I'm sure most of you need no introduction to the Ofo dockless bike, with these bright yellow shared rides having become a common site in cities across the world for a brief couple of years, before the Chinese venture went south and the company dissolved its international operations in mid-2018 to concentrate on its domestic markets.
As a cycling enthusiast with my own gear and no smart phone I never paid much attention to these bikes when they were about; other than a passing interest in their commendable and fairly novel concept, perhaps. It was easy to dismiss these utility bikes given their origin and application, as I sped past them on my road bike - however as I'd later discover they're actually pretty decent little rides.
This one came into my possessing by chance some months ago. I figured it'd make a good pub bike / shopper and was somewhat drawn to it by the back-story of a failed business model underpinned by a drive towards a fairly novel model for bike sharing (and harvest a lot of user data along the way!).
There are many different variations of the ofo bike and information on the whole range appears pretty scarce (some good stuff on bikeshare museum, although I found some not totally accurate to my model) so I'm not sure where my example lies amongst them all in terms of age, spec or desirability(!). While far from perfect it was in pretty good nick when I got it; its GPS unit / lock having already been removed and a few allusions to its past life on the frame having been painted over. There was plenty of work to be done to make it into a viable ride though!
The work has been carried out over a period of months. This was before I was a member of the forum so I'll skim over it; had I been a member at the time it would probably have resulted in a much more picture-heavy and detailed thread FWIW.
Original Specification
I was actually pretty impressed by the bike's spec once I took a decent look at it. On the whole it's well thought out and executed, with many decent quality branded components present. Of course the viability of the business rested partially on the bikes' long-term reliability, so they're designed for a long and low-maintenance service life.
Frame
The step-through frame and fork are constructed from TIG welded aluminium and is pretty substantial; especially around the rear triangle. The headset is (IIRC) a standard 1 1/8" threaded setup, the bottom bracket a standard square-taper item.
Frame Ancilliaries
The mudguards are aluminum with steel stays, the chainguard also ally with steel fixings. The riser-style handlebars are also ally. The bike came with an aluminum basket at the front and I've seen some other models with pannier racks at the rear, although mine lacked this feature. The stand is cast alloy and plastic.
Saddle Assy
The seat is a fat, well-padded black plastic offering on a pneumatic seatpost with a locking lever. Actuating the lever and applying load to the top of the seat allows it to be pushed down inside the seatpost to accomodate shorter riders, while operating the lever with no load on the saddle allows it to extend fully to cater for the "tallest" rider. The saddle can be postioned at any point between these two extremes to suit different rider heights; the seatpost being graduated to make setting the bike up easier when moving between different examples.
Drivetrain
The bike has a single 36 tooth chainset which drives a 16 tooth sprocket on a three-speed Shimano Nexus hub, courtesy of a stainless steel KMC chain. Gears are selected via a grip-shift on the right handlebar.
Brakes
The bike has Shimano roller brakes front and rear; the former being a Nexus-branded item, the latter being their un-named entry-level offering.
Wheels and Tyres
Wheels are 26"x17c, 36-spoke offerings with fat 2.3mm stainless spokes and somewhat oddly-sized 3.6mm nipplies. Rims are black powder-coated ally. Tyres are solid offersings from Chao Yang, allegedly 559x40mm but measured at 35mm width.
Lighting
The front light is a Brio XDO LED unit that's run off the Shimano Nexus hub dynamo on the front wheel, while the rear is a solar-powered LED light. Both have integral light sensors so only come on when it's "dark"; the rear also has an accelerometer so only operates (flashes) when the bike is moving.
Fixings
Somewhat unsurprisingly for a bike of this nature, pretty much everything is nailed down hard with tamperproof fixings. These range from the commonly available "Security Torx" six-lobed efforts with centre-pin to all manner of weird propriatory formats including three-winged jobds and pentagonal forms with centre pins.
The bike weighed around 17.5kg when I got it!
Initial Impressions
Well, it was definitely a bike and when you pushed down on the pedals it went forwards!
After the initial ride a number of glaring shortcomings became obvious:
- It's bloody heavy.
- The ride quality was awful (crashy, harsh and uncomfortable), thanks to the nasty solid tyres.
- It has a pretty narrow range of gear ratios, making hills a challenge.. while the fact that there are only three of them means big jumps between each.
