The Smut Pedaller

What difference does it make?

2012-02-23T23:48:00.003Z

As I'm riding 17km each way to work now, I thought it'd be interesting (just like The Smiths song) to see what difference it does make which bike I take. I've already covered the difference weight makes and concluded that, while a lighter bike is faster, the vast majority of resistance is wind resistance. I compared two different bikes, a traditional English 3 speed town bike and a light touring bike. So in one corner we have:

Raleigh Superbe

Town bike

Weight: 20kg+ in riding trim

Riding position: Raleigh bars about 1" above saddle

Tyres: 37mm Schwalbe Delta Cruiser @ 55psi

Drivetrain: Sturmey Archer 3 Speed hub gear

Mr Ramen

Randonneur/Light touring

Weight: 12kg

Riding position: Drop bars set 1" below saddle

Tyres: 28mm Panaracer Pasela @ 80psi

Drivetrain: 2 x 7 Derailleur

This is the route below, it starts at Bow Road tube station, heads west along Cycles Superhighway 2 through central London, over the Southwark bridge then continues along Cycle Superhighway 7 and finishes at Earlsfield rail. The distance is about 17.6km, with an overall climb of 130m which makes it essentially flat. The route involves a lot of traffic lights, as well as a lot of traffic including but not limited to, chock-a-block London buses, crazy taxis, irate BMW 4WD's and large trucks. I averaged 5 trips each and averaged them, effort was reasonably consistent at a 7/10 effort most of the time. I define 10/10 as all out, so 7/10 is more like a tempo effort which you could sustain for a few hours.

View Bow Rd to Earlsfield in a larger map

First up we have the times for the Raleigh, note that the times are in decimal format. Also the 52m time was correct, I think I had a strong tailwind and I put in a slightly harder effort as well. The 67m time was into a headwind and I didn't feel well that day so I took it easy.

Raleigh Superbe

62.43, 67.08, 60.62, 52.01, 56.75

Average time 59.78 - 59m47s

Now we have the times for the Randonneur, I'll admit that I did hammer it down some of the straight flat parts where there were long stretches between traffic lights.

Randonneur

57.53, 60.33, 53.50, 54.93, 56.75

Average time 56.6 - 56m36s

So you can see the difference is 3m11s, which is a difference of 5.6%. This certainly is noticeable, while not huge it seems to feel about right after fiddling with the bike calculator previously. I would attribute it mostly to the lower more aerodynamic position of the Randonneur as well as the higher pressure faster rolling tyres and less so the lower weight.

My thoughts:

I think though that this really shows how versatile the Randonneur style of bike is, I define the Randonneur as basically a road bike mixed with a touring bike, a sort of jack of all trades. It has most of the speed of a road racing bike, but with most of the practicality of a touring bike, it won't substitute either one but blends the best characteristics of both which is really well suited to commuting and recreational riding. Comparatively, the Raleigh is slower, but lower maintenance, easier to ride in any clothes, better braked and more suited to adverse weather due to everything being sealed. What the French call the randonneur style of bike is really synonymous with what people in the UK call a "winter/audax" bike, or the traditional English club bike, they are all basically practical bikes suitable for day rides or light touring but equally suited to general riding, they are fast and practical.

This is really one of my favourite styles of bike, mostly because it's so versatile. Walking into a typical bike shop here is much like in Australia; bikes are divided mostly into Road or MTB, occasionally you get Town/City bike but generally the former is the dominant divider. To me this seems ridiculous because both Road and MTB are recreational sport bikes mostly made for racing or recreational riding. While generally in London there are a lot of cyclists on all sorts of bikes, and now most shops will have good city bikes with full mudguards, hub gears and sensible riding positions, it's almost impossible to find a Randonneur style bike or even a full touring bike. The funny thing is that 30-40 years ago, most road bikes had mudguard/rack eyelets and clearance for sensible size tyres, they have slowly "evolved" into much more niche sporting equipment that you will struggle to fit with any practical components.

