What have you fettled today?

[Kim]

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".

TPIUWP   

[robgul]

Having had the adjuster seize into a Shimano caliper, and then shear off when I tried the water pump pliers on it (AFTER a soak in WD40)     

- I drilled out the errant adjuster and with a bit of juggling managed to "re-tap" the hole in the brake using a steel bolt - obviously the alloy brake is relatively soft.   Gentle turning/turning back and some oil as I went and it worked a treat - replaced the adjuster with one from the large box of misc bits and I have the brake back in service.   Quite pleased as it's part of quite a nice pair of retro brakes.

I was just surprised that the steel bolt was man enough to work as a tap.

Rob

[Polar Bear]

A long overdude fettle of #1's mtb.   It actually has touring tyres and he uses it mainly on road.   It was all fouled up with front mech and rear disk brake not working as well as the chain having a number of stiff links.   I de-gunked it and replaced the rear brake pads.   

#1 now has a broad smile across his chops!   

[interzen]

What is it with Genesis and forks?! They've managed to trump the Croix de Fer's 'godawful mud clearance on a 'cross bike fork'¹ with a right doozy.

Picked up the 180mm rotors and whatnot for the Fortitude from the LBS today and started to fit them when I got home - rear went on, absolutely no problem; didn't even have to faff around with the caliper too much to get everything running nice and quiet. So far, so good.

Now for the front.

Oh sweet Jesus Herbert Walker Christ, what a mess ...

By way of background, the Fortitude is my Ride Of Choice for the Tour Divide; as such, it will be running an SP dynohub which in turn will run a Supernova E3 Triple headlight and/or a B&M USBWerk for charging duties. Said dynamo hub uses a 6-bolt disc fitting. Some bright spark at Genesis obviously decided that everyone runs CentreLock these days (maybe so, but I'm not forking out extra for the Supernova hub just 'cos it has a centrelock fitting), so if you use a 6-bolt hub .... the fork leg actually gets in the way of the rotor bolts: best case, a thunking noise 6 times per revolution as the bolt heads catch the fork leg, worst case: the wheel doesn't bloody well turn because the bolt heads hit the fork leg full on 

Just to make life more interesting, the axle-to-crown measurement is 445mm - the sort of thing you find on a rigid 26er fork (rigid 29er forks tend to be 468mm or thereabouts).
Like the Salsa Cromoto.
One of which I've just ordered 

EDIT: I've also fitted sintered brake pads to the 1x1. As fettles go, this was considerably more successful.

¹ - it's a lovely bike in nearly all other respects, but the mud clearance with the stock fork is piss poor. I'm replacing it with a Surly Disc Trucker fork.

[Polar Bear]

A long overdude fettle of #1's mtb.   It actually has touring tyres and he uses it mainly on road.   It was all fouled up with front mech and rear disk brake not working as well as the chain having a number of stiff links.   I de-gunked it and replaced the rear brake pads.   

#1 now has a broad smile across his chops!   

And on a whim I have prepared the audax bikes for tomorrow.   We've been using the 26 inch tourers over winter but it's time to go 700c for the foreseeable.   

[David Martin]

Having determined that a) failing to connect the H-bridge motor power to the correct pin and b) connecting it to the wrong pin so it blew the arduino (and the next, and the next) was a rthar pricey way of learning from your mistakes. Even at £1.30 per board. However, it all now works and I am piecing together the rotating hardware.

And in other news, I fettled some brackets for holding race radios in a sensible place. A nice bit of laser cuttery, some waving of a hot air gun to bend things, and I have some mounts for Mitex radios that slot into the cheap windscreen mount phone holders.


on the table and when installed in the car with a ski-pass holder for the mic

[David Martin]

Got everything together for the turntable. The little stepper is too weak to turn it. A replacement is now on order that is much bigger.

[T42]

Looked very hard at a bunch of Tamiya connectors and a couple of lengths of B&M lighting cable but felt too lazy to start anything.  Cut a shim for my seatpost rack out of an old HB grip instead.

[Deano]

Tried to fit a Zefal gizmo universal thingie to my Dave Yates, gave up. Complete pain.

[interzen]

This:



It started out as a singlespeed, it being a High Latitude Singlespeed frame and all, but somewhere along the line its mutated into a 1x10 with the aid of a Cotic gear-tug, an XT rear mech, Zee shifter, an 11-36T SRAM cassette, lots of zip-ties and a fair amount of cussin' ...

... but bugger me with the rough end of a pineapple, IT WORKS! (mwaaahahahaha!)

It's due to have a pair of Salsa Fargo forks fitted ... when they eventually turn up at the LBS (not their fault, but when they ordered them from Ison they miraculously went on to back-order. Along with  the Disc Trucker forks I ordered for the Croix de Fer  )

Oh, and I fitted a 9spd XT rear mech to the Croix de Fer yesterday (10spd road shifters work with a 9spd MTB mech ... Shimano Logic^TM innit?)

[Deano]

Very orange nice. That's the sort of colour I imagined my Peugeot would have been (Caygill described it as metallic orange - it was more of a seventies brown).

Is the seat tube really as curved as it appears in the photo?

[interzen]

Very orange nice. That's the sort of colour I imagined my Peugeot would have been (Caygill described it as metallic orange - it was more of a seventies brown).

Genesis called it 'burnt copper', I called it 'metallic orange' and the box said .... 'metallic orange'
If I was getting it resprayed I'd be tempted to go for something like this: http://surlybikes.com/bikes/karate_monkey_ops - translucent orange powdercoat 

Is the seat tube really as curved as it appears in the photo?

There is a slight curve to the seat tube, yes. It's probably exaggerated by the angle I had to adopt to take the photo. It was taken in the alley behind my place, and space is a bit limited ... it has fewer weeds than my back garden, though.