- Even at its highest setting the saddle was still pitifully too low to accomodate even my meager 5' 10" frame; making the ride inefficient and inciting knee pain.
- Wind drag is terrible since the upright position gives the drag profile of a house.
All these conspired to make the bike pretty slow and unpleasant to ride..
Positives
Despite the issues above I persevered with improvements as I could see some value in the little yellow rascal:
- Low maintenance gears and brakes.
- Chainguard and mudguards, so a much more practical bike to ride in the wet / in "presentable" clothes without ruining them
- Highly undesirable / unsellable format so it should have little appeal to thieves.
- Relaxed, upright riding position.
- Slight look of incredularity and suspicion from others when seen riding it..
All in all, potentially a decent utility bike that would fill a hole as a poor-weather hack, or something to ride into town for a night out. Both applications poorly-catered for by my existing fleet
Work
I've put a silly amount of time into the bike. Below is a summary (complete or otherwise) of what's been done so far:
Basket, Headset & Front Light
When I got the bike the basket's brackets were loose, causing it to flail around all over the place while riding. Not only was this irritating but it was also damaging the steerer tube, as the top bracket is retained by the headset nut and centred by a tab that locates into (and had subsequently damaged) a slot at the rear of the tube's headset thread.
The basket weighed over a kilo and tended to cause the handlebars to violently tip to one side or the other while manouvering the bike when parking etc. It also got in the way when storing with my other bikes. Given that I usually carry my shopping in a rucksack on top of all these issues, I removed the basket and its lower bracket.
This wasn't completely straightfoward as the light cable ran through an enclosed tube on the welded steel basket bracket, so these wires were disconnected at the dynamo end, tied to a bit of fishing line and drawn through the fork and lower bracket, the line then removed from the wiring allowing the bracket to be removed. The fishing line (that was still running through the fork) was then re-attached to the wiring and it pulled back through / reconnected.
The light was bolted to the top basket bracket and its wiring tidied, while a tool was purchased and the headset nut tightened up once the damaged threads on the steerer tube had been tidied up as best as possible with a jeweller's file.
Handlebars
I'd noticed while riding that the bars weren't quite square to the front wheel, so after a bit of research the quill bolt was slackened off, the stem given a tap with a block of wood to free it off and the bars properly aligned. At this point I also learnt about the height adjustment this format of headset arrangement offers, so I dropped the bars as low as they'd go (about 30mm) while retaining access to the headset nut. This was done in the hope of cutting the aero drag a little and maybe making it a bit more manageable to ride out of the saddle when climbing.
Seatpost
It was discovered that (just like on any other bike) the major OD of the seatpost tube assy could be raised in the frame to elevate the seat further. This was hampered slightly by the existing clamp that was semi-captive on the collar at the join between the "not-dropper" post's major and minor diameters. Because of this and the fact that the collar didn't have a lip to stop it slipping down over the frame while being tightened, I replaced it with some cheapo lightweight offering off ebay.
This was great for a while but upon removing it I found some paint damage at its base; suggesting the frame was flexing at this point due to the seatpost's poor fit and reduced clamping area. Long story marginally less long, the post was packed out at the top with some Amstel-sponsored ally shim, while the bottom was wrapped in tape to give a sliding fit in the tube and prevent it pivoting about the clamped area at the top under cyclic loading while the bottom of the post flapped about inside the frame. The original clamp refitted on account of its larger clamping area.
The post is now about 65mm extended from where it was in the frame; suggesting that this bike's natural saddle height adjustment probably maxed out at people of around 5'8 - 5'9 - perhaps the designs were all based on Chinese anthropmetric data!
I'm generally happy with the seat setup now; although I'm half-tempted to replace the seatpost with a longer plain one to give the frame a bit of an easier life since it now has less post engagement than it did.
Rear Light
I like the rear light - it's innovative and once charged flashes like the wagging tail of an enthusiastic puppy if you accidentally bump into it
The light did however need a bit of love; showing signs of water ingress and having a knackered battery. The cell inside was quite interesting in itself - IIRC an "80H" which is a rechargeable NiMh 1.2v button cell. I did try "conditioning" the original by lashing it into my battery charger, but it refused to charge and swelled up a little, so it went out with the recycling..