I'd personally love to see a revival of this type of bike, most people don't race and most MTB's never see the dirt. A town bike is great around town, but insufficient for a hilly weekend ride, the Randonneur can do both pretty well, ride to the country on Sunday, ride to work on Monday. It really is about as close as you can get to a do-it-all type of bike, which is why I have built mine the way I have. There are lots of minor variations like hub gears, different styles of racks, geometry etc, but the basic idea is the same - a bike you can go for a adventure on but still ride to work the next day.

My thoughts on tyres

2012-02-15T00:14:00.000Z

I thought it might be useful to do a comparison and reasonably concise account of the tyres I've used. I'm going to avoid too much faff and try to be as objective as possible giving mileage, punctures and typical usage so you can get a good overall picture. As I don't have any testing facilities I'll have to give my opinion on things like rolling resistance and grip. I'll try to update this as I ride more tyres.

Race tyres

Continental Gatorskin folding
23mm x 700c inflated to 100psi front and back
5000km mileage

These were used on the front and rear of my Cinelli, and I used them briefly on my randonneur bike Mr Ramen. The tyres were typically used for club runs in the mornings as well as the occasional commute home and some other weekend recreational riding.

Performance: The grip is good but not fantastic, they tend to be a little sketchy in the wet. Cornering is good as well, although not as sticky as other rubber I've used before. The tread is basically smooth except for some textured triangular bits which I'm sure serve no purpose whatsoever. The rolling resistance is pretty low and it feels like a pretty quick tyre.

Durability: I suffered 4 punctures during the 5000km which makes it an average of 1 puncture per 1250km or so. For me at the time this would have been about every 6 - 8 weeks. All the punctures bar one were through the main part of the tread, the last one was a terminal sidewall cut which was about 5mm long at which point I retired the rear. The tread itself is approximately 3-4mm thick down the middle, it didn't cut up very much at all over the 5000km which was nice. Towards the end of the 5000km it started to square off.

Conclusion: This is a reasonably economical training tire, with reasonable punture protection. Since I bought this Continental released a "hardshell" version which is a bit heavier and supposedly more puncture resistant. I was pleased that they didn't really cut up very much at all compared to typical race tyres, this is probably because the tread compound is a bit harder and less sticky than other race rubber.

Challenge Elite folding clincher
23mm x 700c inflated to 100psi front and back
600km mileage

I used this to replace the worn out Gatorskin, I put this on the front and put the remaining Gatorskin on the rear. I'd never tried any Challenge tyres before but I was a bit intrigued by the "open tubular" moniker, which I think is really just faff for a clincher. The first impression I got was that the tread was very thin and the tyre was very light. This is more of a full race style tyre rather than a training tyre like the Gatorskin.

Performance: The first ride I took I noticed the tyres are very sticky, the tread has a traditional shallow herringbone pattern on it which effectively makes it a slick. The tread compound is soft and sticky, you can easily feel how sticky it is to the road which is quite confidence inspiring during cornering. Grip in the wet is also very good, certainly better than the Gatorskins. The ride is quite smooth and the rolling resistance also feels very low, this could be attributed to the high 225tpi thread count.

Durability: There has to be a cost for the grippiness and smooth, supple ride. I had 2 punctures within 2 weeks, both penetrated right through the centre tread which is quite thin, maybe about 3mm or so thick. Even when I first took them out of the box, you could feel how thin and supple the casing and tread are. Make no mistake about it, this is a proper race tyre, they cut up quite easily as well. Although I may have not ridden many kilometers on the tyre to get a proper idea of how durable they are, I think just looking at the construction you could take a guess.

Conclusion: This is a great performing tyre which is super grippy and rolls fast and feels lively. However it is a very lightweight and somewhat delicate tyre, not be expected of a more race oriented tyre. I'd probably skip this next time, as my preference is to not have to fix flats by the road and I'd rather put up with a slightly heavier tyre.

