Tag: Tech

June 29th – Some tools are small, cheap and indispensable, and this little red wonder is just such an item. 

This is a Rixon & Kaul ‘Spokey’ spoke key. I’ve had a fair bit of trouble with broken spokes lately (due to damage, not bad wheels) and a good spoke key makes replacement much easier, as it did when I got home this evening.

This little tool costs about a fiver, and fits the spoke nipples positively, without damaging them, and provides a large, easy lever for gentle adjustment.

It’s also small and light enough to pop in the saddlebag toolkit for emergency adjustments on the road.

A real cycling design classic.

June 13th – At my destination, a very unusual steed was parked in their shed: an Elegance electric bike. It has a 3 speed Shimano Inter-M rear hub, driven by a shaft drive (yes, shaft drive, so no chain), rear roller brake, front disc brake, a large battery on the back and a motor in the front hub. 

It was a heavy beast, and seemed to have both electric pedal assist, full motor drive and pedal only options. It’s a nice looking thing, but it was very heavy, and I wouldn’t want to pedal that far without electric drive…

The shaft drive is clever, but it’s a lot of faith to put into small gears with high efficiency losses and worrying wear rate.

Having said that, it’s a lot of innovative design for a shade off £700.

I don’t like e-bikes, but I can see the utility of this. Find out more about it here.

Jun 2nd – This is a bit of a geeky one for fellow owners of Garmin Edge bike GPS units: I notice now that under the Garmin ConnectIQ brand, there are a selection of installable, free apps to give new screens and data fields for your device. Most of the stuff available is fitness related, and doesn’t appeal to me; but this app – called My Edge – giving an analogue-style speedometer with clever max and average speed implementation, with other data fields configurable, is really nice. It has a slight bug in that elevation related fields display in feet, rather than the labelled meters but it’s cool. You can investigate the My Edge app here.

There are other interesting apps too – another I’ve loaded shows the current OS grid position you’re at, which I find nicely geeky.

Check out the Garmin Connect service here.

March 26th – There’s times when you just have to give in. For several reasons I’ve recently converted from 28mm Schwalbe Marathon Plus tyres to 25mm. the ostensibly small, 3mm change has made a big difference to fitting the tyres, which has led to a couple of tubes being pinched on reassembly – notoriously during my ride around the Roaches a couple of weeks ago.

I’ve been looking for solutions. These tyres won’t be fitted by hand, the combination of Mavic rims and Schwalbe rubber is notoriously tough, so I’ve opted to try a new tool – this plastic hook device made by BBB and costing about £7 pivots like scissors, and you rest one arm on the opposite rim, and hook the tyre on with the other.

I’ve not tried it yet, but it has to be worth a shot. Never known tyres this tight before.

April 27th – I keep noticing this Giant bike at Telford; I don’t know who it belongs to, but it annoys me irrationally every time I study it. Giant are an American brand whose bikes I’m not a huge fan of; like fellow US companies Cannonade and GT they often have a non-standard, peculiar approach to design resulting in bikes with odd features or incompatibilities, usually only noticed after purchase when something goes wrong.

This one annoys me for two reasons: one is design, the other is just happenstance. The rear seat-stay seems to be 2 parts, a U formed tube for the stays and a curious, welded linkage interpenetrating between the U form and seat tube. The weld, being aluminium, is rough, not square and looks absolutely awful. What on earth was the designer thinking?

The other thing is that rear quick release. Who would leave it closed facing backwards in such a vulnerable position? I want to sort it but would never touch another’s steed.

A mystery are the two M6 tapped holes on the non-drive side dropout; they aren’t present on the opposite side, and serve no apparent function, but designing them, machining them and fabricating the form they’re in was clearly serious effort. What are they for, does anyone know?

An odd bike. Never been fond of US designs.

March 14th – Brooks Saddles. Made and broken in the Midlands.

I love a Brooks leather saddle – made in Smethwick for a century or more from real leather, they’re a marmite thing amongst cyclists – you ether love them or hate them. I adore them; I’ve ridden on a Brooks for tens of thousands of miles and I’ve never found anything that fits my ample arse better. 

However, some aspects of them are not great. the ‘Brooks creak’, where at an indeterminate point after breaking in, the thing squeaks noisily for 400 miles or so no matter what you do to relieve it; the sometimes middling build quality can be disappointing; but both of these pale compared to the real annoyance – poor quality tension pins.

The two metal objects above should be one piece. This bolt sits in a yoke from the saddle rails to the nose, the nut adjusting the tension of the whole thing. It rarely needs adjusting, but it takes the entire weight of my resplendent girth.

Until it fatigue-snaps on the way home. 

They are a bugger to replace, and cost a fiver a time. To snap like this (and it’s a common, longstanding moan with Brooks customers) the component is poor quality. It would be easier to fit were it threaded to the boss. The whole thing is weak and shoddy. That’s very poor for a £60 saddle.

It left me with an uncomfortable, rattly ride home and a horrid workshop job to do. 

But I still wouldn’t entrust my posterior to any other brand. 

Brooks you muppets, sort it the hell out. Please.

March 11th – A nasty graunching from the rear brake on the way home was severe enough to have me check it out as soon as I got home. Much to my shock, I found the stock, soft resin-organic brake pads in my rear calliper were just a bit worn.

Ahem.

The new sintered metal ones are at the rear, the ones I took out in front. That’s bad. Should have spotted it sooner – luckily I don’t seem to have damaged the disc.

Never take your eyes of those essential maintenance tasks, people!

January 25th – There’s been a bit of a running debate lately amongst friends and family about just how much one should clean a bike in winter. I must admit, I’m from the ‘Only clean when the crud is ~25% of the total weight of the bike’ school, but others differ.

Visiting a client this afternoon, I checked out the bikes parked in their bike rack. This clearly well-used semi-hybrid has a fairly clean, well-lubed chain, but oh – the caked mud on that front mech is crossing a line.

That thing really needs some mudguards – all the mud from the back wheel that isn’t doing a skunk-strip on the rider’s jacket is being dumped on the chain and front mech.

January 16th – Another bitterly cold, but generally bright day, so I headed to Hints, Weeford and Shenstone to best enjoy the it. I’d finally got the ice tyres on, so felt confident (literally) breaking the ice and riding through the slush and frozen puddles.

The landscape looked wonderful again, but it was also good to see even more  fungus near Hints – on the same large, felled log, yellow jelly fungus and ascocoryne – and perfect specimens too.

This sudden cold snap has been so much what I’ve been wanting and hoping for..

November 26th – Spotted in a works bike rack, this fine steed. A very decent bike, with very curious panniers on the front of the crossbar. They seem to be holding cells for the front light, but I must confess I don’t understand how they’re comfortable to ride with. If those were on my bike, I’d keep banging them with my knees.

Still, bikes are very individual and we all have different solutions for luggage and general carrying needs. Studying other people’s bikes is endlessly fascinating.