CityCyclingEdinburgh was launched on the 27th of October 2009 as "an experiment".
IT’S TRUE!
CCE is 15years old!
Well done to ALL posters
It soon became useful and entertaining. There are regular posters, people who add useful info occasionally and plenty more who drop by to watch. That's fine. If you want to add news/comments it's easy to register and become a member.
RULES No personal insults. No swearing.
I removed the bit of my chainguard which is attached to the cranks, as it was rubbing against the outer bit.
The whole reason for removing it was because it was making an annoying noise, but I only truly realised how annoying it was when it was gone.
The original bigger chain ring fitted today so I didn't spin going down hills. Also required new cassette with bigger inside cog to reduce the struggle going up hills. This also meant a new long reach rear derailleur and naturally a new chain.
Quick check showed the brake pads needed replacing which also prompted a long overdue front and rear brake system bleed.
Altogether very satisfactory, although there's now some noise coming from the front wheel bearings. I'm sure it wasn't there before.
I am hoping to fix rod operated brakes on a trike I have in garage to give to a little lass struggling with bicycle. Have ordered new blocks from cyclesofyesteryear. If this works I will be satisfied. Only has a front brake. Pad goes up vertically onto the rim. Pad has exact opposite pattern of wear as the undulation of the rim, thus it does not touch the rim.
Saturday morning a mile from Middleton (basically in the middle of nowhere) and a chain break. (stone caught in the mech somewhere) Had a spare link and a very helpful bloke 'Koba' stopped to help me. Thank you Koba!
Someone pinched a couple of small bits off the bike carriers on my car (those three-headed M6 knobs). It was very satisfying to find spare ones from about 15 years ago lurking at the bottom of the spares tub*.
*more of a small skip, really.
My Crane bell (bought after everyone was raving about them on here about five years ago) had lost the spring that made its pinger ping. Or so I thought - until I looked more closely and found the pinger spring had simply come unsprung. A little fiddling with the spring and the pinger now once more pings, enabling my bell to ring. If only I'd checked when it first happened and hadn't had to spend the last two weeks saying 'ding ding'.
(this post shortly coming out as a Dr Seuss book)
How to Ring a Ding a Chinese Gong (and other stories)
I've a tale to tell, of the highest importance:
returning the call of my favourite transportance.
My bike's lost its voice, and my bell will not ring
It all worked before, 'tis a curious thing.
A marvellous mind set to work right away
What can be the matter? I'll work night and day!
Is it the top of this bright yellow gong?
It used to make noises but now it's gone wrong.
The flat bit beside it now flops quite around,
I'll push and I'll pull but it's making no sound.
Perhaps it's inside, a tiny component?
I won't be outdone, my shiny opponent.
Alas, what is this: the spring is unsprung!
The lever has left and the pinger has pung!
I'll poke at it fierce with the end of my pen,
It refuses to catch – must I try yet again?
My thumb is too fat, but my finger's too thin:
the end of the spring is spiking my skin.
Perhaps I should wait, and grow all my nails?
I haven't the patience: the time it entails.
The tip of a knife! Such a glorious wheeze,
as in slips the spring with a consumate ease.
And after a fankle the dinger goes dung,
I've mended the tinkle, the bell can be bung!
The runners and cyclists and walkers alike
will hear from afar my mellifluous bike!
A joyous occasion, the Crane again sings
And tells of its presence with loud happy pings.
Bravo
I had a spectacular "today's rubbish bicycle" moment while riding home this evening. Having changed down a several of gears approaching the toucan crossing from MMW to Argyle Place, I stopped and tried to backpedal, but the chain grabbed. Suspecting I'd failed to complete the shift I looked and discovered the chain had overshifted and jammed between the spokes and the cassette.
It having proved so thoroughly jammed that I was unable to simply pull it out, I had to remove the wheel. As I did this (which took ages) I discovered that in jamming itself, the chain had actually forced the cassette, and thus the rotor body, away from the hub, causing the freewheel pawls to become exposed.
Taking one's vintage Hope Bulb to bits to reseat the pawls and reassemble is not a task I ever thought I would need to do of a windy evening in the Meadows.
I was probably rather less than 200 yards from TBW, but this is me you're talking about.
@Arrelcat
We salute you. Magnificent.
Removed a strange recurring noise in road bike rear brake by... err washing it as it was carted with huge lumps of mud. You don't have to do that for V-brakes or disc brakes!
Also cleaned the mankiest bags I have so I can get stuff in and out with making things dirty.
You have been busy. Were some of these bags also mouse poop collectors?
Well hot damn!
tl;dr: super expensive brake repaired after six years using bits from a super cheap brake.
My sparkly purple recumbent is still indisposed while I work out the best plan of action in replacing the fork. Woe is me. Tulyar's hand-me-down turned out to be too narrow and too short. A new disc fork, whether constructed by Kinetics or Mike Burrows or the man himself Tim Brummer, is a whole chunk of money. One option that I may well try is to go back to v-brakes, at least temporarily, if I can get a second-hand fork from another Lightning owner. I replumbed the bike for discs, you see, so recabling is non-trivial, but my time is free, and I need this bike.
Thing is, the bike itself was designed in the early 1980s when roadie caliper brakes were the thing, not cantis, and certainly not Vs. When I built the bike in 2007, I put the smokin' hot Avid SD Ultimate v-brake on the front, because all v-brakes have the cable going in from the top-right-hand side, but on a recumbent, that's where the chain is. The Ultimate, however, like the Paul Motolite, is swappable from right to left. The problem, and one of the reasons I went to discs in the first place, was the spindly plates inside the brake, that retain both the spring end and the pin that goes into the brake boss on the frame, had broken, leaving the brake useless. :-( Blame Avid for going all weight-weenie with aluminium when steel should have been used. You absolutely can't buy the Ultimate, even second-hand, anywhere these days.