The rear light now works perfectly, although unfortunately it's not currently fitted to the bike due to the mudguards having been removed..
Wheels and Tyres
This is another epic in its own right. Based on info on the Bikesharemuseum site that suggested the rims would take pneumatic tyres once the solid ones had been removed I ordered some (deformed and discounted) 26" Marathon Plus tyres, tubes and tape. Once they'd arrived I set about removing the solid tyres - no mean feat that was eventually achieved by heating up an 8-10" section of they tyre, hooking the wheel behind my seated calves and rolling the hot section of the tyre up and across the rim. The heating and rolling was repeated working around the rim until the tyre was off.
It turned out that the tyres were held on with 18 (or 16 in one case) plastic bayonet clips. I won't go into detail but am happy to take some pics if anyone's particularly interested.
The rims were drilled to take a presta valve and everything put together. Everything seemed gravy on the maiden test ride, until a few miles in when the back end started feeling deciderly wayward. A checkup revealed that the rear tyre bead had rolled off the rim, allowing the innertube to escape and breaking the tyre bead
The supplying shop were good at sending me a replacement tyre and tube which went on the front wheel, while the other front tyre was rotated to the back. Unforunately the same happened again to the rear tyre; suggesting that the rear was far more prone to this issue (probably on account of the greater load on the tyre).
At this point I wasn't sure whether it was the (deformed) tyre or rim that was to blame. I appealed on here for an old bald but straight 26" tyre I could use as a tester and figbat sorted me right out with some really decent, barely used 47mm semi-slicks, amongst some others. Thanks Paul!
I chucked the tyres on and so far they've been golden, with absolutely no hint of any issues.. the only down-side being that the mudguards no longer fit over the tyres.. I don't want to chuck any more money than necessary at the bike so was just going to claim my reimbursement on the knackered Marathon against a full-price, non-deformed one and stick that on the back, along with one of the originals on the front.
For now however I'm very happy to run these tyres while it's dry - they give a wonderfully cushioned ride compared to the original bone-shakers, offer lower rolling resistance and don't have a habit of locking the front wheel under heavy braking either!
I have considered fitting some larger aftermarket (SKS, probably) guards to the bike to allow me to keep the lovely fat tyres, however I'm currently put off by the cost, returns situation with the knackered Marathon and the fact that the splendid rear light would lose its mounting point (although with some mods this could probably be overcome).
Drivetrain
Not a lot has been done here.. I did toy with the idea of fitting an 8-speed hub but this has been scuppered as the OLN measurement is smaller on the 3sp hubs, so it's a non-starter (probably for the best given my financial situation!). I have fitted a reuseable KMC link to the chain to allow it to be removed for waxing and it's had its first stint in the pan.
Unfortunately I forgot to take into account the lack of a springy (derailleur) tensioner on this hub-geared setup, so fear I'll still have to slacken off the rear wheel to get the chain off to wax; not the end of the world but a bit of a pain given the other bits that require removal to allow this to happen. That said based on other bikes the chain will only need wax every 300 miles or so; (possibly more in this case given the wider chain) which is a lot of trips to the shops and back!
Brakes
I've not done much to the brakes other than adjust their cables, however unlike the nice quick-release mech on the front brake, the budget-rear requires the cable clamp to be slackened off and the cable withdrawn to remove the rear wheel; which was made impossible by the presence of the crimped-on ally cable end. Since I didn't fancy replacing this every time I had to take the wheel off (which was depressingly regular given the situation with they tyres, below) I removed the cable end and after a couple of aborted goes managed a reasonable job of soldering the bare cable to prevent it fraying.
Cables
The brake and gear cables, plus front light wiring all pass through a triangular hole in the pressed steel top basket bracket. This has sharp edges and was abrading the cable outers. I guess it probably had a rubber grommet in there originally but given the queer shape I'm never going to find a suitable replacement, so used a bit of innertube slit along its length and fitted around the edge of the hole. Looks reasonably tidy and stops the cables getting shafted!
There are still some cable-rub points on the head tube that need addressing' one has gone right through the paint while the others have just scuffed it up. When I get around to it I'll buy some cheap sticky-backed plastic to put over this area to prevent further damage.