Touring & Commuting tyres

Photo: http://www.flickr.com/photos/quad/

Vittoria Randonneur Pro
37mm & 32mm x 700c inflated to 60-70psi
5000km

These were used on my randonneur as well as my 3 speed mostly for commuting day to day from home to work and around inner Sydney, this meant a lot of riding through glass strewn roads and a lot of potholes and debris. The version I got has a reflective sidewall which increases side visibility greatly, I think almost all tyres used on the road should have these. The stated widths are misleading, they actually measure at about 4mm narrower; this is so the manufacturer can give a lower weight for the stated width; the 37's measured at 32mm and the 32's measured at 28mm. The Pro designation means it's a kevlar beaded tyre, it also has a anti-puncture protection strip which is red coloured and will show through once you've worn it down.

Performance: The initial impression with grip is quite good, the rubber whilst not super sticky is predictable and good in the wet or dry. The ride is smooth and compliant over rough surfaces and can take on the occasional off-road jaunt quite successfully, just keep it to the hardpack and avoid loose gravel; the tread is a slick V shaped pattern. Even though this tyre is the lighter kevlar version, the tyres just felt a bit sluggish and slow; however these are intended as heavy duty touring/commuting tyres.

Durability: This is where the Randonneur shines, in 5000km I did not get one puncture. The impression I got taking the tyre out of the box was how heavy duty and solid it felt. The tread with the anti-puncture belt must be about 6-8mm thick I would guess. I rode through many many patches of broken glass with these tyres; it's like they just laughed at the glass and carried on through. Throughout the 5000km there were very few cuts or nicks on the tyres, the rear tyre looked barely worn at this point as well, these are very tough.

Conclusion: These are not fast tyres, but I would have no hesitation using them for commuting or touring. They are simply as tough as old boots and appear to last a very long time. The size and lower pressure gives them safe and predictable handling on tarmac and the occasional hardpack path. These are perfect for the low maintenance commuter, it's unlikely you'll ever have to worry about flats and you only need to pump them up once or twice a week. Oh and they are also very cheap in the wire bead version.

Panaracer Pasela TG
28mm x 700c wire bead inflated to 70-90psi
2000km

These replaced the Vittoria Randonneurs on my randonneur, they came in the cream/white version. They measure at the stated 28mm and have a very fine diamond knurled like tread with V shaped siping. They are made by Panasonic in Japan, the ones I got are the TourGuard version, this features a kevlar anti-puncture belt. As you can see in the picture, the centre of the tread has gone whiter which only started recently, maybe it's a reaction to the salt as it won't come off with a wet rag. It hasn't affected the performance of the tyre at all though.

Performance: These were put on straight after the Vittoria randonneurs and it changed the character of the bike completely, the bike just felt so much more lively and brisk. The Pasela is reasonably grippy on tarmac in the wet and dry and can handle towpath dirt quite well. The ride over uneven ground is nice and supple giving predictable and responsive handling. I found for my weight running 70-80psi on the front and 90 at the rear worked really well. Funnily enough I weighed these and they were heavier than the 32mm Vittoria Randonneurs (which really measure at 28mm) by about 60g from memory, this is probably due to the wire bead in the Paselas, however they felt significantly faster and more supple - must be the compound.

Durability: So far I have not had any punctures, there are very few cuts or nicks on the tyres. The tyre hasn't shown too much wear either. The tread itself is probably about 5mm-6mm thick, not as heavy duty as the Vittoria Randonneurs but somewhere inbetween that and a race tyre. I've ridden through some glass and that has made no impression on the tyre whatsoever, these feel like good durable tyres, not quite as durable as the Vittoria Randonneurs though.

Conclusion: I really love these tyres, they completely changed the character of my randonneur making it feel lively and quick. They are pretty comfortable over uneven surfaces and potholes and combine that with good grip and durability. They are somewhat inbetween a race tyre and a heavy duty commuting tyre, so they suit light tourers and fast commuters very well.

Schwalbe Delta Cruiser
37mm x 26 1-3/8 (a.k.a ISO 590 or 650A) inflated to 50-65psi
800km

I got these go to on my Raleigh Superbe as they were one of the few tyres available in this once popular size, they are obviously aimed at older bikes as they also come in the old 28" size (ISO 635) and come in a nice cream colour which is the ones I got. They come with a reflective sidewall which is great for city riding.

