one monkey typing

The Nashbar (Cheng Shin) tire I put on in May of 2014 is about shot - cord visible in 8 places, up from 3 a week ago.
So it lasted one year and 1350 miles. Not bad for a $12 tire I guess, and I have 3 more of them. When they're gone, I think I might look for a longer lasting tire. The Marathons I bought for $24 a few years ago lasted about 7000 miles, but then again, those were 32s not 23s. Still, probably better value for money.

Odometer: 4228

My front tire was leaking down this week. I got it off and patched it, I don't think it was a puncture, the tube looked like it had been pinched or abraded in a line.

Also my chain had gotten quite loose and was badly corroded and sticky. I put it in a mineral spirits wash for a couple of hours, shaking it by hand while watching TV. Then I put some prolink on it, but I don't like prolink for winter riding, it's too thin and dry. I went to the bike shop in town today to look for some wet lube but they didn't have anything I liked - the wrench there wanted to push Boeshield T9, but I already have some and really don't think it's very good.

I wound up coming home and cutting some chainsaw bar oil with a little mineral spirits to make it flow. That should be sticky enough. Really in the winter it would be best if I cleaned the chain a lot more. I don't like doing it but I should try to do it.

Then I had to adjust the bottom bracket to tension the chain. This is a little bit of a pain in the butt - I haven't found a pin spanner that does a good job so I just put a crappy allen wrench in a hole and tap on it with a screwdriver and a 2 pound sledge to rotate it.

I'm not happy with the weather forecast for Sunday/Monday. If there's 10 inches of snow, I'll probably wave off riding on Monday, and I already skipped Friday due to the flat tire and the chain issues.

Odometer: 1300
Yeah, low mileage for a bike I've had for over a year. I don't ride this bike unless I have to (Giant Seek 0 2014)

I've had a lot of trouble getting acceptable rear mounts for my taillights and rear camera on my bicycle, since I ride with either a rack trunk bag or a garment bag, both of which obscure things mounted on the seat post.

Over the weekend I decided to brainstorm, I brought the bike into the lab and came up with this. I think it's a winner.

Here are the source files and a writeup on YouMagine if you like it. Or send me an email if you want one and don't have a 3D printer.

I got the road bike functional again this evening; a final cleaning in the shifter, then threaded a new cable in and got everything adjusted. I don't have a bar wrap replacement yet, one's on my wish list at Amazon but I hesitate to place something like my 4th small order this week for only $5. Something will come along soon enough, and besides, I ride on the hoods 100% of the time anyway.

I was disappointed, I brought the bike in to the hallway to do the reassembly and the cats didn't come to investigate. One lurked on the basement stairway staring at it but no sniffing.

I also got in from Amazon all the cables I think I need for the audio stuff for this weekend, reviewed a youtube video by a pro audio guy on how to properly bundle cables for storage, got them all bundled and secured with velcro straps and put into a gym bag. Tomorrow I will hopefully get over to the church and start setting up, there's a rehearsal on Saturday morning so I def need to be ready by then.

Yesterday the chain on the road bike that was damaged in the wreck earlier this year came apart - one of the links just parted. I called home for a bail-out, then threw on a new chain and went to work.

As I expected, the cassette is worn and skipping with the new chain. This isn't particularly safe since I can't accelerate in traffic as well as I should be able to, so I have to do something about it before hitting the roads again.

My original plan was to convert to an 8 speed cassette. They're a LOT cheaper ($20 versus $60, and the chains are $8 versus $30) and 10 speeds is ridiculous overkill for me - there are gears in there where I can shift and I can't even tell the difference. With the indexed shifting, converting may involve having to do some fiddling with a cable pull adapter.

The Performance shop in A2 has both cassettes. I'm leaning towards making the move to 8 speed now rather than spending $60 on a cassette just to get my use out of a $25 chain. According to Sheldon Brown, the cog spacing on Shimano 10 speed is 3.95mm, on the 8 speed, 4.8. So it's likely I'll need a cable pull adapter. I'm toying with the idea of designing and 3D printing one. I'm sure I can pull off the pulley and use a standard bearing, but I'm not sure about the body of such an adapter. I MIGHT be able to pull one off fully 3D printed, by making a quite chunky body for it.

I can probably use the thing without the adapter in the short term, because I can feather the upshift.

Also, Sheldon suggests a couple of methods for slightly altering cable pull travel simply by re-routing the cable. Probably not enough to make up a whole millimeter per click though.