Since I'd been studying the Paul brakes, yesterday I had the brainwave that since it was only the spring holders and tensioners that had broken, I could replace them entirely with those from another brake. Before I hacked apart a spare pair of Avid SD7s that I'd taken off my mountain bike yonks ago—and SD7s are still worth a bit of money—I decided to go to The Bike Station today to see if they had any really basic Avid or Shimano v-brakes that I could use to practice my cannibalism. An hour's rummaging turned up a pair of SD3s which were just the trick. Some rotter though has purloined the USE Shokpost I had my eye on last time.
Back home, I knocked the spring holders apart to get at the bushings. I didn't need the whole length since the Ultimate runs on its own ballbearings, so I mounted them in my big drill, and chopped them down with my faux-Dremel cutting disc. Worked like a charm. The fork may have ceased to be, but a test fit on the brake boss went well enough that I think I might just get away with going back to cables. I might even put the original wheels back in too, to avoid spoiling the brake tracks on the newer wheels.
Do I go back to discs later, when I'm feeling flush? We'll see.
I have a shed that is almost exclusively for bike maintenance. I have a shadow board on the wall with a panoply of bike tools. I have one of those boxes with lots of little, carefully labelled, drawers full of different sized screws and other components. I have a workstand.
Nevertheless, when I read Arellcat's posts I realise that I have a long way to go.
Improvising a lathe is +1.
I just serviced my USE Shokpost. The polymer insert is as hard as stone and the 'keys' are worn out. I was surprised to see you can still get spares.
I replaced the disc brake pads fore and aft yesterday on the basically-a-cargo-bike, and in the process discovered that one of the front rack mounting bolts was loose.
Coupled with the cassette/chain refresh last weekend, I don't think I've ever had such a great impact from £40 of parts and an hour of time...
I really need to convince @arellcat that my long standing embrace with cycle-simplicity has its benefits, whilst she marvels at how my bike runs with so little oil coming near to the chain.
A broken frame in 1985 set me off on riding fixed/1-speed for most of the time ever since, and a current lust to acquire coaster-freecoaster hubs with just 3 key moving parts, no freewheel etc, or the 2-speed duomatic (Sachs apparently better than Sturmey) as it s VERY difficult to engineer a practical fixed wheel Brompton.
The rescue forks I wrested from a Raleigh 18 had 1" steerer, and 90mm axle. Alas no early Raleigh 20 or Dawes Kingpin (but these also have 440/451 tyres so possibly not a close enough to 406 (US 20") that the UK 18" (395) offered with an optimistic measurement (fitted) of the steerer & headset stack. So close (perhaps 6-8mm?) but frustratingly on the low side rather then the excess material option, unless the headset seat/stack height can be trimmed down and the forks spread or a 406 with a decent 80/90mm hub slipped in. NB I have several 80mm 28H hubs as a serial (Brompton) killer.....
Along shot might be the Peugeot Nouveau Style stacked away with the 29" Pennines, & 27" Scot, but that's a long term project & 500's for conversion to 451 or 406.....
I usually give my bike a good clean once a week, which takes about 90 minutes. Usually I take the wheels off (no quick release, unique keys), clean them in hot soapy water, drown the chain in muc-off and then scrub away at it and the cassette / front rings for ages, then quickly wash the frame and put the wheels back on.
I only realised a fortnight ago (RttS last weekend, so just a quick clean last Friday) that my chain has a quick link after it was last serviced and the chain replaced, so today I took the chain off and soaked it in turps before attacking the cassette and chain rings with muc-off degreaser and a toothbrush, then cleaning the frame and then the chain.
It usually takes about 90 minutes, with the chain off, 30-45. Why have I not done this before?!
@edinburghcyclecam, both options sound very time consuming. I did use to clean a lot but now less so, there seems to be little diff?
I'm a paradox - I'm lazy, but I like my drivechain to be shiney so I can see it's free from grit and gunk. An hour clean every week seems like a reasonable compromise to me.
Are there bike cleaning services? All I know of is Evans' gold service, where they (allegedly) dismantle the bike and clean it all before reassembling it. But then about half the time I've taken my bike to Evans, it's come back with problems...
Are there bike cleaning services?
No mechanic will respond well to being asked to clean a bike. There are motorcycle valets. They might do a bicycle.
Not quite maintenance, but folding bead 25mm gatorskins seemed impossible to find* with out a long wait, but decathlon had them in stock and ready to go. Woop.
*The GT 4000's on the road bike seem to get regular punctures, i don't know why. Happy with tiny bit of extra weight so I can get some long rides in!
I also got some bar end plugs with expanding wedges to keep them in as the little clip on ones keep falling out. They are a bit clunky, if anyone knows of any good ones?
Gators great for winter and fine for Scottish summer
I'm sure there was a discussion in the last few months about bike cleaning services. If you have a google you might be able to find it.
MR Hart I think happy to charge you to clean your bike?
Perhaps the centre stand on the Mailstar/Pronto might finally stay tightened up. Fitted an M10 bolt through from underneath, then a nut and then a lock nut on top.
Just let it dare come loose now.
Some ‘Grade A’ father & son fettling in Moffat on Saturday. Involving several power tools, a stand drill and some threaded rod. Disassembled a couple of old pannier racks in order to bodge the integrated rack on new bike to be able to take a pannier and a rack mounted child seat.
Extremely satisfactory although felt completely unnecessary, is there a reason why 90mm wide pannier racks exist ?
Was hoping your post involved a software update for your bar tape or something.
Almost disappointed at this real-world engineering.
@edinburghcyclecam I've been using quicklinks for years but it only recently occurred to me that using a contrasting colour makes them easier to find under all the grot. 
Shiny! :D
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