What have you fettled today?

[Jurek]

An organ.

From a van, to a kitchen.

I'll leave it to PaulR to fill in the details.

Suffice it to say it was an unexpected (albeit not entirely unwelcome ) interruption to my Sunday afternoon/evening.

Trust me when I tell you it was heavy.

[JJ]

New innner tube on the youngest's stabiliser bike.  Took about 20 mins to dig through all the chainguards and stuff to get the wheel out and tyre off.  Had to do it all over again half an hour later as the new tube turned out to have a manufacturing defect in the shape of a pin-prick hole.

New mudguards on the commuter, leading to cobbling a new extension out of an unbroken piece of the old ones, leading to discovery that the bike needed a bit of a clean, leading to discovery of a shocking amount of play in the shimano hub dynamo, leading to discover that the cones only have about a 2mm spanner flat on them, leading to the kids learning some new vocabulary over the next 45 minutes.

Cleaned the audax bike, and lubed it up.

Cleaned the chain on Mrs J's tri bike.

Fettled the brakes on bikes of offspring numbers 1 and 3.

New stays on the front mudguard of "The Black Thing".

Failed utterly to swap headlingts over between TBT and Audax bike.

Failed even more utterly make any progress on the spare-parts-tandem.

Failed to swap out the knackered Marathon+ on the commuter.

Amazed to discover that chains on all the above are still within tolerance.

Sufficient unto the day is the evil thereof.  I never want to see another seized 5mm bolt again.

[GruB]

Kitchen taps.  They no longer drip.

[Gattopardo]

Kitchen taps.  They no longer drip.

Wanna do my bath taps

[TimO]

... leading to discover that the cones only have about a 2mm spanner flat on them ...

Which is why we have cone spanners.

[LittleWheelsandBig]

Softer 17mm cone spanners just get mashed by the short flats on Shimano dynohub cones. I had to buy a second (more expensive) 17mm cone spanner to work on HK's Shimano dynohub.

[clarion]

Last night:

Cleaned three bikes

Checked my chain carefully to see if I could find the odd tinking noise

Oiled three chains.
 
Checked all three chains for wear

Sorted out (as far as is possible) the cotter pin on TGL's fixed.   

Checked my brake blocks for wear and grit

[TOBY]

Turned this Raleigh Pursuit (obtained from Toby of this parish)

http://farm6.static.flickr.com/5293/5421982450_4feea1f573.jpg

Into this

http://farm6.static.flickr.com/5298/5421981962_d5fda4df0b.jpg

Replaced the brake cables with black rather than bright yellow outers.

It'll make a nice hack bike.

I can't believe you ditched the yellow cable outers 

Looks great 

[JJ]

... leading to discover that the cones only have about a 2mm spanner flat on them ...

Which is why we have cone spanners.

Err... 2mm they other way. I exaggerate a bit, but not much, and they are also only about twice the thickness of a human hair across!

a second (more expensive) 17mm cone spanner

is clearly what I needed, but I think I made matters worse by doing it up good n' tight last time

[MattH]

Replaced the brake cables with black rather than bright yellow outers.

I can't believe you ditched the yellow cable outers 

Looks great 

My son said the same. But he's 13 and has very suspect taste  Of course, if they hadn't been faded then I'd have left them on!

Took it out for the first real ride today - only about 10 miles round trip to the bank in the next town, but lots of fun and a nice quiet, smooth ride. The 83" gear seems about right too for the minimal hills here (I was running the same in Sweden last time I had a fixed - but there my 25km commute had a grand total of 125m climb).

[jogler]

I've clipped an SKS Raceblade over the back wheel.Saturdays ride indicated that a pannier rack was insufficient to prevent a mud*-stripe up the back.

*there was probably a high % of cowshit :we passed a wet lane across a farm entrance

[rower40]

Cleaned the drivetrain on my commuting bike.

By removing the main component and placing it under a running tap.   Then getting busy with a sponge and scrubbing brush and bucket of water on the sprockets.

To suppress the annoying clicky noise that I get when I release the brake levers, I glued two little patches of rubber to the levers.  This time I didn't superglue my fingers together.

