What Have You Fettled Today?

[ColinJ]

A friend is going to have a go at retruing the wheel for me. I have put the bike up on my Park Tools stand and am waiting for him to come round. We are going to clip clothes pegs on the rear rack to use as gauges for the rim. (The original plan was to use the brake blocks for that, but the pegs will be a very versatile way of doing it).

He had a go and then we both remembered him trying to do it 4 or 5 years ago and failing!

The problem is that the wheels had been used through a few winters and salty grit had got into the nipples and corroded them. We tried to free them but they are stuck fast despite giving them a few hours with penetrating oil soaking in. We don't want to use force to free them because I think that something will be damaged in the process.

I'll use the wheel as it is and check again that I have got the best compromise between tyre pressure and proximity to roller.

 

[bikingdad90]

New set of rims from superstar with code rim70 for 70% off?

 

[Elybazza61]

Messing about with Exposure dynamo light to improve clearance with new rack; still a work in progress.

 

[november4]

I bought a chain wear gauge, and happily found all bikes are wallet friendly in spec

 

[ColinJ]

[I'm making a tablet holder to use when watching videos during my turbo trainer sessions...]

It might be a few days until I can get the drill back so I might just buy a bradawl overnight on Amazon Prime and use that instead tomorrow.

PS I've ordered the bradawl, but won't get it until Sunday. Never mind - the forecast is reasonable for tomorrow so I'll be riding on the road rather than using the turbo trainer.

I accidentally ordered an awl (rounded spike tool) rather than a bradawl (skinny screwdriver lookalike tool)!

Still, no harm done - I have just had a go with it and after one failure (hole too close to edge of skinny timber, which split) I was successful. It works really well.

It was nice using an old skool handtool rather than relying on a super duper battery powered 'drill-driver'.

My woodwork skills are almost non-existent so I concentrated on making the tablet holder solid rather than beautiful.

I'm just having a mug of tea then I will stick a strip of velcro hooks to it and a corresponding strip of felt-like velcro 'eyes' to the back of my tablet case to make sure the tablet can't fall off the holder if it gets knocked in use.

[Time passes... slowly!]

Ok, I'm finished.

I'm sure that some of the more meticulous CycleChat members will shudder when they see my crude handiwork, but it will do the job. I had been thinking of buying one of THESE from Planet X but decided that I could find more interesting things to spend the money on. I already had an old tripod, scrap timber, and self-adhesive velcro strips. It only cost me £5 for the screws and awl, which will probably last me the rest of my life.

Anyway, here you go, warts and all... ColinJ's turbo trainer tablet holder:

Back view

Front view

The tablet fits...

... and the holder does the job!

 

[Andy in Germany]

I accidentally ordered an awl (rounded spike tool) rather than a bradawl (skinny screwdriver lookalike tool)!

I keep an awl in my "daily use" toolkit for bike maintenance: if you push it into the end of a freshly cut gear/brake outer cable it clears away bent or squashed bits that would otherwise jam or rub the inner cable.

 

[si_c]

I keep an awl in my "daily use" toolkit for bike maintenance: if you push it into the end of a freshly cut gear/brake outer cable it clears away bent or squashed bits that would otherwise jam or rub the inner cable.

Yep, I have a set of small files for the same reason, awl, file flat, awl again.

 

[HLaB]

The left cleat on my commuter shoes was a tad worn so I replaced it. It does see a bit of shuffling from one platform to another at train stations. So in truth I should buy new spd shoes but whilst it is only one day a week and the old road shoes are ok. I'm not rushing out to buy any. I also found a barely worn cleat and swapped for it.

 

[ColinJ]

The left cleat on my commuter shoes was a tad worn so I replaced it. It does see a bit of shuffling from one platform to another at train stations. So in truth I should buy new spd shoes but whilst it is only one day a week and the old road shoes are ok. I'm not rushing out to buy any. I also found a barely worn cleat and swapped for it.
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That is one of the reasons that I switched to SPDs!

