get a paper clip and clean out the holes. One screw comes out but the other won't budge - the hole has become completely fubarred. OK, Dremel time! Lots of careful drilling and filing and cutting and eventually it's off.

All that took two hours (and £50 for the two hangers).

Time for a cup of tea and a sit down.

[benp1]

Short jobs are never short. Although short jobs involving gears are usually particularly "never short"

At last you were able to sort it under controlled conditions

[whitestone]

Well at least CTBM have already dispatched the hangers so I should have them tomorrow

I was quite impressed with myself - there was very little swearing involved. Note that the swearing is usually frustration at myself for not being able to do something.

[Jurassic pusher]

I expect Single Speeding had never seem so appealing!

[Zippy]

Sounds like a fairly normal day Bob!
I was helping my brother change his exhaust on his car – impact gun just rounded a couple of nuts (they were on firm, plus-gassed etc.). Nut splitter wasn’t much good on the flanged nuts, so I shopped them off with the angle grinder eventually. Then as they were pressed in studs on the catalytic converter, spent an hour or so carefully drilling them out, before realising I did indeed have the perfect press tool for the job and pressed the studs out of the cat in about 2 minutes! I also happened to have the perfect size M10 stainless nuts and bolts to replace these….must remember I have more tools and crap than I used to.

Top tips for next time (possibly, may be a red herring and you’d already considered yadayada) is to 1. Penetrating spray on the thread side of the bolt, and 2. Try a left hand drill bit (at normal drill speeds, not speedy dremel speeds), as quite often they grab and unscrew the stuck bolt. (I’ve a few times had to weld a new nut on the end…but that’s bigger stuff).

[whitestone]

Given that the bolt was going to be toast anyway, I probably should have used one of the Dremel cutting blades to make a slot in the top then a flat bladed screwdriver would have fitted.

Somewhere I've a set of left handed taps for precisely this sort of situation but I've a feeling they are a bit big for the bolts for a mech hanger. The other problem is that you are working from "inside" the frame so you can't get larger drills square to the dropout.

[Zippy]

Ah yes - didn't appreciate you were "inside" the frame. A simple job can easily be very complex if access is a pain!