Performance: The rubber on these is pretty sticky, a little stickier than the Paselas and the Randonneurs. I've now ridden with these tyres through ice, snow, rain, dirt and plain old tarmac in the wet and dry. The grip is excellent, they really just stick to the bitumen. I typically only inflate the front tyre to about 50psi and the rear to the maximum 65psi, this is due to the more rear weight biased geometry of the Superbe and this gives the front a nice compliant ride over bumps and potholes as well as good predictable handling.

The tread blocks are about 3mm tall which gives it better off-road performance than the Randonneurs and the Paselas because it lets it dig in a bit. Rolling resistance is a bit sluggish but quite reasonable when you are at speed, subjectively I'd say it feels about the same as the Randonneurs in this regard. The tyres give a really nice stable feeling over jittery potholes, expansion joints and cracks which you typically find in central London; what I really like about these is how settled the bike stays, it just seems to float over crap roads.

Durability: So far there have been no flats, I can't see any nicks or cuts in the tyre at all. The tread is quite thick, I'd guess about 8mm which includes an anti-puncture strip similar to the Randonneurs. This is similar to the Randonneurs as well in that you can really just ignore glass and ride right through it as they won't make a scratch on these; you only really have to worry about nails and screws. So far so good.

Conclusion: I really like these tyres, not only do they look great they are also very grippy, more so than the Vittoria Randonneurs. They ride very smoothly over rough surfaces including the occasional off-road detour. The only downside is the rolling resistance which isn't great, however these are meant as commuting tyres and this is acceptable given the durability and puncture resistance. Overall I think these are great, a better overall tyre than the Randonneur due to the better grip and is also similarly priced and comes in more sizes.

How effective is a chaincase?

2012-02-13T23:10:00.002Z

My Raleigh Superbe is the first bike I have owned and commuted on regularly, every other bike has either been a derailleur geared bike with everything exposed, or a similar 3-speed with only a hockey stick style chainguard that only covers the top half. The Superbe was designed from the beginning to have a chaincase and has the proper mounts and braze-ons on the frame to accept it. I replaced the chain and rear sprocket when I bought the bike to get the gearing to a sensible level, now that I have done 500km+ on wet grimy roads, several rides through 7.5cm deep snow, salted icy roads and gritty sandy towpaths; I thought I'd have a look at the condition of the chain inside.

Even with full mudguards and a big mudflap you still get
gunk thrown up on the bottom bracket area

Side view of the inside face of the chaincase shows
how far the salt spray and road gunk gets flicked up

A lot of the white marks are dried salt churned up by the rear wheel

I think this was salt that dripped off the
inside of the pannier, note how dirty the
rear wheel is.

The chainring is original and probably hasn't been ever cleaned
since 1978 when it was made. The Shimano Nexus
chain on there came with a silver finish...

The chain rollers are super clean, as well as the outside
links, barely a speck of grit or grime

It's not a surprise that the chain is spotless, you can clearly see a lack of black gunk that you typically accumulate on a bike without any chaincase. Even just looking at the chaincase you can see how much dirty grime was stopped from being sprayed into the drivetrain. I haven't had any real issues with the chaincase at all, I haven't had any flats yet out in the field and I don't find it all that hard to remove the rear wheel anyway. This just goes to show how effective a chaincase is in reducing drivetrain wear and maintenance.

Fixin' the Chossy

2012-02-09T22:22:00.000Z

The right strap broke and the left one
was on it's way to breaking. The awl
is called the "Speedystitcher" and came
in a suitably retro box.

So you may have noticed that I've obtained some nice old black panniers on my Raleigh, courtesy of eBay. Originally I bought them for a friend, but decided to keep them for myself. They are made of black vinyl with black leather straps and buckles, they have these badges "The Chossy" on the flaps. A quick Google reveals that this brand was a popular maker of saddlebags and other luggage, based in Epsom, Surrey in the south of England. I've seen quite a few of their saddlebags on eBay but haven't seen any other panniers so they must be reasonably rare, they were not very well described on eBay so I got them for quite a good price.

