What have you fettled today?

[LittleWheelsandBig]

Replaced both brake cables on HK’s Greenspeed and fitted a second taillight, dyno headlight, Monkii cage and a GPS mount.

Replaced the rear tyres and front mudflap on HK’s orange Trykit.

Fitted new front brake pads on my fixed and straightened a brake lever. I need to replace the headset and chain soon and swap out the borrowed dyno-wheel, once I replace a bent rim.

Built a disc + rim brake dyno-wheel for my trike and another for HK’s orange trike.

[Mrs Pingu]

I bought some 3D printed racks to attach under kitchen cabinet shelves to store boxes of cling film, foil and the like. Except I found I was struggling to get the wood screws in the shelf through a combination of screwing upwards, reaching too far and having insufficient upper body strength. Using the proper Makita drill seemed like a sledgehammer to crack a nut so I left it a couple of weeks while I brewed the tuits.
This morning I had a bit of a brainwave, I was sure I had some tiny little archimedes type hand drills I had from my jewellery class, so I rummaged in the jewellery making box and there they were.
Still a bit bloody awkward (prolly would have been better if I had been arsed getting the ladder out of the garage instead of standing on a step stool) but made enough of a difference to allow me to get the wood screws in right at the back end of the cabinet.

[Mr Larrington]

The Thrustmaster T500 RS Gear Shift, unlike such devices in Real Life, has nowt to stop one from inadvertently hooking reverse when accelerating one’s virtual lorry away from the virtual traffic lights.  This makes a nasty noise and if repeated often enough break one’s virtual gearbox.  The solution is obvious: an old-Ferrari-stylee lift-up wossname to confine the gearstick to the forward ratios unless reverse is actually required.


Objet in situ #1 by Mr Larrington, on Flickr


Objet in situ #2 by Mr Larrington, on Flickr

[Mrs Pingu]

 

[Kim]

Love it.  I'd have attempted to MITM the USB and added a box with an inappropriately chunky toggle switch to enable reverse.  This would have undoubtedly involved a week-long dive into a USB HID rabbit-hole, therby proving that Ferrari have the superior solution.

[jsabine]

inappropriately chunky

It's a wagon¹. I don't think this is possible.




1: Yeah, yeah, a pretend one. Still a wagon.

[Mr Larrington]

Love it.  I'd have attempted to MITM the USB and added a box with an inappropriately chunky toggle switch to enable reverse.  This would have undoubtedly involved a week-long dive into a USB HID rabbit-hole, therby proving that Ferrari have the superior solution.

For some bizarre reason the wheel+pedals+shifter combo appears to use three different types of connector*, only one of which is USB.  Plus if you jammed the reverse signal the game would probably interpret the lever as being in neutral, over-rev the engine and make a nasty noise.

* probably because they’re French

[Afasoas]

Two bikes in the dining room was pushing my luck, so with help from an inquisitive hound I reduced the cheap audax bike wot turned out to be broken to a pile of parts.

Also listed the 'summer bike' on Facebook market place. It's in fine fettle but the new acquisition is just as light with mudguards and I can't see me using it much now. I figured I'd be better liqidating that asset and putting the funds toward either improving or replacing the going-to-town bike.

Desperately need to sort the garage out and make some bike storage/fettling space available.

[De Sisti]

Not me, but two guys from Glevum Windows who fitted new upvc doors to my kitchen and shed.

[The Family Cyclist]

As mentioned in on the commute I'd probably abused a not heavy duty wheel by using it on tourer which is currently used for laden commuting with some awful cycle paths and cut through. Riding home Friday one of the spokes called enough and snapped while I was stuck in traffic so not even moving

Thankfully had a more suitable wheel in shed so today swapped cassette, tyre etc over to that and fitted. Noticed the terrible state of the chain so that came off for a clean and the derailleur jockey wheels came out to unclog as well

Need to stick new pads on wife's bike after lunch

As a postscript to this my bike felt lovely this morning. May have been running the tyre a bit softer but the drivetrain was grim so a nice lubed chain and cleared out of gunk derailleur must have helped

[JefO]

A month or two ago, I bought an expensive front light for my 1958 bike.
As I may be using this bike on the Dunwich Dynamo this year, I decided that 5 hours on max illumination power would not be enough. So I bought two more of the "easily replaceable 18350" cells, that the sales blurbist had written and which had convinced me this was a good light. They arrived with the purpose bought charger today. Have now invested more than £70 in this lamp and was a bit miffed when the batteries did not work in the Town Mouse Centre Light... I was even more miffed when I realised that the light manufacturer had actually made it necessary to buy a certain type of "18350" cell that is not readily available at most lithium battery stockists. They had actually been very clever, in an attempt to make people like me buy their replacement / spare cells from them.
I have a dislike of that kind of bullying, which makes me very beligerent.
I set about designing a modification to the positive terminal cap (inside the lamp) that would allow both types of battery to be used.
It meant I had to fire up the lathe as the blighters didn't make it easy to modify the cap.
There was a fair bit of machining, trial fitting and then machining a bit more, to achieve the happy medium that allowed both battery types to be 100% reliably replaceable. Hopefully the pictures will fill in any details I might have missed...




   

[Kim]

So they'd designed the cap to only accept a terminal with a weird shape?  Bastards.

