What have you fettled today?

[JefO]

2) fitting tubes and tyres to new wheels received from Hunt

Fitted said wheels to bike today... the 2019-2023 project is finished!

[Kim]

Fitted the Ice Spikers to the Reasonably Priced Mountain Bicycle™, so hopefully warmer weather will be with us soon.

[Kim]

Replaced the cheap nasty (and knackered) landlord-quality bath taps with a cheap mixer tap with barakta-friendly handles.  Those Croydex bodge-mixers are a false economy.

[Sergeant Pluck]

New rear brake pads on the Surly. Badly worn after what couldn’t be much more than 2k km. I’ll have to check the front but will leave it until I change the cassette and chain in a week or two.

Cleaned and oiled Surly and Brompton chains. Pulled various pieces of vegetation out of the Brompton chain tensioner and environs. Noticed that dried mud has occluded the space twixt tyre and drive side chainstay.

Adjusted out a tiny bit of play in the gravel bike headset. Then spent ages getting the bars lined up. For a while (months) on this bike I have felt as if my left arm needs to reach further than the right, yet, when I check, the bars seem to be straight. But it’s very hard to be sure. I also think there may be a barely visible difference in lever position or angle, but I am not convinced this is enough to cause the lack of symmetry that I can feel.*




* Or perhaps I can’t face redoing my bar tape just now. Or is it me - am I becoming more asymmetrical with age?

[Mrs Pingu]

Replaced the cheap nasty (and knackered) landlord-quality bath taps with a cheap mixer tap with barakta-friendly handles.  Those Croydex bodge-mixers are a false economy.

Did you get yourself one with a proper shower outlet at the same time?

[Kim]

Replaced the cheap nasty (and knackered) landlord-quality bath taps with a cheap mixer tap with barakta-friendly handles.  Those Croydex bodge-mixers are a false economy.

Did you get yourself one with a proper shower outlet at the same time?

Indeed.  Downward-facing, because that way it won't cause a fountain if there isn't a shower attached.  The bath is the wrong way round, with the tap end floating in space and the non-tap end up against the wall with the Pissy Landlord Electric Shower and associated rail above it.  I've bodged an extra long shower hose to facilitate proper showers.

[rogerzilla]

Put up the Xmas lights and deconstructed the crate in which the firewood was delivered.  I might saw up the planks later, if it dries up.

[ElyDave]

Changed the strings on both guitars, moved some of the trees in smaller pots and slightly tender plants into the greenhouse. It's not heated, but provides a degree of protection from the worst of the cold for things like the olive tree.

Also tweaked the position of the cleats on the new winter boots, tested them out on the turbo yesterday and found that after 90 mins my right knee was sore and shins starting to hurt.  Moved the cleats back more to the midfoot, and changed the angle on the right to get the foot straighter.

[alfapete]

Scraped and swept the 50m section of the local bike path that travels through trees to clear the accumulation of dead leaves which was making it very narrow and slightly slippery.

[LittleWheelsandBig]

Finally trimmed the mudguard stays on my trike with new-to-me folding boltcutters. It has been niggling me for way too long.

Fitted an accessory mount to HK’s last unadorned Backroller pannier.

[vorsprung]

yesterday I was out on the second best bike and the RH shifter cable snapped

So today i replaced that.  It has internal routing so this took some time.  Then I fitted the new mudguards as the old ones (6 years old) have various issues,most recently a large chunk of front mudguard fell off

As you probably appreciate internal routing followed by mudguard fitting is quite taxing but the bike seems to be going well now, so happy ending

[robgul]

Partial fettle pending sourcing parts for a Tektro hydraulic brake where the customer's dog had chewed through the hose (not sure what it made of the taste of the fluid?) - and then noticed that one of the gear outers had signs of canine attack.

This is one of the more unusual jobs I've had - same customer had me "upgrade" an old Halfords Carrera entry-level road bike with the latest Ultegra groupset (despite my protestations that it was a waste of money)  Takes all sorts I suppose.

[MattH]

Back in about 2002-ish I bought a cheap Claud Butler hardtail MTB. Cost £200, so you can see the quality. Five years on it had an LX hub/Mavic rim rear wheel, mainly LX components with XTR M960 dual control levers (the ones that use the brake levers to shift by pushing them up or down rather than having separate thumb shifters). The components cost many times what the bike was worth, even though they were all bought on sale at various times. So it didn't really make financial sense, but the shifters were needed following a thumb injury (couldn't operate a thumb shifter for ages, and couldn't get along with grip shifters even though I tried a couple of different good quality ones), and that bike did me for a 20 mile per day commute and weekly trail ride with colleagues after work for several years. And have taken it to a couple of MTB trail centres.

So the quality of the base machine didn't affect my usage, the components made it work for me - though the front suspension is still rubbish.

