What have you fettled today?

[Owthathurt]

Changed a lightbulb in a lampshade today.....does that constitute fettling?

[Canardly]

Funny that, I changed some SES spots for LEDs.

[Owthathurt]

Funny that, I changed some SES spots for LEDs.

That's complex fettling right there....................

[Feanor]

Rather embarrassing fettle today...

For a couple of weeks, I've been plagued by a light metallic Ping!...Ting!...Ting!...Ping! whilst riding over rough road.
I've had a bear of a time trying to discover where it's coming from.
I've spent hours bouncing the bike up and down on the garage floor trying to reproduce it with no success.

On today's ride, I finally discovered the source.
It was the rear brake cable, which had become a bit slack, and was slapping against the underside of the top tube, where it runs outside of any outer.
Grab a hold of it and clamp it to the top tube by hand, and silence.
Or take up the slack with the brake lever, and silence.

So when I got home, I go to investigate how the rear brake cable is so slack.

The rear calliper QR lever is open.
It must have been like that since I fixed a puncture on our family ride to Elgin 2 weeks ago.
Idiot boy.

Crank the QR lever round to the closed position, and normal cable tension is resumed, and silence is restored.

[Mrs Pingu]

Finished painting section 2 of 3 of the living room (leaving the bit with the stains still to do) yesterday.
Today stomped the carpet back down on the grippers, put the blind back up, moved the stand with all the hi-fi & media kit from one side of the room to the other (a delicate operation), cleaned all the dust off it, Pingu un-spaghettied all the cables and connected it all up to the new LAN socket.
Moved the bookcase and speakers back from their temporary (~5 months) home in the hall and connected all that up.

Dismantled and de-nailed half a pallet (until I'd had enough, feeling a bit weak & weedy today). Grubbed about in the corner of the loft to excavate several boxes of paperbacks for future charidee shop trip. Hoovered.

I'm bloody knackered now!

[ElyDave]

A bit of dark side fettling today.

The rear lighting on the M5 has had my brian ticking over for a while and I had thoughts at the weekend.  It moved from a metal rawrdobe pole to a bit of brrom handle before finally settling on a length of PVC water pipe instead. Held to the frame of the headrest with cable ties threaded through holes drilled at 90 degree angles.

And no excuse for car drivers, it's higher than it would be on an upright

[robgul]

A bit of workshop fettling - moved the bench-mounted work-stand clamp from one bench to the other (and packed away the floor-standing work-stand that I keep tripping over) - making a QR lever for the tube clamp from an old Allen key superglued into an Allen bolt head. Also re-arranged the bike hanging wall-mounted racks a little wider apart now I have sold a couple of machines.

Next step is to go through all the cycle stuff to find the things I don't need and get them ready for a cycle jumble where I've booked a table.

Rob

[Kim]

That bike's desperately in need of a carbon fibre tailbox.

[Deano]

Sewed some cloth badges onto my tatty old Carradice. Some light relief from re-rimming a wheel - the brake was a bit grabby on Saturday, and there are some noticeable dimples in the old rim.

[ElyDave]

That bike's desperately in need of a carbon fibre tailbox.

Not at 800 euro plus VAT it isn't

[Feanor]

I've just fettled a new battery into Junior's iPhone 5, who's battery life had deteriorated to single-digit minutes.
He's been going around with one of my USB battery packs in his pocket.

It wasn't too difficult, really.  Just fiddly.
And it even still works.

[Kim]

He's been going around with one of my USB battery packs in his pocket.

All the cool kids are doing that these days.  I blame Pokemon.

[Feanor]

He's been going around with one of my USB battery packs in his pocket.

All the cool kids are doing that these days.  I blame Pokemon.

Indeed.

(This Junior is not such an avid Pokémon player as his older brother.)

Apparently, you can pick up 'eggs' which need to be hatched by 'walking around'.
There are different eggs, and they require different Km of walking to hatch them.
But to register the distance, the phone has to be on and active, with GPS enabled to track the motion.
So this is why they need Audax-style solutions to battery life issues!

