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Meanwhile in South Africa

(9 posts)
  • Started 11 years ago by lionfish
  • Latest reply from lionfish
  • This topic is not a support question

  1. lionfish
    Member

    Hello all!
    Sorry it's been so long since we visited the forum (especially after being so active). But we've been in Africa for the last two months!

    While making the blog, I found this old photo lying about on my laptop - I can't remember if I already posted it to the forum (sorry if I've just completely forgotten).

    Has anyone else experienced side-car bike-child-carriers?

    http://africanpostcards.wordpress.com/2013/11/23/an-off-topic-cycling-post/

    I'm afraid our current trip is the opposite of cycling - we've bought a massive landrover defender to travel about in :) Planning on hiring some bikes for a week to get about Cape Town though, so will see what cycling here's like.

    Hope all's well in Edinburgh, I've not been following the forum (or any other online thing). Need a really short minisummary of forum/edinburgh/cycling news :)

    Posted 11 years ago #

  2. algo
    Member

    Hello,

    hope South Africa is fun and your Defender is going well - key to a Land Rover in my experience is to treat engine oil leaks as a clever chassis rust protection mechanism.

    If you want to catch up on the biggest recent story here I'd say it's this:

    http://citycyclingedinburgh.info/bbpress/topic.php?id=11324

    which documents some catastrophic design decisions by CEC and various knock-on effects. Plenty of press coverage and videos there to get through...

    Posted 11 years ago #

  3. lionfish
    Member

    @algo - I like that :) I'm not sure when to worry about the oil leaks (i.e. how much starts to go from an entertaining, if environmentally dubious, feature to a problem). We've noticed that it only seems to leak much if we top the oil up to near the High mark on the dip-stick... don't know if that makes sense either.

    Thanks for the link to the latest. I'm also intrigued by how the George Street bike-lane trial is going??

    We're in Cape Town now, and have hired a couple of bikes for a few days - so will be putting up a couple of blog posts about it soonish. The blog's a bit behind at the moment.

    In the meantime, a general cycling-in-SA post...

    http://africanpostcards.wordpress.com/2013/11/26/cycling-in-south-africa/

    Posted 10 years ago #

  4. chdot
    Admin

    Well you did ask -

    "I'm also intrigued by how the George Street bike-lane trial is going??"

    Posted 10 years ago #

  5. lionfish
    Member

    I can't see much sign of a bike-lane, but I'm liking how chilled and easy everything's become! I'm guessing the problem is a Christmas market or something's blocked the bike lane? Anyway, hopefully once that's sorted the bike lane will be good? :) How's the connection at each end with other bike-"facilities"?

    My first thought was why is everyone wearing so many clothes - it's taking me longer than expected to get used to being on the other side of the tilty Earth.

    Posted 10 years ago #

  6. chdot
    Admin

    "How's the connection at each end with other bike-"facilities"?"

    Good question...

    http://citycyclingedinburgh.info/bbpress/topic.php?id=10031#post-133835

    Posted 10 years ago #

  7. lionfish
    Member

    Hmm, is that just a temporary solution or something? Until the tram-works are complete?

    Anyway, thanks for keeping me up-to-date :)

    Posted 10 years ago #

  8. algo
    Member

    @lionfish - to address the observation less pertinent to cycling (apologies) - all combustion engines experience "blow-by" which increases crank-case pressure. This is regulated by a crank-case breather (called a CCV or PCV) which usually sits on top of the valve cover. If you over-fill the oil then the crank-case pressure combined with increased oil pressure can force oil to find its way out past the weakest seals. Once the oil level is a bit lower and the nominal pressure to oil-pump decreases oil will seep less out of seals. This is pretty normal. If you find a level of oil between low and high on the dipstick where oil leaks tend to stop then that is pretty normal - keep an eye on it for sure. You want to get worried about oil leaks if they are anywhere near timing belts or possibly clutches but otherwise it's a fact of life and chasing them down and repairing seals will only make the oil come out somewhere else!

    Apologies for the long post - it is very rare a topic comes up on here about which I know something....

    Posted 10 years ago #

  9. lionfish
    Member

    Thanks algo for the advice - that was roughly what I suspected. However, there's been a bit of a hiccup with the landy, more on that later...

    Anyway, finally got a couple more posts up on the blog - one specifically about cycling in Cape Town :)

    http://africanpostcards.wordpress.com/2013/12/18/cycling-in-cape-town/

    Posted 10 years ago #

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