[JefO]

So they'd designed the cap to only accept a terminal with a weird shape?  Bastards.

Yes, the design is for flat top batteries only, the more readily available type is 3mm taller including the positive terminal pip.

[Afasoas]

Nice work.

[Afasoas]

Got the old Garmin firmware updated. Made up an up-to-date OSM map and tested that I can still upload tracks to it.
That's the navigation side of things sorted, subject to the mount I've bought working as expected.

[SoreTween]

Yes, the design is for flat top batteries only, the more readily available type is 3mm taller including the positive terminal pip.

They are different, button top usually include over discharge protection circuit to use straight up in torches, vapes & the like. Use cases akin to disposables.  Flat top are unprotected, the device is expected to provide it & they are more for welding into a multi cell pack or where infrequent cell replacement is expected.

However, as is the way with standards I see fogstar now list unprotected button top 

[JefO]

Nice work.

Thank you Afas. Yes I was rather chuffed at being able to make the light work with both styles of 18350.

They are different, button top usually include over discharge protection circuit to use straight up in torches, vapes & the like. Use cases akin to disposables.  Flat top are unprotected, the device is expected to provide it & they are more for welding into a multi cell pack or where infrequent cell replacement is expected.

However, as is the way with standards I see fogstar now list unprotected button top 

Thank you Soretween - I rather suspected there was some form of clever electronics in the shoulder of the new batteries.
Hopefully, when (if) they go wrong, if I can no longer charge the batteries, I can mechanically remove the electronics and use the cell as if it had never had the protection circuit in there.

[robgul]

There's no weight rating in the spec from Boardman - I'm about 88-90kg and tall (XL frame) so not outrageous.

What is unusual with these wheels is that they are significantly offset - that's both the extruded shape of the rim and all the spokes are off to one side . . .  that seems to be not good design to me for stress etc.

I'm awaiting a reply . . . .

It is strange that there is no mention of maximum all up weight, wheel makers normally specify this, to protect themselves.

However, the Boardman 1 year parts and components guarantee, probably prevents successful claims, as the rims will probably not fail within a year for 99.9% of riders.

For an e-bike wheel, the build doesn't look like it is particularly beefy. Are the spokes straight 14g (ie not butted)? 

Regarding the stresses in a wheel built with an asymmetric rim, the spoke tensions are likely to be closer to equal on drive side and non-drive side, than on a symmetrical rim... as long as the rim has been fitted the correct way round!

Spokes are (were!) straight - horrible black powder coated things.

Update : after a number of "dear shithead" emails to Halfords and the "examination" of the wheel by a kid at the local branch they have refused any claim or admission that the wheel failed prematurely. If they had replaced the wheel they said it wouldn't match the other wheel as they only get the wheels with complete bikes. So . . . 

Whatever the outcome I had decided early on that the best option, it only being money, was to get a decent pair of wheels.

Spa obliged with a quality hub and rim, 36 spoke, combo which they supplied very quickly (a friend was going to Spa to buy a bike and he collected the wheels for me) [I wont say how quickly Spa built the wheels as it was well short of their usual leadtime ]   

Rotors (I did have to buy lockring adapters for the 6 bolt rotors), cassette and tyres were fitted when I got the wheels and the bike is back on the road.  I've only ridden about 40 miles so far but the wheels do feel more stable than the original offset rims - it may be that the increased spoke count is a factor?

I now have a complete front wheel and a rear hub in the "stock of bike stuff" . . . and a rim without spokes that my wife is going to use with strings to grow some sort of flowers in the garden!

[LittleWheelsandBig]

Fitted a Sunrace 9sp bar end shifter to HK’s Greenspeed trike, replacing a crappy 8sp twist-shifter. New cable and casing of course, along with a chain and cassette.

[Afasoas]

Not really fettling ... or maybe fettling in the loosest sense.

The house is now free of bikes and bits that bolt onto bicycles. Also evicted the power tools. All safely housed in the garage, with room to spare .. perhaps even enough room for, in future, one more bike 

I also pieced together the cheapest workstand that Park Tools sell. My lower back is going to be thankful. Hopefully I'll be putting it to good use stripping and regreasing some of the components on the gas pipe hybrid later this week.

[chrisbainbridge]

Couldn’t. bothered with the studded tyres any more so stripped them, cleaned all of the tubeless gunk from last year and refitted the tubeless tyres for the year.

[Mr Larrington]

Moved the wireless thermostat to the opposite end of the shelf wot it sits on; used an ancient address book under the base to tilt it such that the temperature can be read from my customary loafing position on the sofa.  Ph3@r m1 l33t 5k1llz!

[Tim Hall]

Oiled* my shaft**.


*Boiled linseed oil.

** Hand axe shaft that I'd recently replaced.

[LittleWheelsandBig]

Fitted a tyre and disc rotor (from garage stock) to a new trike thru axle dynowheel. Need to get a disc for the other trike dynowheel sometime.

Replaced a dyno headlight bracket on HK’s orange trike with a spare Brompton dyno headlight bracket to stop the gear cable casings switching off the headlight switch midway through tight turns.

[Afasoas]

Properly aligned the rear calliper on the new bike.
Fitted a rear pannier rack. Checked tyre pressures. It's nearly ready to ride.

Next job, if the wind doesn't get up too much, is to give the gas pipe hybrid some love and attention. Chain is a bit slackrusty.