Fixings
While I've been working on the bike I've been attempting to replace the tamperproof fixings with standard stainless alternatives. I already had bits to fit the Torx bolts and bought some dedicated bits and a pentagonal socket for the hub nuts from Ali Express off the back of recommendations on Bikemuseum. Unfortunately not all of the bits fit and thanks to this and the slightly odd headset quill bolt (M8x180mm ish!) some tamperproof fixings remain.. although I've done most of the torx one and just need a few washers to fit the replacements to the seatpost and clamp.
All fixings are metric coarse and while some of the lengths were a bit non-standard (and headset bolt notwithstanding) they're all pretty normal. I got away with longer bolts in some applications and had to cut others to length.
Again I've spent bloody ages on the fixings and have only just skimmed over it here, so on the off-chance anyone wants more details let me know and I'll provide more information
Summary
So, that's currently how it stands.. bits I've forgotten notwithstanding! It;s now so much more pleasant to ride, with the mods having addressed most of its shortcomings. It's still pretty slow but of course that's not what it's about - where it excels is in gentle, relaxed riding rather than smashing it up hills. So far it's aided me on numerous shopping trips, one pub trip (I can't really drink and the arrival of the 'rona have put paid to any more immediate visits) and has even given me some excellent off-road jollies that would have been decidedly unpleasant on my 25c-shod road bikes.
The bike currently owes me about £120 and countless hours; pehaps folly perhaps not given the utilitarian hacks that can be had used for similar money. All that said I've learnt quite a bit along the way and abject despair about the continually-failing tyres / smaller setbacks nothwithstanding has been a fun little project.
Really I just need to get the tyre / mudguard situation sorted now and hopefully it'll be a faithful utility hack for a good few years
Below are a few pics of the bike as it stands - they're largely not the most inspiring as it was a crap day both in and outside my head when I took them, but you get the idea
As it was before the bars were dropped, the tyres changed and the mudguards removed:
Pretty much as it stands at the moment:
Front hub and brakes:
Front light in its new home:
Gripshift unit and bell, which rattles and is a bit crap at best, however does seem pretty effective at sending unwary pedestrians scattering
The branded grips are nicely contoured, comfy and seem like decent quality.
Seatpost assy, complete with 65mm raise:
Much-trouser-appreciated chain guard:
...
As a cycling enthusiast with my own gear and no smart phone I never paid much attention to these bikes when they were about; other than a passing interest in their commendable and fairly novel concept, perhaps. It was easy to dismiss these utility bikes given their origin and application, as I sped past them on my road bike - however as I'd later discover they're actually pretty decent little rides.
This one came into my possessing by chance some months ago. I figured it'd make a good pub bike / shopper and was somewhat drawn to it by the back-story of a failed business model underpinned by a drive towards a fairly novel model for bike sharing (and harvest a lot of user data along the way!).
There are many different variations of the ofo bike and information on the whole range appears pretty scarce (some good stuff on bikeshare museum, although I found some not totally accurate to my model) so I'm not sure where my example lies amongst them all in terms of age, spec or desirability(!). While far from perfect it was in pretty good nick when I got it; its GPS unit / lock having already been removed and a few allusions to its past life on the frame having been painted over. There was plenty of work to be done to make it into a viable ride though!
The work has been carried out over a period of months. This was before I was a member of the forum so I'll skim over it; had I been a member at the time it would probably have resulted in a much more picture-heavy and detailed thread FWIW.
Original Specification
I was actually pretty impressed by the bike's spec once I took a decent look at it. On the whole it's well thought out and executed, with many decent quality branded components present. Of course the viability of the business rested partially on the bikes' long-term reliability, so they're designed for a long and low-maintenance service life.
Frame
The step-through frame and fork are constructed from TIG welded aluminium and is pretty substantial; especially around the rear triangle. The headset is (IIRC) a standard 1 1/8" threaded setup, the bottom bracket a standard square-taper item.
Frame Ancilliaries
The mudguards are aluminum with steel stays, the chainguard also ally with steel fixings. The riser-style handlebars are also ally. The bike came with an aluminum basket at the front and I've seen some other models with pannier racks at the rear, although mine lacked this feature. The stand is cast alloy and plastic.