Once the Fargo forks are on it, I'll be able to swap the hub dynamo wheel between this and the Fortitude - the Enabler fork is 135mm, so the 'old' SS wheel is there as a placeholder.

My flirtation with off-road singlespeed was rather short - after riding fixed for so long it just feels wrong; riding fixed off-road is probably wronger for different reasons but I prefer it I'll probably keep the singlespeed wheel handy, though.

[Cudzoziemiec]

Nice, looks capable of most things. What are the bars?

[interzen]

Nice, looks capable of most things.

That's the general idea 

What are the bars?

On-One Mary bars.
I find them more comfortable than 'regular' flat bars and there's a better range of hand positions too. Drops aren't (currently) doable because I'm running hydraulic brakes.

[Cudzoziemiec]

It seems you can now have hydraulic discs with drops, but only if your gears are Spinal Tap.

[interzen]

Therein lies the problem - mine only go up to 10.

Which, admittedly, is 9 more than I'm used to.

[clarion]

Genesis called it 'burnt copper', I called it 'metallic orange' and the box said .... 'metallic orange'

Have they ever burned copper?  Don't you end up with copper oxide, which is dark grey/black?

[Kim]

Yesterday, really:  Got most of the electronics for the Giant 80s Deaf Alarm Clock built.  As it's a one-off with relatively few SMD components, I opted to use one of those excellent Whitewing prototyping boards, rather than bother with a custom PCB.


^{(LED display contrast is better in real life - the camera flash lights up the module, and is faster than the display brightness sensor can respond to)}

I'm all out of LM317s, so the actual vibrating pad (not pictured, it's in the bed connected to the fire alarm) doesn't work yet.  I also need a power jack that fits, and to finish adding the audio amp components.

Physical construction is mostly there.  The cutout for the HDMI port at the back needs a bit more filing so the plug actually goes in, and I'm still not sure whether to go with the black acrylic for the lower panel, or the brushed aluminium that was supplied with the case.  Will want some black screws for the LCD mounting if I stick with the acrylic.

Software is still a work in progress.  I've written code for all the low-level stuff to confirm the hardware works, but need to tie it all together with clock and alerting functions, proper menu driven interface and so on.  It's working nicely as a stratum-1 NTP server, though.

[Vince]

That looks brilliant, though I think it would be more appropriate to have it sitting on an atomic bomb in a Man from Uncle plot, than your bed side table.
(The countdown always gets stopped with 3 seconds to go!)

[Kim]

That looks brilliant, though I think it would be more appropriate to have it sitting on an atomic bomb in a Man from Uncle plot, than your bed side table.
(The countdown always gets stopped with 3 seconds to go!)

Exactly the aesthetic I'm aiming for.   

(The big red button aborts the alarm.  Preferably with 3 seconds to go.)

[Deano]

Tried to fit a Zefal gizmo universal thingie to my Dave Yates, gave up. Complete pain.

Hmm, I think I've cracked it. It feels fairly secure, but there's something about it I don't like, and the instructions are no fucking help. Guess I'll find out on the road.

Meanwhile I've also fitted a Marathon+ in 25 mm - not quite as impossible as the notoriety of this tyre suggests, though I did have to use a toestrap at first to get the head in place, and chasing the last of the head into the rim well was a bit tricky.

[Peter]

Dean, is that for the pump I usually carry for you?  I imagine the bottle cages prevent you springing it between cross-bar and BB.  I've got one but it fits my other frame only if I don't use a bottle cage.  It'll just squeeze under the cross-bar of the Harry Hall but I'm afraid I'll damage the spring so will get a shorter one.

[Deano]

No, the Zefal Gizmo is a thingie which lets you fit an extra bottle cage to a frame.

http://www.zefal.com/en/bottle-cages/51-gizmo-universal.html

[David Martin]

Yesterday, really:  Got most of the electronics for the Giant 80s Deaf Alarm Clock built.  As it's a one-off with relatively few SMD components, I opted to use one of those excellent Whitewing prototyping boards, rather than bother with a custom PCB.


^{(LED display contrast is better in real life - the camera flash lights up the module, and is faster than the display brightness sensor can respond to)}

Is the soldering iron resting on the temperature sensor, or is the 8th segment not connected?

As an aside, I received two parcels today. One with a stepper motor and controller (and mounting bits) and the other with 10 of 88mm high 7 segment displays, pump track timing system for the use of.

I will be delving into serial control via bluetooth and android mobile phone shortly.

[Kim]

Yesterday, really:  Got most of the electronics for the Giant 80s Deaf Alarm Clock built.  As it's a one-off with relatively few SMD components, I opted to use one of those excellent Whitewing prototyping boards, rather than bother with a custom PCB.


^{(LED display contrast is better in real life - the camera flash lights up the module, and is faster than the display brightness sensor can respond to)}

Is the soldering iron resting on the temperature sensor, or is the 8th segment not connected?

Neither.  The temperature sensor is on an internal board roughly below the bottom right corner of the LCD.  I won't display the temperature like that in the final code (the smaller 7-segment display being for doing a countdown to the alarm going off, and for shifting the time display to when the primary 7-segment display is busy saying things like "door" or "tEL", which experience has taught us is useful to know the time in order to work out whether they're worth getting out of bed for).  Temperature is high because it's upstairs on the south-west side of the house, in a room full of computers, and it's been summer today.

Oh, just realised you think it's reading 235C, which is a plausible (if a bit low) soldering iron temperature.  It actually says "23:5C", because that module doesn't let you address the dots of the colon individually, but that's not obvious because of the camera flash.  I think the sensor gives up at 80C or so.   

Similarly, I caught the colon on the main clock display during the off part of the 0.5Hz flash cycle.