They came in excellent condition with no rips, the only downer was that the leather buckles had dried out a bit so there were some cracks; I found this out the hard way on the way home from the supermarket. They are attached the traditional way with leather straps looped through the rack, one of these straps decided to break with a pannier full of groceries, luckily it still had the other strap to hold it in place, albeit dangling perilously close to the road, every bump made me wince at the thought of all my groceries being splattered across Whitechapel road, a busy 4 lane road. Luckily I made it home, with all my groceries intact. After this, I applied proofide to all the leather straps and buckles to prevent any more cracking and to moisten the leather, in the hope that they would hold; this was not to be as one of the buckles that holds the lid down cracked a few nights later.

This was disappointing, as whilst I can sew at a basic level, I have little experience working with leather or luggage. However in my eyes it looked easily repairable and I was confident that I could take it to any shoe cobbler and they could cut out a new buckle from a piece of leather and just sew it in and replace the old one. Off I went to the local shoe repairer, the first thing they said was that they didn't have a sewing machine that would fix it, I then asked if it could be done by hand. The shoe repair guy just smriked a bit and replied that I'd have to be super strong to get through leather like that... The leather on the buckles was only about 2mm thick. They chose the wrong person to say that to, I have Google on my side! After some quick Googling I found that typically leather is sewn with special needles that are larger and with special tools, like strong metal thimbles to push needles through as well as a tool called an Awl. So off I went back to eBay to purchase one of these awls, I found some useful videos on youtube

So today my sewing awl arrived and previously I purchased a black leather belt from the local op-shop to use for the straps. At this point I wasn't really sure if it would all work, but I felt that there was a good chance it should be fine. I'd also ordered a leather punch to make the holes for the buckles but that hadn't arrived yet, the awl however was perfectly fine for making holes, just not as accurately or cleanly. The plan of attack was to pick out the old stitches holding the exisitng buckles on their, use it as a template on the belt to cut out some new ones. The belt leather is a little bit thicker than the original and the grain a little bit different, but not really noticeable.

I used the awl to pre-punch some holes in
the new buckle straps

Sewing took a bit to get used to, but it
was relatively easy to punch through
the thicker leather.

All done!

My gut feeling was right, and this was totally doable, it took me about an hour or two. A lot of this time was spent just learning how to use the thing properly. The stitching was the wrong colour however, the original stitching is black not white. Also the awl made much larger holes in the leather than the original, they must have used smaller needles originally. Not to worry though, the colour was easily fixed with some shoe polish.

A bit of shoe polish never went astray...

My repaired buckle on the left, the original on the right.
The original stitching and leather grain is different from left
pannier to right pannier, which I only noticed after.

They're back on the bike now, hopefully the left pannier will hold for a while, the straps on it aren't as cracked. Now I know they can be reasonably easily and quickly fixed so I'm not too worried, now to haul some groceries! I was originally expecting to pay £30-£50 to have someone fix it for me, then was told it wasn't really fixable. After all this it's only cost me about £20 and I have gained tools, skills and had the satisfaction of doing it myself. I have also been thinking of modifying them to use modern quick-release attachments to the rack as well, stay tuned!

Brake upgrade

2012-02-09T21:23:00.002Z

I normally ride my Raleigh Superbe to work and my Randonneur bike, Mr Ramen more on weekends. Occasionally when the weather is good and I feel like it, I'll ride to work. I think I've been spoilt though by the drum brakes on the Raleigh, the single pivot Dura Ace EX brakes on Mr Ramen simply feel inadequate, particularly when braking from the hoods. They are very good brakes compared to what was around in 1982 however, and are themselves beautifully made, but closer inspection showed that there was some cracking in the arms where the pads are fixed. You really can't take chances with brakes, I would not feel safe barrelling down a hill at 50km/h+ with some brake caliper arms that could just give at that moment that I need to stop. There is nothing particularly wrong with the old Dura-Ace calipers, the alloys they forged the arms with is very stiff compared to the Shimano 600EX calipers which are their contemporary, however I think this means they are also quite brittle.