Saddle Assy
The seat is a fat, well-padded black plastic offering on a pneumatic seatpost with a locking lever. Actuating the lever and applying load to the top of the seat allows it to be pushed down inside the seatpost to accomodate shorter riders, while operating the lever with no load on the saddle allows it to extend fully to cater for the "tallest" rider. The saddle can be postioned at any point between these two extremes to suit different rider heights; the seatpost being graduated to make setting the bike up easier when moving between different examples.
Drivetrain
The bike has a single 36 tooth chainset which drives a 16 tooth sprocket on a three-speed Shimano Nexus hub, courtesy of a stainless steel KMC chain. Gears are selected via a grip-shift on the right handlebar.
Brakes
The bike has Shimano roller brakes front and rear; the former being a Nexus-branded item, the latter being their un-named entry-level offering.
Wheels and Tyres
Wheels are 26"x17c, 36-spoke offerings with fat 2.3mm stainless spokes and somewhat oddly-sized 3.6mm nipplies. Rims are black powder-coated ally. Tyres are solid offersings from Chao Yang, allegedly 559x40mm but measured at 35mm width.
Lighting
The front light is a Brio XDO LED unit that's run off the Shimano Nexus hub dynamo on the front wheel, while the rear is a solar-powered LED light. Both have integral light sensors so only come on when it's "dark"; the rear also has an accelerometer so only operates (flashes) when the bike is moving.
Fixings
Somewhat unsurprisingly for a bike of this nature, pretty much everything is nailed down hard with tamperproof fixings. These range from the commonly available "Security Torx" six-lobed efforts with centre-pin to all manner of weird propriatory formats including three-winged jobds and pentagonal forms with centre pins.
The bike weighed around 17.5kg when I got it!
Initial Impressions
Well, it was definitely a bike and when you pushed down on the pedals it went forwards!
After the initial ride a number of glaring shortcomings became obvious:
- It's bloody heavy.
- The ride quality was awful (crashy, harsh and uncomfortable), thanks to the nasty solid tyres.
- It has a pretty narrow range of gear ratios, making hills a challenge.. while the fact that there are only three of them means big jumps between each.
- Even at its highest setting the saddle was still pitifully too low to accomodate even my meager 5' 10" frame; making the ride inefficient and inciting knee pain.
- Wind drag is terrible since the upright position gives the drag profile of a house.
All these conspired to make the bike pretty slow and unpleasant to ride..
Positives
Despite the issues above I persevered with improvements as I could see some value in the little yellow rascal:
- Low maintenance gears and brakes.
- Chainguard and mudguards, so a much more practical bike to ride in the wet / in "presentable" clothes without ruining them
- Highly undesirable / unsellable format so it should have little appeal to thieves.
- Relaxed, upright riding position.
- Slight look of incredularity and suspicion from others when seen riding it..
All in all, potentially a decent utility bike that would fill a hole as a poor-weather hack, or something to ride into town for a night out. Both applications poorly-catered for by my existing fleet
Work
I've put a silly amount of time into the bike. Below is a summary (complete or otherwise) of what's been done so far:
Basket, Headset & Front Light
When I got the bike the basket's brackets were loose, causing it to flail around all over the place while riding. Not only was this irritating but it was also damaging the steerer tube, as the top bracket is retained by the headset nut and centred by a tab that locates into (and had subsequently damaged) a slot at the rear of the tube's headset thread.
The basket weighed over a kilo and tended to cause the handlebars to violently tip to one side or the other while manouvering the bike when parking etc. It also got in the way when storing with my other bikes. Given that I usually carry my shopping in a rucksack on top of all these issues, I removed the basket and its lower bracket.
This wasn't completely straightfoward as the light cable ran through an enclosed tube on the welded steel basket bracket, so these wires were disconnected at the dynamo end, tied to a bit of fishing line and drawn through the fork and lower bracket, the line then removed from the wiring allowing the bracket to be removed. The fishing line (that was still running through the fork) was then re-attached to the wiring and it pulled back through / reconnected.
The light was bolted to the top basket bracket and its wiring tidied, while a tool was purchased and the headset nut tightened up once the damaged threads on the steerer tube had been tidied up as best as possible with a jeweller's file.