[marcusjb]

Put an uphanger thing on my girlfriend's bike to stop the awful judder she was getting since she changed to Koolstop pads - one of these:



Works a treat - stops perfectly with no judder at all.  Amazing what a difference it makes.

Hopefully slightly less ear-ache about juddery brakes will follow!

[drossall]

I can't believe you ditched the yellow cable outers 

You used to be able to buy lengths of any reasonable colour (red, blue, yellow, white, black,...) from the drums hung up in any self-respecting LBS. We all use bar tape in colours to match the bike; I can't really see why you wouldn't for cables too.

It's indexed gearing that did it, of course; cables come pre-packaged in Henry Ford colours.

[BrianI]

Fettled a popped seam on a pair of specialized full finger gloves.  Make do and mend and all that. I knew those home economic lessons at skool would come in useful one day!   

[BrianI]

I can't believe you ditched the yellow cable outers 

You used to be able to buy lengths of any reasonable colour (red, blue, yellow, white, black,...) from the drums hung up in any self-respecting LBS. We all use bar tape in colours to match the bike; I can't really see why you wouldn't for cables too.

It's indexed gearing that did it, of course; cables come pre-packaged in Henry Ford colours.

Hmmm, I could probably do with replacing the inners and outers on my Lemond racer.  White outers would look nice seeing as it's a black frame with white logos.......     Pity you can't get the cheap outer cable in any other colours apart from henry ford colours :-/

[CrinklyLion]

Fettled by proxy....

On the way home from school at lunchtime, SmallestCub announced that his very yellow Puky like-a-like-a-bike needed some air in the front tyre.  So I checked, and concluded that the 3 year old was indeed not wrong.  Since it has woods valves and I knew I didn't have an appropriate adapter at home, we popped into the corner shop where they not only did the honours with the track pump, they also donated a spare adapter for us to take home with us.  I do like York Cycleworks.

[Kim]

Chains, epic de-skogging of.  Also de-skogging of components that come into contact with said chains.  And asociated acts of lubrication.  And an abortive attempt at removing oily black stain from the carpet where I accidentally sat on my dirty rag (suspect trousers may have suffered a similar fate, but they're well-worn and two sizes too big so I don't really care).

[Aidan]

Fitted some rather snazzy new mudguards to the Holdsworth

[Kim]

Just finished emergency fettling of the bathroom door latch, which we noticed was being a bit funny yesterday, but barakta went for a bath and was daft enough to close the bathroom door anyway and got herself trapped.   

Cue some rather fiddly digging around in the sheared cheesy mess of the mechanism from the difficult side of the door frame in order to release the latch, while communicating with hearing-aid-less barakta via the light switch.  Fortunately, I was only halfway through working out how best to encode "lower dental floss out window for tools" in light flashes when I managed to get it open, saving the embarrassment of not realising that I simply would have had to slide a note under the door.

The remains of the offending mechanism were ceremonially removed with my biggest bastard mole grips and deposited in the bin.  There's no need for it anyway - there's a perfectly functional bolt for the rare occasion that someone wishes to lock the door.

Let this be a lesson to you all: Always keep a screwdriver, textphone and morse code lookup table in your bathroom.

[MattH]

Let this be a lesson to you all: Always keep a screwdriver, textphone and morse code lookup table in your bathroom.

That reminds me of an article in an early 1990s copy of QST (a US amateur radio magazine). The author's wife wasn't keen on his installing radio gear in the house, so he built a HF transceiver into a waterproof box installed into the toilet cistern - so he could lock himself into the smallest room and communicate around the world 

[jogler]

The remains of the offending mechanism were ceremonially removed with my biggest bastard mole grips

a quality bit o' Brummie engineering 

[cycleman]

took the rear wheel out of the antrotech and removed the parking brake which was cleaned lubed and refitted . fitted a new parking brake lever, replaced the wheel, reset the gears and it all works again 

[LittleWheelsandBig]

Changed the worn-out pedals on my Frezoni, fitted a mudguard flap and second front light to HK's work bike, fitted new jockey pulleys and new BB and crank to HK's MTB. Now ordering a new BB for HK's S&S bike to get that back on the road. I think she rides them too much!

[Canardly]

That Holdsworth is rather nice