It still exists, it still looks ratty, and still gets used 20 years+ after purchase - albeit now as the bike I take on our campervan and am not too worried about leaving chained up in a random town centre when we go exploring.

[JefO]

@MattH
Any chance of a photo of the shifters? I can't visualise them.

[MattH]

Here's one from ebay. Left hand lever, you can see where the handlebar would sit with the clamp - it would be top to bottom of the picture, to the left of the shifter, with the bar end at the top of the picture.


To pull the brake, you pull the lever towards the bar as normal (pulling towards the left of the photo).

To change gear, you move the same lever up or down relative to the handlebars (put your fingers under it and flick it up, or fingers on top of it and flick it down). I.e. to change the gears the lever moves up towards the XTR logo, or down away from it, staying the same distance away from the bars. Hope that makes sense.

Once you get used to them, you can brake and change gear at the same time by combining both motions.

These levers were combined with a low normal rear mech - i.e. when the cable is released it moves to the biggest sprocket rather than the smallest as per conventional ones. It means that the same action on each side has the same effect - pushing down on either side puts you in a higher gear.

[JefO]

Here's one from ebay. Left hand lever, you can see where the handlebar would sit with the clamp - it would be top to bottom of the picture, to the left of the shifter, with the bar end at the top of the picture.


To pull the brake, you pull the lever towards the bar as normal (pulling towards the left of the photo).

To change gear, you move the same lever up or down relative to the handlebars (put your fingers under it and flick it up, or fingers on top of it and flick it down). I.e. to change the gears the lever moves up towards the XTR logo, or down away from it, staying the same distance away from the bars. Hope that makes sense.

Once you get used to them, you can brake and change gear at the same time by combining both motions.

These levers were combined with a low normal rear mech - i.e. when the cable is released it moves to the biggest sprocket rather than the smallest as per conventional ones. It means that the same action on each side has the same effect - pushing down on either side puts you in a higher gear.

You live and learn!

Thank you for this - never seen these or a low normal rear mech.

Well done!

[MattH]

I think they were only made for one or two years as they were almost universally despised, so pretty rare. Not surprising you've not come across them.

[Kim]

I can imagine that working a lot better on an USS recumbent than it ever would on a flat-barred bike.

[MattH]

It's surprisingly intuitive once you get used to it, just different to the thumb shifters that were universal by then. I'm not sure it'd work as well as the bar end shifters on my trice.

[zigzag]

replaced a no-name 118mm square taper bb with a 115mm shimano un300 unit on a vintage bike; adjusted front mech and chain catcher accordingly.

[ravenbait]

Rebuilt Shackleton's rear wheel last night after discovering three bent and very loose spokes when trying to fit a feathertail. Fortunately discovered some spare spokes in the toolbox.

Rear hub feels like it's starting to fail, but is there a flip flop 135mm track hub out there now that On One don't make them any more? No.

Sam

[Afasoas]

Epoxied a guy line tensioner onto Moon Meteor Storm Pro front light so that I can safety strap it to the handlebars^[1].

The £90£160 "Audax" bike has had it's new BB and chain installed. A gear fettle later and all is mechanically sound.
I swapped the long stem out for a slightly shorter one and stripped off the alarmingly manky bar tape.

Just new bar tape, mudguards, pedals and an array of lights to fit before it's ready for the road.
Debating a lightweight rack just so I can fit a Cateye Reflex Rack rear light, so at least some effort has been made with standards.

[1]: I had one fall off on my last trip out. Look to have survived the initial impact with the road but it didn't survive being run over by the 12th vehicle that passed by, the drivers of the previous 11 vehicles having managed to avoid it. I'm not 100% sure whether I'd clipped it into the bracket properly - but I'm not taking any chances with this one.

[robgul]

Finally got round to breaking my disc brake bleeding virginity this morning!     Customer's bike had the front hose chewed through by her dog (ditto the nearby rear gear cable outer).

Hose kit with fittings and "universal" bleed kit and a bit of YouTube study - no problem, nice firm braking.


... one question - the syringes in the kit say "single use only" - can't see why provided they're kept clean (in the nice plastic case the bleed kit came in) . . .  or am I missing something?

[The Family Cyclist]

Finally got round to breaking my disc brake bleeding virginity this morning!     Customer's bike had the front hose chewed through by her dog (ditto the nearby rear gear cable outer).

Hose kit with fittings and "universal" bleed kit and a bit of YouTube study - no problem, nice firm braking.


... one question - the syringes in the kit say "single use only" - can't see why provided they're kept clean (in the nice plastic cae the bled kit came in) . . .  or am I missing something?

I wonder if the cheap plastic syringes are not resistant to the brake fluid

[grams]

A cheap kit will have syringes mass produced for medical use and any labelling will apply to that.

If it's Shimano the fluid isn't corrosive.