Handlebars
I'd noticed while riding that the bars weren't quite square to the front wheel, so after a bit of research the quill bolt was slackened off, the stem given a tap with a block of wood to free it off and the bars properly aligned. At this point I also learnt about the height adjustment this format of headset arrangement offers, so I dropped the bars as low as they'd go (about 30mm) while retaining access to the headset nut. This was done in the hope of cutting the aero drag a little and maybe making it a bit more manageable to ride out of the saddle when climbing.
Seatpost
It was discovered that (just like on any other bike) the major OD of the seatpost tube assy could be raised in the frame to elevate the seat further. This was hampered slightly by the existing clamp that was semi-captive on the collar at the join between the "not-dropper" post's major and minor diameters. Because of this and the fact that the collar didn't have a lip to stop it slipping down over the frame while being tightened, I replaced it with some cheapo lightweight offering off ebay.
This was great for a while but upon removing it I found some paint damage at its base; suggesting the frame was flexing at this point due to the seatpost's poor fit and reduced clamping area. Long story marginally less long, the post was packed out at the top with some Amstel-sponsored ally shim, while the bottom was wrapped in tape to give a sliding fit in the tube and prevent it pivoting about the clamped area at the top under cyclic loading while the bottom of the post flapped about inside the frame. The original clamp refitted on account of its larger clamping area.
The post is now about 65mm extended from where it was in the frame; suggesting that this bike's natural saddle height adjustment probably maxed out at people of around 5'8 - 5'9 - perhaps the designs were all based on Chinese anthropmetric data!
I'm generally happy with the seat setup now; although I'm half-tempted to replace the seatpost with a longer plain one to give the frame a bit of an easier life since it now has less post engagement than it did.
Rear Light
I like the rear light - it's innovative and once charged flashes like the wagging tail of an enthusiastic puppy if you accidentally bump into it
The light did however need a bit of love; showing signs of water ingress and having a knackered battery. The cell inside was quite interesting in itself - IIRC an "80H" which is a rechargeable NiMh 1.2v button cell. I did try "conditioning" the original by lashing it into my battery charger, but it refused to charge and swelled up a little, so it went out with the recycling..
The rear light now works perfectly, although unfortunately it's not currently fitted to the bike due to the mudguards having been removed..
Wheels and Tyres
This is another epic in its own right. Based on info on the Bikesharemuseum site that suggested the rims would take pneumatic tyres once the solid ones had been removed I ordered some (deformed and discounted) 26" Marathon Plus tyres, tubes and tape. Once they'd arrived I set about removing the solid tyres - no mean feat that was eventually achieved by heating up an 8-10" section of they tyre, hooking the wheel behind my seated calves and rolling the hot section of the tyre up and across the rim. The heating and rolling was repeated working around the rim until the tyre was off.
It turned out that the tyres were held on with 18 (or 16 in one case) plastic bayonet clips. I won't go into detail but am happy to take some pics if anyone's particularly interested.
The rims were drilled to take a presta valve and everything put together. Everything seemed gravy on the maiden test ride, until a few miles in when the back end started feeling deciderly wayward. A checkup revealed that the rear tyre bead had rolled off the rim, allowing the innertube to escape and breaking the tyre bead
The supplying shop were good at sending me a replacement tyre and tube which went on the front wheel, while the other front tyre was rotated to the back. Unforunately the same happened again to the rear tyre; suggesting that the rear was far more prone to this issue (probably on account of the greater load on the tyre).
At this point I wasn't sure whether it was the (deformed) tyre or rim that was to blame. I appealed on here for an old bald but straight 26" tyre I could use as a tester and figbat sorted me right out with some really decent, barely used 47mm semi-slicks, amongst some others. Thanks Paul!
I chucked the tyres on and so far they've been golden, with absolutely no hint of any issues.. the only down-side being that the mudguards no longer fit over the tyres.. I don't want to chuck any more money than necessary at the bike so was just going to claim my reimbursement on the knackered Marathon against a full-price, non-deformed one and stick that on the back, along with one of the originals on the front.
For now however I'm very happy to run these tyres while it's dry - they give a wonderfully cushioned ride compared to the original bone-shakers, offer lower rolling resistance and don't have a habit of locking the front wheel under heavy braking either!
