What Have You Fettled Today?

[Hacienda71]

Nice and clean that mate! Doing Hit the North?

Not sure. suspect that I may have a commitment that day looking after small people. The boy is playing club, county and regional hockey so I am turning into the stereotyped dads taxi......

 

[raleighnut]

Not sure. suspect that I may have a commitment that day looking after small people. The boy is playing club, county and regional hockey so I am turning into the stereotyped dads taxi......

 

[Blurb]

After Friday's rim split on the commuter, new wheels, chain and crankset.
I suspect the crankset has been iffy for some time, it's done 16000 miles on the middle chainring !!!

 

[ColinJ]

Some non-cycle fettling:

I have a decent pair of Audio Technica headphones which I use when watching TV or listening to music late at night. My hearing is not brilliant so I tend to turn the volume up more than most people and I don't want to annoy my neighbours. (Yes, the ones that I hear screaming at each other every day! )

Anyway, I became aware of a subtle distortion on the left channel. It didn't make the headphones unusable but having noticed the problem I found myself getting distracted by it. It was a low level buzzing sound when loud sounds at certain frequencies were being reproduced.

I took the left channel 'earpiece' to bits and saw that some of the internal wiring was routed in a very haphazard fashion. It seemed very possible that one or more of the wires was vibrating against something else so I tidied up the wiring and reassembled the phones. Problem sorted!

Except that ... the problem came back.

I thought that I would take the 'phones to pieces and have another go at sorting the problem out, but then I noticed that I had them on back to front - the left channel was on my right side and the right on my left. How come the sound was still distorting on the left?

Whichever way I turned the headphones, the distortion remained on my left. And then the horrible truth dawned on me - it is my left ear itself that is distorting! I conformed that by putting a finger in my ear and humming loudly - buzz, buzz, buzz!

I know that my hearing is damaged from listening to stupidly loud music as a young man but I thought it was just a loss of certain frequencies. Nope, I get distortion too. Oh super!


PS To any younger music-loving CycleChat members reading this ... when old people tell you that your music is too loud and will damage your hearing, they are not just saying that to spoil your fun. I SAID YOUR MUSIC IS TOO LOUD AND WILL DAMAGE YOUR HEARING!!!

 

[ColinJ]

Hang on a minute ... I have been fiddling about with that finger/ear and the distortion comes and goes. I wonder if I have a build-up of wax in that ear?

Looks like some ear-fettling is required!

 

[ColinJ]

[QUOTE 4700306, member: 9609"]Things you learn after 40 million spins of the wheel of a bike that I have maintained entirely myself.... i thought I knew every little bit of it.

about a week ago my indexing on the gears went all to pot, I have had a busy week on the bike too, knocking out a 140 miles (biggest week of the year so far). Anyway the indexing has not been clicking properly and it has not been changing well at all, and no amount of faffing with the barrel adjuster at the side of the road has helped one little bit. So today as storm ewen rolled through I took the whole lot to bits to work out what was going on.

View attachment 339845

for what ever reason sometime last week the toggle thing had been twizzled nearly around from SIS to 'FRIC' I didn't even know this function existed, I resorted to googlr to find that FRIC meant Friction and SIS was for indexing

All fixed and working perfectly now though , and I now know something new about my bike.[/QUOTE]
When I bought my first adult bike in 1989 it had shifters like those. I had the opposite experience - I had never experienced indexed gears before. As a teenager, my shifters were just friction type. I'd been familiar with hunting about to select a gear so it came as a very pleasant surprise to find that the gear lever just clicked straight to the correct position every time. A simple but brilliant innovation!

 

[si_c]

[QUOTE 4700306, member: 9609"]

for what ever reason sometime last week the toggle thing had been twizzled nearly around from SIS to 'FRIC' I didn't even know this function existed, I resorted to googlr to find that FRIC meant Friction and SIS was for indexing

All fixed and working perfectly now though , and I now know something new about my bike.[/QUOTE]

Just stick it in friction mode and have effortless, trouble free shifting for the rest of your life.

 

[Low Gear Guy]

I fixed my rear light with the aid of a soldering iron and a contact cleaning brush.

 

[ColinJ]

[QUOTE 4701254, member: 9609"]My first bike was friction, but only being 5 speed I guess the position of the leaver did not need be so precise, I never had any problems changing gear but do remember being very impressed when I gout my indexed shifter.
[/QUOTE]
I remember often not quite getting it right and hearing a ticking noise coming from the back as the chain tried to make its mind up which sprocket to settle on!

 

[DCLane]

My son and I worked on his new Cervelo S3 to get it ready for the new race season:

• New 48 tooth ceramic chainring fitted to the Rotor 3DF crankset
• Dura-Ace 11-28 cassette swapped for a Miche 16-30 one (couldn't find a 16-25/27)
• Tyres swapped from Rubino Pro to GP4000 SII's

All seems OK. Now for a shakedown and onto the track ...

 

[si_c]

Got back from work today and the front brake was sticking on the right hand side, caliper not returning to it's rest position. They're Mafac Racer centrepulls, so it was simple enough to completely remove, disassemble, clean, grease properly, and reassemble. Now working flawlessly. Took the opportunity to shorten the straddle cable by a half inch to give a bit more bite, and re-toe in and align the pads.

Also wiped down the frame and noticed there were quite a few stiff links on the chain, and it was in generally poor condition, so cleaned it up a bit. Dropped the chain checker in, completely worn. Only done about 800km, although the road conditions on the new commute are terrible, and there has been a lot of grit and salt on the roads compared to my previous route. Will pop in to Evans tomorrow and get a new one.

 

[Elybazza61]

Finished the re-build of the better half's Liv Avail today so it's now running full Ultegra,apart that is from the 10-speed cassette as the hubs on the stock wheels will not take an 11-speed one.

Will eventually get a 11-speed wheel(possibility of re-building a spare wheel i have which has a knackered free-hub to something like a Miche hub) or swap the Zondas over from my ally Ridley.

Also fitted new purple bar tape but the cross brake levers had to stay and some Elite cages.

 

[TheJDog]

Stripped down and cleaned my CAAD8 frame, ready for selling.

It's a lot easier to take a bike apart than to put it back together, that's for sure. Took me about an hour at most.

 

[chriscross1966]

Had my first attempt at getting drops onto a brompton and still have it fold... wasn't successful but learned a lot about actually how to do it... trying to find the right length clamps is proving a bear, so I might just machine my own up.... it's that or come up with a modified stem that supports what I want to do.... it's possible I could get the functionailty out of a Dahon stem but I'd rather not fit one.... also realised I might be able to up the Campagnolo count on the current project with old 5-speed freewheel hub and a modified freewheel running four gears.... Would have to come up with a mod for the Brompton chain tensioner or massively modify a derailleur to shift it, but using a two-chainring setup at the front is a solved problem.... that would have me using a complete Campy grupetto, Cinelli bars and a Selle Italia saddle... painting it in Celeste..... will have to do the lettering in Helvetica Neue....

 

[Leaway2]

Re greased and adjusted the rear wheel bearings.