What have you fettled today?

[T42]

Nix gefettelt, but found with a quiet hurrah the missing half of a pair of copper dynamo-wire tags that skedaddled from the bag the other evening and hid behind my Audax bike's back tyre. Chuffed.

[Tim Hall]

Made my first bullroarer out of a bit of tree and a length of cord. Whittled to a suitable shape then got whirling. V pleased

What's a bullroarer?

Edit for clarity - my mobile is rubbish at quoting.  One of these http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bullroarer
  a bit tough on my hands though - must wear gloves next time.

[Tim Hall]

And today I molished a new wedge for a hand axe out of a bit of dead tree. A lot tighter than the old one.

[Chris S]

I have a "Day Off" tomorrow - which in my company means "Stay by the phone/WhatsApp/EMail/Lync in case we need you". So I can't stray far from the above.

I need to go through a process of elimination to try and isolate the TICK TICK TICK (strong enough to make a "Ping" in the frame tubing) at the bottom of every (loaded) pedal stroke on the tandem. BB is most likely I guess, but I de-rusted the pedals with ACF-50 last week, so need to rule that out as a potential cause.

Also - I need to fettle some Ingress portals. One in particular.

Oh. And the fuel-pump on the Volvo has started whining, adding it to the "Next Service" list - which is possibly long enough to write off the car.

[Tim Hall]

Nearly forgot - I also adjusted the saddle height and handlebars for a Small Girl.  She then helped me pump up the tyres and went zooming off round the block. 

[David Martin]

Wired up more of the museum project. It has now almost all the wiring done and just needs some holes drilling in the enclosure, programming and testing.

[Kim]

I made a thing...

From the department of fettling-by-proxy, the boards have arrived!



Silkscreen unavoidably dodgy in places, and I know I've cocked up the audio jack (drillings for the power input look dubious, too), but it's not bad for a first attempt.  Phantasmagoriana will approve of the soldermask.

Annoyingly the 10k surface mount resistors are on back-order, which is going to limit testing.  Should be able to get all the connectors and power stuff mounted and confirm that the voltages are in the right places, though.


ETA:  Finding some of the bugs...



Most obvious, the large electrolytic capacitor that fouls the transformer on the POE board.  Oops.  A couple of harmless cockups in the silkscreen (T1 and T2 are for some reason drawn backwards, and I've mislabelled the pins on the IR receiver).

Not a PCB cockup, I appear to have bought RJ45 jacks in a weird metric[1] size.  Will have to order proper ones.

The power stuff all works, as does the audio amp.

Further testing limited by R1 (which chip enables that fiddly little level converter directly above) being on back-order.  I might bodge a through-hole one on there.

[Tim Hall]

Laid a bit of scary sharp goodness on my Frost Mora Clipper.  All nice again now.

[Mrs Pingu]

Tried to replace a knackered rear brake with a shiny new one. Failed. Insert sense of humour failure and leaving it for the penguin to sort out.
Humph.

[jogler]

Two hours precious riding time was expended on fettling the tandem....
 changed both pairs of pedals
 changed both saddles
 swapped the babbage engine for one that functions correctly
 applied bar-phat gel & tape to pilot's h'bars
 repaired a p*n*t*r* to front inner tube

[simonp]

Motobike: changed engine oil and filter. Checked and adjusted idle speed. Lubricated various pivots and exposed cables. Cleaned it.

[interzen]

Fettle fail.
Tried to fettle the gearing on the fixed MTBs. The starting point was:

Genesis Fortitude: 17/19T Dingle plus 34/36T chainrings
Surly 1x1: 17/21T Dingle plus 34/38T chainrings

The desired end point was:

Genesis Fortitude: 17/21T Dingle plus 32/36T chainrings
Surly 1x1: 38x17
17/19T Dingle -> bits box

However, after almost giving myself an aneurysm trying to shift the sprockets on the 1x1 (not to mention bending the chainwhip in the process) I gave up.

I also fettled the shed so that I can now get three bikes in there. Any chancer who decides to spirit away with the contents had better know the correct order in which to remove things, otherwise they'll be getting very up-close and personal with Pugsley ... which would make for an interesting cause of death: crushed by fat-bike.

[Mrs Pingu]

Penguin didn't fix my brake so I did it. Hacksawed off a short section of the bolt and it fitted perfectly. I hope I never need to use the centering adjustment screw because I couldn't get it to turn at all.
In other news, took the ice tyres off my commuter and replaced with normal, but couldn't pump them up because somebody had buggered orff with the track pump...

[andygates]

Swapped the screen on my Nexus 7 tablet.  All fun and games until ungluing the bezel, for which I had to use ovens and hairdryers and so many shards of crystal that I am, in fact, Ogra.  But it worked! 

[citoyen]

ungluing the bezel

BTDTGTTS

PITMFA

[LittleWheelsandBig]

Swapped saddle, seatpost and pedals on one of HK's Roberts. Swapped handlebars and stem on the Longstaff and fitted some lights. Still got to replace the Longstaff's rear gear cable. Checked all the lights and finally ditched the dead ones. Assisted HK with sorting out the spare bike bits in the garage.

Still got to fiddle with my Pompino (Miche cog is giving grief) and the Frezoni and plenty to do on the racing tandem to get it running.

[clarion]

... so many shards of crystal that I am, in fact, Ogra...

[Butterfly]

Put the bracket for the other baby seat on my tourer. Not sure if it is going to work yet, the passenger is in bed, but I pumped the tyres up, just in case.

[LittleWheelsandBig]

Adjusted my Brompton's headset this morning and inflated tyres, replaced brakepads and adjusted the front brake of HK's Condor this evening, all ready for her French sojourn tomorrow.

[Kim]

Bit of code, bit of PCB design, bit of bathroom floor.

[Vince]

Put a pair of 32mm tyres on the CdF in preparation for load carrying at the weekend. Assisted Boy Wunja to put a rack on his Cube hybrid after he pranged the Goingtoschoolbike by riding into a bollard   

[jogler]

Fitted a new saddle to Carol's tandem;stoker position

[Kim]

*Finally* got round to putting the regular marathons back on the Dawes.  Gave the wheels a bit of truing-stand love too, as well as a mildly paranoid rim inspection.

Then general acts of lubrication on the Streetmachine, with particular attention to the rear shock (a lightly-used eBay bargain I replaced the seriously knackered original with last year) which had started making interesting noises.  It responded well to unloading the spring and repeatedly frobbing the damper while dribbling fork oil around the seal.  I suspect I may have to suck it up and replace it with something new and expensive at some point.

Also pumped up all the tyres, of which the trike was in particular need.

[Deano]

Changed the sprocket on my Dave Yates to give me a more usable gear for a trot across the Pennines. I also changed the chain, and finally fitted some mudflaps.

[Barry]

I have lived for five years with a huge Indian rickshaw parked in and dominating the the middle of my living room. After two long days of dissasembling (to get the thing out of the house) and rebuilding, today it got it's first outting. After a complicated, drawn out and labourious fettle with the gondola and rear axles, to adjust chain tension, I can now move through the town at a stately 5 or 6 miles an hour. It might not be fast and I might not be pretty but nobody is going to say to me, "Sorry mate, I didn't see you".