n-1: Crack of Doom strikes again

[Kim]

  Noted the absence of any V-brake mounts, which means I can't fit the parking brake. 

Untitled by mark tilley, on Flickr

Do you not have these wee beasties on the lower swing arm?  Failing that, I always use a toe strap around the rear brake lever, (front brake lever on an upwrong.)

Nope.  At some point they seem to have gone all-in on disc brakes.  Which is entirely sensible, really.

[Kim]

Today's achievement has been threading cable internally for the lighting, which was a complete bastard of a job, even armed with torch, a spare gear cable inner and harsh language.  Slightly baffled by how the cable is supposed to get from inside the boom to the dynamo, unless they drill a hole in the steerer (which is where I draw the line).  Will route that bit externally anyway, because it's going via a switch and a socket for the e-Werk.

[ElyDave]

E-werk of stan, i think you mean. Mine never lived up to promises

[Kim]

E-werk of stan, i think you mean. Mine never lived up to promises

I find it werks as you'd expect for the specification, given something that can soak up the charge without being fussy about the start-stop nature of the power.  Which is to say, you can get a couple of amp-hours out of a day of riding.  Which is occasionally useful, but not as much as some quality time with a mains socket.

[Kim]

Well, it works!


(Horrible gooses for scale)


Feels weird.  Hard to tell how much is the minor differences in gemoetry/suspension, and how much is 5 months of exclusively riding upwrongs.

I seem to have got the gear ratios spot on, which is pleasing: Slightly lower than the granny gear on the previous bike, spinning out at about 30mph, which is perfectly sufficient for a touring bike.  Rohloff shifting will take a little getting used to, as will the absence of a convenient parking brake (the Mk 1 bit-of-elastic works to hold the bike, but is too fiddly for stopping at junctions).  Chain is deliberately a bit slack, as is the cable to the speed sensor, until such a time as I'm happy about boom length adjustment.

The new style seat has too many axes of adjustment, so I expect to be tweaking it for the next six months.  The special seat brackets for short-arses appear to have been unnecessary, but only just.  Interestingly, overall length is about the same as the old bike, as I've lost most of the extra 40mm through the lack of a chainring guard that can accommodate a 54T big ring.

The XT hydraulic disc brakes Just Work, and have cute little HPVelotechnik neoprene gaiters to keep the Weather out.

Ventisit pad is a work in progress^[1], hence the nasty closed-cell foam pad - no point paying HPVelotechnik prices for a posh sponge.  And a matching left crank is on its way to handcyclist OTP for shortening.

Suspect I may need to obtain a firmer spring for the front fork, which is likely to be annoying.  It's about right with the preload dialled up to max, and that's with the bike unladen.  TBH the fork is the weak point of the design - it seems like a downgrade on the MEKS one, although it probably saves a bit of weight.  They really need to ditch the 1" headset to have better options - which is a strong argument in favour of the AZUB Six.

The braze-ons on the underside of the frame have been re-arranged, which precludes mounting both a bottle cage and the low-rider rack at the same time - at least without the aid of comedy spacers (which I've employed, along with cable ties, for the Bordo Lite).  But since there's now a proper mounting point for the front light on the BB shell, I was able to use the bottle-cage braze-on the derailleur post^[2] for their intended purpose.  It looks a bit stupid, but it's surprisingly easy to access, at least when not in motion.  Proximity to the cranks makes it unsuitable for stuffing my waterproof jacket in, thobut, so I'll have to come up with another solution for that.

Absence of bar-end shifters means I can use a Mirrycle rather than the B&M Cyclestar mirror.  Will see how it goes long-term.

Had to do some rather tedious sewing to extend the straps on that tri-bag (which is looking like it's been out in the sun too long) to account for the larger boom diameter.


_{[1] They no longer ship to the UK because brexit, which means I have to deal with recumbent dealers or arrange to have one smuggled in.
[2] I could have had a boom without one, but it seemed silly not to have to post for the mounting of stuff.  There is, after all, no point in weight-weenieing a Streetmachine.}

[andrewc]

Is that in Trump orange ?

[Kim]

Is that in Trump orange ?

It's Vorsprung Durch HPVelotechnik ORANGE^[1], a much classier metric colour which is completely different to Demented Shitgibbon ORANGE.


_{[1] AIUI it's RAL 2004}

[Cudzoziemiec]

Photo taken from drive side? ✔️
Cranks at aesthetically pleasing angle? ✔️
Marmite present? ✔️
White goods or kitchen furniture in background? ❌

[andrewc]

Is that in Trump orange ?

