What have you fettled today?

[Vince]

The spare parts bike now has a black down tube. The rust under the transfers has been rubbed back and undercoat & black topcoat (because I had black left over from the Crapocaster) have been sprayed on. Headset and bottom bracket have been carefully installed without dinging the soft paint.

(I don't have time to prep and paint the whole frame as I want to ride it on Wednesday.)

[davelodwig]

New chain, chain ring, and brake pads on the thorn.

I've got a rolhoff sprocket to fit, but not got round to ordering the special tool.

[fuzzy]

I recently acquired a Ridgeback Velocity from Woofage OTP. It's in decent nick, but I have been tweaking it a little. I swapped the stem with a higher one - also from Woofage - and realised the rear pads were almost worn out, so replaced them. The v-brakes were a bit sticky after a month outdoors in deepest Suffolk, so I removed, cleaned and lubricated the relevant bits and reassembled them using the springiest notch. I am not familiar with this type of brake and need to work out what the little adjustment screw does, as I often fail to have them set right.

AWL, the little screws adjust the distance between the pad and rim. The tip of the screw rests against a stop on the brake boss. Turning the screw one way pushes the brake arm 'out'. Turning it the other way allows the spring to force the brake arm 'in'. Try watching the gap as you turn the screw, you will notice the distance increase/ decrease with your adjustment.

[zigzag]

found the flat tyre on my runabout bike, took the tyre off - the inner tube failed at the valve joint.. should i blame the heat? inner tube replaced, bike rideable again.

[Vince]

Major push on getting the Spare Parts bike re-assembled. Just the cables to instal and adjust everything.

I performed a secondary fettle on the garage door to make sure both locks engage properly, after a couple of 'gentlemen' asked if I had any old metal.

[Kim]

Finished the Fun Factory.  This hopefully means sleep and bike rides that don't involve West Bromwich and things.

Nikki will be along with some decent photos in due course...

[LittleWheelsandBig]

Tweaked some wheels, a cassette and a rear mech, none of which were mine. Sometime soon I'll be shortening a chain to the right length.

[Feline]

I fettled the lawn and the dog. The dog is actually only half fettled because the cordless clippers ran out of juice half way through. I'm now going to take him for a walk in the dark to avoid the embarrassment of being seen by anyone with him like this 

[nikki]

Finished the Fun Factory.

Booting up:



LED bling:


Secret Cinema:




It's a periscope. Just mirrors. No tech. It's pretty cool.


The Control Panel. (Feat. farty noises, modem noises, trombone noises and a miscellany of others):


"Give me strippers and bubblewrap"


YACF jersey being non infra-red compliant:


It's taken months. Also blood, sweat and tears.
Constructed in/on/behind assorted bin stores, rooves, conference screens and other wholly inappropriate spaces.
On the other hand: best build team ever.

*passes out*

[andrewc]

Congratulations to you both      So much hard work.

I notice wheels,  is there a bike towing hitch ?

[clarion]

Good work.

[Vince]

The Spare Parts bike now has two working brakes (Oh how I hate setting up canti's) and a working front deraileur. Should get to turn the pedals tonight.

[fuzzy]

Finished the Fun Factory.

"Give me strippers and bubblewrap"

WTF is Kim gonna do with strippers dressed in bubble wrap?

Bloody well done BTW, looks like a 'Thing' to be proud of 

[clarion]

WTF is Kim gonna do with strippers dressed in bubble wrap?

What anyone else would do: Pop the bubbles.

[Kim]

Congratulations to you both      So much hard work.

I notice wheels,  is there a bike towing hitch ?

This was discussed, but we reckoned it would need a Trice to get it moving (There's an awful lot of plywood and 42" screen in there), which would make the nose weight difficult...   

I'm still wondering what my professional ethics lecturer would say about programming something to make annoying noises at random intervals near a reception desk, mind.

[Wombat]

So I've spent some time this afternoon drilling 8 holes into my garage floor, and fitting another 2 ground anchors and affixing several metres of the finest heavy duty hardened steel chain, bought from docsquid's company, Pragmasis.

I really should get around to fitting my Pragmasis ground anchor. It's not too bad without it though as the chain is currently wrapped around thick cable that brings mains electricity to the distribution box (prior to the meters). No scrote would be stupid enough to try and cut that (and live).

You're not aware of the folk who cut through live cables supplying railway lines then?  They keep doing it, and I haven't heard of scores of electrocuted theives, so I would not rely on your assertion to protect my assets, I'm afraid. Go on, fit that ground anchor, you know it makes sense!

[Greenbank]

So I've spent some time this afternoon drilling 8 holes into my garage floor, and fitting another 2 ground anchors and affixing several metres of the finest heavy duty hardened steel chain, bought from docsquid's company, Pragmasis.

I really should get around to fitting my Pragmasis ground anchor. It's not too bad without it though as the chain is currently wrapped around thick cable that brings mains electricity to the distribution box (prior to the meters). No scrote would be stupid enough to try and cut that (and live).

You're not aware of the folk who cut through live cables supplying railway lines then?  They keep doing it, and I haven't heard of scores of electrocuted theives, so I would not rely on your assertion to protect my assets, I'm afraid. Go on, fit that ground anchor, you know it makes sense!

They're stealing the highly valuable copper cable though. It's also very easy for them to trip the power on the line first; you can't do this with incoming power to a house.

I'm aware of bank robbers that tunnel through several feet of solid wall, use explosives and even smash and grab ATMs using fork lift trucks. All of which would easily defeat a ground anchor, but I don't worry about them either.

[Kim]

Indeed.  It wouldn't be beyond the wit of a scrote to come equipped with some insulated bolt cutters / linesman's gloves and a torch, or to successfully improvise the same from the contents of your garage.  The 240V/415V in that cable isn't going to do anything particularly unexpected, unlike the 25kV they're likely to encounter on a railway.

I note that fortuitously insulated bolt cutters were recently shown in another thread...

[Dibdib]

Fettled some aerobars onto the Tricross in preparation for tomorrow's attempt at a timetrial. Surprisingly comfy on a quick spin around the block, we'll see how they fare tomorrow.

[Kim]

Fettled that p*ncture from Monday.  May take a broom to Luton Road, or at least go the other way for a while.

[Vince]

The Spare Parts bike is complete, just need to check the saddle position.

Put new mudguards on Boy Wunja's bike.

[Chris S]

Tandem gear cable inner.

Gear changes on last weekend's Baldock 300 gradually decayed into something of a lottery, especially changes up (larger->smaller sprockets). Suspected a lazy cable - and that's what it turned out to be - the cable inner was very stiff inside the outer, at the dérailleur end of things.

New inner runs buttery smooth. Mmmm...

Lubed the chains too, which had become rather squeaky, within a couple of hundred km. I'm really not sure I'm a fan of dry-lube. It seems to need a lot more re-applications than wet-lube, even in warm, dry weather. That said, the chains are at least still silvery, and not thick black and sticky.

[zigzag]

attached spd-sl cleats to the shoes, set the release spring on the pedals to the preferred tension; swapped the saddle. will test the new setup when i'm back in the country week after.

[BrianI]

Fettled teh bathroom radiator, which was suffering a bit with rustage on the lower edge.
Wire brushed the loose paint / rust off, and on with a coat of hammerite satin white radiator paint.
Looks a lot better already, although needs a second coat.

[jogler]

Extended the downtube shifters on the Longstaff using Sugru (donated by Deano otp  ) to make them a smidgen longer but rather fatter to give a more comfortable touch.

To my colour-challenged vision the blue Sugru is not a bad match to the blue Longstaff sticker on the seat tube.