 

[november4]

I recco screen protector for tablet.....as i broke mine last month and cost me £200 to get new screen etc, about half value of tablet

...isopropyl alcohol syringed underneath to break adhesive, box cutter and guitar pick to remove the old one.....in case anyone has the misfortune...

 

[ColinJ]

I recco screen protector for tablet.....as i broke mine last month and cost me £200 to get new screen etc, about half value of tablet

...isopropyl alcohol syringed underneath to break adhesive, box cutter and guitar pick to remove the old one.....in case anyone has the misfortune...

Yikes - bad luck!

My Samsung tablet only cost me about £140 so it wouldn't be such a big loss if something broke its screen, but I still wouldn't be very happy if it happened.

The case (seen wrapped round the back of the tablet in my photos above) gives a lot of protection when the tablet is not in use though. I have secured the case to the wooden holder to stop it slipping out if knocked. The only way the tablet's screen would get damaged there would be if I knocked the whole thing over (extremely unlikely because it is attached to a high quality tripod with a wide base) or if I dropped something directly onto the screen (what? I won't be carrying anything near the tablet when I am using the turbo trainer a metre back from it).

 

[HLaB]

That is one of the reasons that I switched to SPDs!

Planning to when the shoes wear out at the moment I am still tippy tappy wobbling 😂

 

[ColinJ]

A collection of odds and sods for you today which might remind you not to make the same mistakes:

You know that slippery liquid that is good for chains...? For some obscure reason (probably to do with increasing senility! ) I incorrectly thought that I had put some on the chain of my singlespeed bike recently. I therefore didn't connect the rough feel and squeakiness of its chain with the fact that it was running over-dry... (It was actually my turbo bike's chain that I had oiled.) My mate spotted it while he was failing to true a wheel for me. I lubed the chain before riding today, and guess what? Yes, it ran much more quietly and smoothly!

I HAD noticed that the handlebar was tilted a few degrees forwards which had the subtle effect of making my wrists bend uncomfortably when my hands were on the brake hoods, and also making me stretch out slightly more than I wanted to. I turned the handlebar enough to bring the hoods back about a cm, which felt a lot better.

The front brake assembly had come loose on the bar and was moving whenever I pulled back on it while climbing. I tightened that up so it stays put now.

On my ride today I tackled my usual tough little hill on the singlespeed. It is a few hundred metres averaging around 7% but with a ramp around 10%. Nothing much on a bike with a decent low gear, but requiring a lot of effort in the SS bike's 52/19 gear. Even so, I was not prepared for how hard it was to climb that hill today. I nearly blew a gasket gasping for breath on the ascent. I started to worry that the dreaded blood clots were coming back again...

But as I crested the hill, I went to freewheel to get my breath back and the bike stopped rolling in about a metre. Er, that shouldn't happen...! I got off and the cause was immediately obvious. I had pulled the rear wheel free in the dropouts so it was rubbing on the left-side chainstay! 9/10 for my supreme athletic achievement in climbing a tough hill on a singlespeed bike with a loose wheel. 0/10 for rookie error in failing to do up a quick release properly...

My tyre pressures had got a bit low so I pumped both back up before setting off. The bike definitely rolled better, but I soon started to feel battered by the broken-up chip 'n seal surface of the local roads. I stopped and let out a few PSI from each tyre and that made a huge difference. The tyres still rolled ok, but now they were able to absorb much of the hammering from the rough roads.

 

[Andy in Germany]

Not today's bike but that's not looking too pretty right now. This was a grade 'A' clunker but hopefully it will make someone happy and mobile...

 

[Andy in Germany]

Tried to get this absolute clunker to work so we could sell it, but it was so awful I eventually gave up: even if I could have got it working safely it would have been too stiff and awkward for children to enjoy properly. so I pulled it to bits and scrapped pretty much everything: there was nothing to keep.

In other news, I figured how to take a freehub off a wheel. I'm not sure why I didn't need to do this earlier; it turns out that it isn't that difficult.