It's Vorsprung Durch HPVelotechnik ORANGE^[1], a much classier metric colour which is completely different to Demented Shitgibbon ORANGE.


_{[1] AIUI it's RAL 2004}

I'm sure I could get you some skin treatment from the makeup shops of Scouseland to match the bike.....    it would probably double as Hi-Viz for those annoying rides that insist on such stuff.......     

[Zed43]

Looks nice  Proper bell too, but how do you ring it (without taking your hand from the handgrip)? And you must have 20/20 vision to read the GPS from that far away 

[Kim]

Looks nice  Proper bell too, but how do you ring it (without taking your hand from the handgrip)?

I went to some effort to acquire a bell with a left-handed^[1] mechanism, so I can ring it by pulling with my little finger. 

(That bell position is a hang-over from the bar-end shifters on the old bike.  By mounting a Proper Bell there, it sticks out enough so that it's what hits the ground when the bike falls over rather than the shifter.  Bells being about 10× cheaper, occasionally fixable by application of brute force and a lot less critical for finishing your ride than shifters.

I reproduced that bell arrangement on barakta's trike, because that little-finger motion is about the only thing that really works on her left hand.  (All her brake/gear controls are on the right.)

And you must have 20/20 vision to read the GPS from that far away 

Just barely, which is why for audax rides and similar I go to the effort to use Basecamp to craft proper Routes, so I can use turn-by-turn navigation to make it easier to read.  Worked better on the old Vista HCx, where you'd get an enlarged view of the junction with a high-contrast arrow superimposed, rather than just overlayed on the map like the current eTrexen and Edges do.

Again, with bar-end shifters there wasn't really anywhere else to put it.  I have acquired a little mount thingy that could go on the left handlebar, but I quite like having it in my direct field of vision and somewhere that isn't going to get bashed^[2].



_{[1] Most bells being designed to be operated by pushing with the thumb of the right hand, with the bell mounted on top of a flat bar with the ringer sticking out to the right.  Some, but frustratingly not as many as you'd hope, have reversible mechansims.
[2] Low-flying muntjacs excepted.}

[rogerzilla]

Shitgibbon Orange is much better than green 

[cycleman]

A fine looking machine. In long term use I found the brass threaded tubes would separate from the plastic outer layer and the mirror would become impossible to lock in place so I no longer use miirrocycle .I now use decathlon. mirrors which  cost a fiver and have proved very reliable 

[Polar Bear]

Very nice looking machine.  A job well done there Kim.  👍

[Arellcat]

The new bike looks great.  I especially like how there is already a certain Kimness to it – maybe the GPS mount and the rack bag.

[Kim]

The gap between the rack bag and seat is new.  Combination of the seat being thinner, and further forward.  More space for stuff.

[ElyDave]

Needs a Ventisit perhaps?

On cabling, I use two zip-ties around the boom with an s-shaped loop of extra, similar aroimd the headrest, maybe 6" or so in total, just in case of needing to refettle connectors at any point

[Kim]

Needs a Ventisit perhaps?

Yes, that's why I ordered it with the nasty closed-cell foam pad, rather than the posh sponge.  The Ventisit from my old seat *almost* works, but I've now ordered the correct model, which is a bit wider at the bottom.  (The old seat and pad is going in the cupboard, on the principle that ergonomic equipment that's known to fit is worth keeping.)

On cabling, I use two zip-ties around the boom with an s-shaped loop of extra, similar aroimd the headrest, maybe 6" or so in total, just in case of needing to refettle connectors at any point

At this point I've got all the lighting cables inside the boom, with a sufficiency of slack to allow the boom to be fully removed.  That leaves the computer speed sensor, which - now I know where the boom's going to be - I've attached to the cable supports where the front derailleur cable isn't, with a supplementary zip-tie to keep things neat.  There's a reasonable, but not excessive, amount of slack (traditionally I've cut a couple of cable-ties to detach the sensor from the fork to gain slack for servicing the suspension).

[Kim]

Meanwhile, I've worked out that the seat needs to be slightly shorter than I think it does, otherwise I end up bearing force on my neck, which is Bad.  Exact angle a work in progress, and will doubtless change when the Ventisit arrives.