Note the crack at the base of the arm

One of the problems is that most modern caliper brakes are too short a reach, as bikes have become less utilitarian and more like weekend toys, 23mm tyres with no mudguards are the norm and thus as are short reach calipers 39-49mm which will barely fit anything bigger than a 25mm tyre. My current setup takes medium reach which is 49-57mm which typically can fit 28-32mm tyres with a mudguard, a bit more sensible. Also I needed a nutted fitting which is what my frame is made with and allows for easier attachment of mudguards, there only was one choice and that was the Tektro R359 which fit all this criteria. The R359 is an upgrade to the previous R358, now it has an improved quick release which opens super wide which allows quicker wheel removal. The old Dura Ace calipers barely fit 28mm tyres with the quick releases open.

The Tektros are really quite beautifully made, highly polished then clear anodised to keep it that way. They were very nice out of the box, I just had to nip up the center bolt because there was a little bit of excess play. Installation was straightforward with no issues, all I noticed was that the Kool-Stop Salmons I had on the front were about 50% worn, this is after about maybe 2000km or so. The quick releases really open super wide, so wide that with the cable adjusted properly when it is in the open position the brake lever can be pulled all the way back to the bar and the caliper won't even touch the rim.

Front caliper in the open position

Rear caliper in the open position

I had a quick ride of it this morning, braking power has gone from about a 6/10 to about a 8/10 with a 10/10 being a hydraulic disc. Braking power from the hoods is limited by the old school non-aero Dura Ace levers I have, the Campagnolo Athena brakes I have on my Cinelli are superior mostly due to the shorter reach calipers (which have shorter stiffer arms) and better ergonomics from the Ergopower levers. Braking from the drops is a different story, they are super strong and I nearly flipped myself over the bars the first time I tried a hard stop. So far so good, and a cheap upgrade which probably would have prevented a failure from the old calipers.

Update 14/2/12
After riding it for a few days I can give a better opinion, overall I'm very happy with the upgrade and I feel a lot safer with braking. Braking from the hoods still isn't as good as a modern setup with aero levers or brifters but it is capable of easily locking up the rear and just being able to do a stoppie with the front. Braking from the drops is much more powerful as you would imagine, it'll pop up the rear wheel with not that much effort at all. I'm guessing I'll wear out the pads a bit quicker too, the Kool-Stop salmons I have on the front are at about 50%. Thats it for now.

Winter wonderland

2012-02-05T01:39:00.004Z

For the first, and probably the last time this year it snowed decently in London, so I decided to go for a midnight ride around my neighbourhood. I've never ridden in snow and it really wasn't that hard, just starting in fresh snow is a bit difficult and I imagine if it was deeper it may be near impossible. I'm glad to have a bike like the Superbe, all the drivetrain and brakes are completely sealed from the snow and muck. Riding in snow felt a bit like riding on a firmer but slippery sand to me, so the ability to feather the drum brakes really helped in controlling it; although this didn't really prevent many near falls! Enjoy the pics.

It snowed through the night and stopped very conveniently for the morning, most of the main roads were salted but ice had frozen in under the snow which made it a bit difficult to go down the less well travelled roads or paths which hadn't been salted. Also I had to dodge many snowballs thrown by groups of kids, although I must admit I was guilty of throwing a few myself.

brakes still worked even when covered in snow!

Finished off with a Sunday roast

Sturmey Archer XL-FDD & X-RD3 review

2012-02-04T18:26:00.001Z

Continuing on from my last post about my Raleigh Superbe drum brake conversion, I've now clocked up about 500km on my Sturmey Archer drum brake hubs, I've managed to cycle through some icy roads, get a bit soaked in rainy weather and pedal down some bumpy muddy towpaths. After a few initial niggles I've had no real major problems, well apart from the freewheel rattle that I had before, it's come back. I suspect through spinning the hub, the grease gets flicked outwards by centrifugal force inside the hub, also I suspect the sub-zero temperatures here in the mornings doesn't help either.
I'll start of with a few things, I suspect that the Tektro FL-750 levers I have are a bit on the small side for drum brakes like these. The official Sturmey Archer levers are basically big 4-finger levers, much like the type you used to get on MTB's from the 80's and 90's which were meant for traditional cantilever brakes. I've used the 70mm Sturmey drum brake with that style of big 4 finger lever on a Gazelle town bike and the brakes felt stronger and more powerful. The Tektro levers are more like a 3-finger lever, so I suspect this is why I can still pull the lever all the way to the bar and not get a complete wheel lockup with the cable adjusted.

