A complete stranger lent me a bike. :-)

[IanSmithCSE]

Good morning,

I thought I would post a "happy" message, on Friday about 6 miles into my 18 mile commute my freehub failed and "freewheeled" in both directions, four month old Tiagra, meaning; Oh no, a long walk.

After about a mile I was walking past a house and this chap said, morning, what's the problem, I explained and he said do you want to borrow a bike?

So off I went, exchanging a CF/Di2 bike for an Apollo dual suspension "mountain bike".... £250 new, dual suspension and around 18kg.

It was a bit of a culture shock, but after a while I sort of got to like it, the decaying country lines suddenly became smooth, any sense of needing to ride quickly went away as there was no chance of doing so anyway and let's not talk about going up hills

I think that the tyres may have been slightly soft but as I don't know what is normal for this type of bike and the wheels never hit the rim I didn't want to over inflate them so I left them as they were. They even made a lovely noise on the downhill bit which I normally do at around 37mph without pedalling.

I am really tempted to buy one as a training tool, anything that could reduce my average speed by about 6mph must be a great way to get faster.

What could have been a really awful day, ended up with just a tiny inconvenience.

Bye

Ian

p.s. I can confirm that Di2 gives a better gear change than the SRAM grip shifters that Halfords sell at £8 each

 

[sevenfourate]

My Father once had a 911 Porsche as a Company car. Our driveway parking was on a slope - and one Winter in the snow the Porsche had so little grip on that minuscule incline, it couldn’t even make it off the driveway……

Meanwhile: the Citroen 2CV my Mum owned laughed in the face of the snow and absolutely carried on as normal as my Father took that to work instead. And parked it in the Directors car park 🤣

Point being, however cool your shoot is, however modern and up to date your ride is - what’s working at the time is always infinitely ‘better’ 👌

****Glad you got into work and maybe now have eyes on a ‘Training steed’…..😎

 

[cyberknight]

bet the chap who now has a CF di2 bike as a swap for a BSO is happy too

 

[Drago]

How quickly did he get your bike listed on ebay?

 

[IanSmithCSE]

Good morning,

........****Glad you got into work and maybe now have eyes on a ‘Training steed’…..😎

I am a bit fed up with the running costs of the 10 speed, it came with a Shimano chainset and a BB30 bb so needs an adaptor and it gulps bearings

So I have been contemplating switching over to the Raleigh.



Currently set up as 1x8 (48/11-28), after all if you are going to run a retro bike why not have retro bike gear ratios, apart from a slightly higher top gear the ratio spread is pretty close to 42/53&14-24, actually I will switch to a double I just need a longer BB.

bet the chap who now has a CF di2 bike as a swap for a BSO is happy too

How quickly did he get your bike listed on ebay?

Sadly he was a gentleman and gave me my bike back.

Bye

Ian

 

[biggs682]

That was mighty kind gesture by said Apollo owner

 

[mjr]

There is an Apollo MTB in the shed here, mostly used as a winter bike with snow tyres. On its rare summer outings, it does wear 54mm tyres that run at something low like 32 psi, but it does glide over very rough roads and rolls surprisingly well for a rusting scaffold pipe frame (it ain't even as refined as gas pipe!)

 

[IanSmithCSE]

Good evening,

That was mighty kind gesture by said Apollo owner

It really was, but no good deed goes unpunished.

I dropped of a little "thank-you" gift this morning, I had intended to just quietly leave it on the doorstep but his dog had different idea and I think that I may have got him out of bed.

Bye

Ian

 

[Pale Rider]

my freehub failed and "freewheeled" in both directions,

If this happens it's always worth bouncing the back wheel off the ground a few times.

The shock will very likely cause the pawls to re-engage, giving you at least enough drive to get home.

 

[ColinJ]

If this happens it's always worth bouncing the back wheel off the ground a few times.

The shock will very likely cause the pawls to re-engage, giving you at least enough drive to get home.

It has never happened to me, but I did see someone on an audax ride with that problem. None of us thought of doing that. He tried to ziptie the hub to the spokes but it wasn't doing the job.

I saw him at the finish about 3 hours later... He'd abandoned and phoned for a lift back to his car at event HQ.

 

[IanSmithCSE]

Good morning,

Interesting ideas, I had heard of the zip tie idea but am not terribly surprised that it didn't work.

I did leave the freehub body soaking in GT85 for a few days and that didn't help either.

There is a slight metallic sound when you shake the body that sounds like a broken bit of metal, I did find a video showing how to dismantle a Shimano freehub, it seemed to involve a lot of 'it with 'ammer and no chance of re-assembly.

Sadly I didn't have a 10mm allen key (to remove the freehub body from the hub) and Halfords only sold one in a set with all the others being sizes that I already did have.

"Plus one" to SJS cycles they replaced it under warranty, originally, thinking that they would be a few quid I was just going to order a new freehub body, when I found out the the freehub body costs the same as a complete rear hub including the freehub body I changed my mind.

Bye

Ian

 

[freiston]

I have a Tiagra rear hub that suffered the same fate. I replaced the freehub but had a go at stripping the old one. I managed it but needed a tool to remove the cone/race (the freehub bearing cone is also the wheel bearing race on the other (out)side - tightened against a shim to get the correct preload for the freehub). The tool was about £6 off ebay but the one I just found costs a little bit more. The old freehub now lives in a sealed bag in the toolbox as a spare.

Now I only use semi fluid grease to grease my drive-side rear axle bearings - it seems to be collective wisdom that regular grease can migrate into the Shimano freehub mech and gunk up the pawls and that using SFG is the defence against this.

 

[matticus]

Interesting ideas, I had heard of the zip tie idea but am not terribly surprised that it didn't work.

It's definitely been done! I suspect you can't put much torque through the "adapted" setup, and when you add in that you've now got a fixie, I think the bodge will work best on very flat terrtain. Ridden vvvvvvery gently.

 

[GuyBoden]

Yes, some modern freehub pawl and ratchet mechanisms seem to break easily.

I've changed to using Hope mtb hubs on a few road bikes, they seem stronger.