And I the other day I realised that the mudguard mount on the front fork would accept an M6 bolt.  So I obtained a cheap and nasty sidepull caliper with oodles of reach^[1]  from eBay, and it works acceptably well as a parking brake (probably more so if I spend a bit more time dragging it downhill through muddy puddles to bed the pads in a bit).  Might upgrade it to something dual pivot and less inclined to rust, now I've proven the concept. 


_{[1] It needs about 75mm, for those playing along at home.}

[Kim]

The Ventisit arrived.  I'm still failing to find a position for the upper part of the Bodylink seat that works.  It feels like there's too tight a curve radius to the top of the seat, and that isn't something that's adjustable.

On today's ride I realised that the problem's actually more subtle than that: The reason it feels like the top of the seat is curving inwards is because part of my spine is sitting in the cut-out, and the bit above it is bearing on the top part of the seat.  (The old seat has a similar curve, but doesn't have a cut-out.)  So I have the choice of extending the seat, which feels comfortable in a static test, but soon causes neck pain when riding, as I'm bearing force on my neck with the top of the seat.  Alternatively, shortening it spares the neck, but to put the supportive part of the top of the seat between my shoulders means the general seat shape is wrong, and it's non-specifically uncomfortable with tension in my upper back.

Next step is to find a piece of suitably rigid sheet material and gaffer-tape it over the cut-out to confirm this hypothesis.  Suspect I'm either going to have to molish some sort of plug for the cut-out, or bodge the old seat onto the new brackets somehow...

[Kim]

Because all the best ergonomic bodges involve Sun workstations^[1], I tried gaffer taping a sturdy metal mousemat^[2] over the hole, and adding a little foam to form a channel...



Vast improvement, in that after 30km I'm not eyeing up the codeine, and the primary seat grumbles were effectively displaced to the lower part (I think because the foam made the seat a little too upright).  So I think that proves that the cut-out is the problem.  Comparing with the old seat, I think what's really needed is something to bridge the hole with a shallow channel, rather than a flat surface.  I think that puts us into the realm of serious molishment, rather than just taping random stuff on.

So I've ordered some fresh resin (my last bottle having set into a solid mass) and will see if I can reproduce the profile of the appropriate part of the old seat in fibreglass.  Bonus points for meeting up with the existing mounting holes.



_{[1] There's a SparcStation crammed full of SCSI disks under barakta's desk that serves as a foot rest.
[2] Of the type used by early optical mice, which required a surface with a grid pattern to operate.}

[Zed43]

_{[1] There's a SparcStation crammed full of SCSI disks under barakta's desk that serves as a foot rest.}

Be careful with that... SCSI devices tend(ed) to draw blood, or at least refuse to work properly unless a sacrifice of blood was made.

Ah, days of yore when I was a PFY and still had to wrangle the hardware for my databases myself.

[Kim]

_{[1] There's a SparcStation crammed full of SCSI disks under barakta's desk that serves as a foot rest.}

Be careful with that... SCSI devices tend(ed) to draw blood, or at least refuse to work properly unless a sacrifice of blood was made.

Ah, days of yore when I was a PFY and still had to wrangle the hardware for my databases myself.

One year barakta and I gave Postman Piers (who at that point may still have been working as BOFH) a birthday present consisting of a Big Scary Knife™; some candles; a plastic goat^[1] and a SCSI terminator from a Box of Old Computer Stuff.

This was an improvement on the previous years effort, which was a thoroughly obsolete developer's guide to Windows error messages.


_{[1] Have you ever tried to buy a toy goat?  I eventually ended up with a whole set of farm animals from the Early Learning Centre.}

[matthew]

_{[1] There's a SparcStation crammed full of SCSI disks under barakta's desk that serves as a foot rest.}

Be careful with that... SCSI devices tend(ed) to draw blood, or at least refuse to work properly unless a sacrifice of blood was made.

Ah, days of yore when I was a PFY and still had to wrangle the hardware for my databases myself.

What's wrong with SCSI? Just write out a list of the devices on each bus and which ID number they have been assigned then check the jumpers / dip switches. Then make sure you haven't put a SCSI 2 or SCSI 3 device with an ID of 14 on a SCSI 1 bus that only supports IDs 0-7   

Oh and make sure you have the right sort of connectors on the ribbon cable and have set the termination switch on the last device and none of the others.

[barakta]

I still remember Piers's face when he saw the knife, then candle, then he saw the goat and got the joke. We then had to explain it all to Yoav who was being Yoavish and didn't know the reference.

Am still proud of the Windows Error Messages present. I am awful at present buying so that was quite skill for me.