I have considered fitting some larger aftermarket (SKS, probably) guards to the bike to allow me to keep the lovely fat tyres, however I'm currently put off by the cost, returns situation with the knackered Marathon and the fact that the splendid rear light would lose its mounting point (although with some mods this could probably be overcome).
Drivetrain
Not a lot has been done here.. I did toy with the idea of fitting an 8-speed hub but this has been scuppered as the OLN measurement is smaller on the 3sp hubs, so it's a non-starter (probably for the best given my financial situation!). I have fitted a reuseable KMC link to the chain to allow it to be removed for waxing and it's had its first stint in the pan.
Unfortunately I forgot to take into account the lack of a springy (derailleur) tensioner on this hub-geared setup, so fear I'll still have to slacken off the rear wheel to get the chain off to wax; not the end of the world but a bit of a pain given the other bits that require removal to allow this to happen. That said based on other bikes the chain will only need wax every 300 miles or so; (possibly more in this case given the wider chain) which is a lot of trips to the shops and back!
Brakes
I've not done much to the brakes other than adjust their cables, however unlike the nice quick-release mech on the front brake, the budget-rear requires the cable clamp to be slackened off and the cable withdrawn to remove the rear wheel; which was made impossible by the presence of the crimped-on ally cable end. Since I didn't fancy replacing this every time I had to take the wheel off (which was depressingly regular given the situation with they tyres, below) I removed the cable end and after a couple of aborted goes managed a reasonable job of soldering the bare cable to prevent it fraying.
Cables
The brake and gear cables, plus front light wiring all pass through a triangular hole in the pressed steel top basket bracket. This has sharp edges and was abrading the cable outers. I guess it probably had a rubber grommet in there originally but given the queer shape I'm never going to find a suitable replacement, so used a bit of innertube slit along its length and fitted around the edge of the hole. Looks reasonably tidy and stops the cables getting shafted!
There are still some cable-rub points on the head tube that need addressing' one has gone right through the paint while the others have just scuffed it up. When I get around to it I'll buy some cheap sticky-backed plastic to put over this area to prevent further damage.
Fixings
While I've been working on the bike I've been attempting to replace the tamperproof fixings with standard stainless alternatives. I already had bits to fit the Torx bolts and bought some dedicated bits and a pentagonal socket for the hub nuts from Ali Express off the back of recommendations on Bikemuseum. Unfortunately not all of the bits fit and thanks to this and the slightly odd headset quill bolt (M8x180mm ish!) some tamperproof fixings remain.. although I've done most of the torx one and just need a few washers to fit the replacements to the seatpost and clamp.
All fixings are metric coarse and while some of the lengths were a bit non-standard (and headset bolt notwithstanding) they're all pretty normal. I got away with longer bolts in some applications and had to cut others to length.
Again I've spent bloody ages on the fixings and have only just skimmed over it here, so on the off-chance anyone wants more details let me know and I'll provide more information
Summary
So, that's currently how it stands.. bits I've forgotten notwithstanding! It;s now so much more pleasant to ride, with the mods having addressed most of its shortcomings. It's still pretty slow but of course that's not what it's about - where it excels is in gentle, relaxed riding rather than smashing it up hills. So far it's aided me on numerous shopping trips, one pub trip (I can't really drink and the arrival of the 'rona have put paid to any more immediate visits) and has even given me some excellent off-road jollies that would have been decidedly unpleasant on my 25c-shod road bikes.
The bike currently owes me about £120 and countless hours; pehaps folly perhaps not given the utilitarian hacks that can be had used for similar money. All that said I've learnt quite a bit along the way and abject despair about the continually-failing tyres / smaller setbacks nothwithstanding has been a fun little project.
Really I just need to get the tyre / mudguard situation sorted now and hopefully it'll be a faithful utility hack for a good few years
Below are a few pics of the bike as it stands - they're largely not the most inspiring as it was a crap day both in and outside my head when I took them, but you get the idea
As it was before the bars were dropped, the tyres changed and the mudguards removed:
Pretty much as it stands at the moment:
Front hub and brakes:
Front light in its new home:
Gripshift unit and bell, which rattles and is a bit crap at best, however does seem pretty effective at sending unwary pedestrians scattering
The branded grips are nicely contoured, comfy and seem like decent quality.
Seatpost assy, complete with 65mm raise:
Much-trouser-appreciated chain guard:
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