Braking:
My first impression of the drums was that they were a bit underwhelming, after riding them for a while I've found that is definitely not the case, a hard stop from 30km/h+ happens very rapidly and in a very smooth controlled manner. They have definitely saved my bacon several times, many instances of cabs stopping suddenly or unseen potholes in the road. I now know the reason why I was a bit underwhelmed by them, mostly because the self-energising action which has a strange feel compared to discs or rim brakes. At a walking pace, a hard pull on the levers won't flip you over the bars instantly like with V-brakes, but at higher speeds when you pull on the levers you feel a slight braking effort then a ramping up in power then you stop. It's the leading shoe starting to catch and then apply itself to the drum which gives you that strange feel.

I'm still constantly surprised at how quickly a hard squeeze on both levers will bring the bike to a stop, the self-energising action just feels a bit strange. I'm very happy with the power as it is, I'm thinking of upgrading the levers to the larger 4-finger Sturmey units maybe later to get even more power. The modulation as I said in my previous post is excellent, the feel is pretty close to disc brakes, you can very easily adjust the amount of braking with more or less lever pressure.

The edge of the braking plate has a lip
which runs in a channel on the hub shell
which creates a labyrinth seal preventing
muck from entering. There is a slight cutout
at the bottom for drainage, should any
water get in.

I haven't noticed a huge difference in power due to breaking in to be honest, as the rear drum was used, it was probably already broken in, the front was brand new and it had reasonable power to begin with which hasn't really changed much. The front definitely does most of the braking, just the rear by itself is still a bit underwhelming, by itself it will bring the bike to a stop eventually; I'd say it's about equivalent in power to a good single pivot rear. The 70mm rear drum I used on my friend's Gazelle with the big 4-finger levers felt a bit stronger however, so I suspect my impressions are limited by my choice of the smaller Tektro levers.

Even in inclement weather, including some decent rain and some ice the brakes have remained faultless, the best thing about hub based brakes is the consistency, you just heave on the levers in any weather and it will stop exactly the same way. I'm quite used to the rim brake technique of skimming the brakes in the wet occasionally to clear the rims of water, so when I do need to actually brake it will start biting sooner rather than later. Although in reality, this technique isn't that great in traffic and there is still a delay from when the lever is squeezed to when the brakes start to bite. The drums just work instantly which means you can really depend on them to get you out of trouble.

Dynamo:
The front XL-FDD hub incorporates a 3.0watt dynamo as well as a 90mm drum brake, this is hooked up to a Busch + Muller Lyt headlamp and a Toplight D rear lamp. From some tests that I have seen, the Sturmey Archer dynamo isn't as low drag as the SON or high-end Shimano units, however from my own riding I can't really tell any difference whether it's turned on or off. I guess that for the type of riding I'll be doing on the Superbe that drag isn't really an issue with any quality dynamo hub. The headlight is noticeably brighter than when it was powered by the lower wattage vintage Sturmey Archer AG dynohub that came with it originally. I've had no problems with the dynamo otherwise, it just works perfectly fine, not much to report.

Gearing:
The X-RD3 hub features a 3 speed epicyclic hub more or less identical to the current crop of Sturmey Archer 3 speed hubs, it has the NIG (no inbetween gear) feature which means there is no neutral position between normal and high gear like the old hubs. Also when I tore it down initially I noticed that compared to the older design of the AW hubs, the machining and casting of the parts was generally finer and a lot more precise. Initially I did find a broken main pawl which I replaced, since then there have been no problems. I have had the occasional slight crunch sound sometimes when changing gears and pedalling but so far this hasn't had any negative effects.