[rogerzilla]

I really need to clean the Inbred, fit a new chain and sprocket, and overhaul the front brake*, but it's chucking it down.  So far I have removed the chain and loosened the axle nuts, then scuttle back indoors for a cup of tea.

I think that, after four years' commuting, I should maybe fit some new V-brake pads.  They still haven't worn excessively but that's because the sky blue Swisstops (for ceramic rims) are *so* hard that they don't really work in the wet.  Now the rims have smoothed off and are no longer like sandpaper, I'm going to try green Kool-Stops again.  How long does a ceramic rim last, anyway?  This one looks as if it might do ten years; its normal predecessor lasted 18 months, and that was on the front!

[hatler]

As far as I can make out ceramic rims last until you bend them.

Until last year I had been doing over 3000 all year round miles on a pair of them since 2008, and have only had to replace two, both as a result of dinks.

[rogerzilla]

V-brakes on ceramic rims are certainly a lower-maintenance option than hydraulic discs!  Normally I just grease the frame bosses once a year to ensure they continue to centre properly when released and - er - that's it.  I am changing the cable today, though.

The coaster brake in the rear hub is even lower-maintenance.  I overhauled the hub this time last year, after 2.5 years' commuting, and wished I hadn't bothered.  It was still clean inside and the coaster brake shoes (knurled hardened steel on new SA hubs, not bronze any more) weren't noticeably worn.

The only things this bike eats up are chains and sprockets.  With a singlespeed or an IGH hub it's usually most economic to run the chain until it's ruined the sprocket, then replace both at the same time (the chainring will be OK for years).  Sprockets are about three quid.

[hatler]

My old Orange O2 was treated to a pair of new ceramic Spa wheels about three years ago. (Both rims and hubs were shot.) Required brake maintenance since then has been zero. Braking performance remains tip top.

[T42]

Tyre change on the Trek, put on 2 x GP4000sII 25mm instead of 23s.

[ElyDave]

100k on the M5 showed me that my tail lighting solution is not the most practical, the pole gets in the way of the back of the helmet.

More fettling to do, with either a shorter stump, or a horizontal solution, or both.

[Bledlow]

Put the fourth new tube in a day on the front wheel of Mrs B's road bike.

First one had a leak through an old patch beside the valve set. The patch was splitting. The second popped while I was pumping it up. Split that looked like a pinch puncture. Maybe it had been damaged but not quite fatally when fitting & gave up the ghost under pressure. The third - seemed fine until it was half pumped, then air started gushing out of the valve.

I don't want to tempt fate, but the fourth one's staying up so far. I've started patching the old ones which were laying around. Three patched, two discarded so far. One road & one MTB to go.

[ElyDave]

Bathroom fan replacement, up in the loft inaccessible, contortionism and strained hamstrings.

As well as swapping over, also corrected the electricians fubar with the cable outer which had not been fed through the grommet on an IPX4 device.

[Diver300]

In house fettling,
1) A good multimeter (Fluke 77) can work out whether a mains cable is live by holding the probe near the live side of the cable. It read 2 ish Volts near the live side and less than half a volt near the other side. The 2 V reading disappeared when the cable was turned off.
1a) The cable I had found turned out to have a junction box for real testing less than 30 cm away 
2) Drill bit extensions can be stacked to allow drilling all the way down through the wooden noggins from the top of a wall to the bottom. With limited headroom each new one is assembled on the top of the stack with the rest of stack in place. The same stack of extensions can lead a string down for later cable pulling purposes.

[Ruthie]

Washed my bike.  Hoping Miff from the club won't look at it with that sad face next week now.  I swear it was a stone lighter this afternoon.

[ElyDave]

Also turned the lightsaber through 90deg on the M5 a s per ^^

[drossall]

Washed my bike.  Hoping Miff from the club won't look at it with that sad face next week now.

My club once said I couldn't ride with them if I didn't wash mine.