FOLLOW-UP: The 8 speed cassette I needed was $35, and Performance gave me a discount bringing the 10 speed one down to $52, so I just did that. I really don't have time (or in the winter, inclination) to do a lot of fiddling with an experimental drivetrain modification.

Pretty much all bicycle headlights available in the US are pretty horrible for road use. They're almost all conical beam (like a flashlight) which means that they throw a lot of light above the horizon where it can glare into the eyes of oncoming drivers. 20 years ago when bicycle headlights were dim, pathetic incandescent bulbs with a couple of C cells, this wasn't really a problem, but these days with high power LED headlights approaching (or even exceeding) the brightness of automobile headlights, it's a case of the law simply not keeping up (partially because bicycles are largely considered toys in the US, not serious forms of transportation).
( Somewhat lengthy post with several photos behind cut )

And while the red accent is bold, it doesn't really fit the color scheme. Only minor injuries to myself. The bike is going to require more attention than I am. I guess the winter bike is coming off hangars this week.




Lessons learned:
If a tire is low or flat, stop in a straight line to fix it.
Don't experiment with a malfunctioning bike while riding at speed.

Events: I hit a sharp stone on the shoulder on N Territorial. About 2 miles later, just as I was about to take a turn, I realized "crap, front wheel is flat." Stupidly continued with the turn. Went down on a VERY screwed up corner with broken pavement and loose gravel. Main road rash is on my right forearm. Replaced front tube. Continued ride, shifting was wonky. Adjusting the barrel didn't do much, decided it would be a great idea to downshift and see if the gears lined up. Hint: it was not a great idea. Downshifting threw the derailleur into the spokes, ripping the derailleur apart, bending the crap out of the hanger, breaking a spoke and wedging the chain hard between the spokes and the cassette. Somehow I didn't quite abrade all the way through the rear tire, but it's trashed. Apparently the earlier crash bent the derailleur more than I thought.

Yesterday's broken spoke, the sixth so far, was #4. Only two factory spokes in that category remain, at this point it's just a matter of time, but I'll wait for them to break in their own time so that I can say that they all broke on their own.

previously: 20, 24, 28, 8, 12 have broken

Odometer: 519 (didn't ride much at all in the heavy snows and very low temps)

This is spoke 24
Previously 28, 12 and 8 broke.

That's half the trailing drive side spokes. If any other types of spokes break or certainly if any of the replaced spokes break, I'll have to consider tearing down and relacing with all new spokes.

The tension seems fine, though I don't have a tensiometer. I'm hoping they just used crappy spokes, and the Wheelsmith spokes I'm replacing them with will hold just fine. The crappy spokes theory seems viable in light of the fact that the nipples are definitely not top of the line.

The disc brakes mean that I don't really have to worry about getting the spoke replaced immediately as the rim can wobble quite a lot before it becomes bothersome (though at higher speeds than I get to in the winter it could be trouble) and the internal hub does make this not much of a hassle because as I proved today, I can replace even drive side spokes with the wheel still on the bike.

So really the broken spokes on this bike are not that big of a deal, though on a traditional bike I'd be a lot grumpier, as I'd have to remove the wheel AND remove the cassette from the wheel for each one. That gets pretty old pretty fast and last time I had a problem like this I did rebuild the wheel.

I think my odometer is around 380 miles on this bike. My bike comp is failing though, so that might be a bit off.

I picked up a Philips Saferide light, which is generally considered to be one of the best on-road bike lights available. What makes it good is that it has a car-like beam - a trapezoid shaped beam that gets brighter as it gets farther out down the road, so that the road surface is evenly illuminated, then a full cutoff at the horizon to keep from blinding oncoming drivers.

Unfortunately there are no laws in the US regarding bicycle headlights, so all we get here are cruddy lights with basically flashlight beams. I've put a lens on my old light to make it not so bad, but I thought it would be good to get the real premium light.

I did a review here.

Long story short, the beam from the light is excellent. The batteries, not so much. It uses NiMH batteries and they do NOT like the cold. The light is rated at 2 hours on high - but at -1*F, I got more like 20 minutes before it started flashing the battery meter and refused to kick into high again.

I sent it back, and will keep my eye open for a shaped-beam light with LiIon batteries. Either that or I'll buy one of the light heads intended for dyno hubs, and hook it to a battery myself.