The rattle I discussed earlier is really starting to bug me, the noise is bordering on unbearable, coasting along in high gear emits this great rattling sound. This would never have been a problem with the oil lubricated hubs of old, as well I appreciate the fact that an occasional top up of the oil in the hub will leak out a bit of oil bringing out any contaminants as well, which avoids a teardown for a very long time. The current grease lubricated hubs will require a teardown every few years and a replenishment of the grease, I also don't like the thought of all the gears grinding around in dirty grease later in its life. I'll have to make a decision what to do when I pop the hub open next time. Other than the rattle which is only a minor problem the hub has been excellent, shifting is more or less the same as the old design.

While the hub got covered in a bit of road
muck, the drum brake stays completely
sealed from the elements

Conclusion:
The Sturmey Archer XL-FDD and X-RD3 combination makes for great update to an old design, they did in the past make the BF front drum hub as well as the AB 3 speed drum hub in the past, however this modern setup incorporates a 3.0w dynamo in the front as well as the improved NIG internals. The drums offer consistent, reliable and strong braking in all conditions. Maintenance is more or less non-existent other than cable adjustment until the shoes wear out, which will take a very long time. My only note is that with larger brake levers with more leverage and cable pull, I should be able to get even more performance out of the brakes.

The dynamo so far has worked without any fault, I can't give any real opinions about drag other than I didn't notice anything excessive. The gearing in the rear hub is also excellent, very dependable and simple like the old AW design but without the faults. The grease lubrication is something that I am a little wary about, I much favour the oil lubrication of the old hubs, as well as the fact that I may have to tear down the hub in a year or so to replenish the grease instead of dropping in some oil every now and then.

Overall though, the conversion has gone really well even with the problems that I did experience. The drums allow me to ride in inclement weather and on wet roads without any fear of non-functioning rod brakes. At the beginning of Sturmey Archer's history, they were a very innovative and high quality company. They largely pioneered the Dynohub and the geared hub; their products were well made and innovative. However, it started its slow progressive decline as a company from about the 70's and reached its low point in the early 2000's when it went bankrupt and was sold to Taiwanese Sunrace. Much like the stories of many British manufacturers. However Sunrace has really resurrected the Sturmey Archer name, even though they are no longer made in England, the spirit of the old Sturmey Archer is back for good. The new hubs are fantastic, and they have the widest array of models, shifter options, mounting options as well as a vast back catalogue. No other hub gear on the market comes close in this respect.

Thanks for reading.

UPDATE:
Since the snowfall over the weekend in London, I've been out and about riding twice in the snow, the hubs have worked faultlessly. The ability to very lightly and smoothly feather the brakes has proved invaluable in preventing skiding on loose ice and snow. Even with the whole hub and wheel covered in snow and muck, there was no effect on braking performance, they performed flawlessly. More pics here

Tow path dawdle

2012-02-04T00:16:00.001Z

I went for a dawdle down the River Lea canal last weekend, it forms part of the canal system of London and goes all the way up from the Thames to Luton to London's north via Hertford. There is a towpath for most of the way which is where traditionally horses would pull boats along the canal. Nowadays all the boats are motorised and the canals are mostly used by cyclists and walkers for recreation. I did a bit of an exploratory ride because the furthest I've ridden previously was only up to Hackney marsh, which isn't very far at all. Eventually I want to ride to Hertford, however this time I was limited by light as it was in the late afternoon and it was starting to rain and get cold. It was a good opportunity to test out my mudflap I had put on Mr Ramen earlier. See the route to Hertford below:

View Mile end to Hertford in a larger map

Much of the towpath is hardpacked dirt with cobbles

The occasional path out in the middle of a field...

and the odd marina

the mudflap has done it's job and kept the chain
and cranks with only one or two drops of mud.

the rest of the mud stayed on the flap, perfect!

Oddly, the path doesn't look so nice on the satellite view on google maps near the reservoir, but what I realised was that on the ground, you can't really see the reservoir at all, all you see is a big 10m high embankment along the canal. It really is quite pretty, and I'd love to do this ride all the way to Hertford on a nice sunny day. This weekend is forecast to snow, so I'll have to postpone it until it warms up a bit. That's all for now.

Not finished yet

2012-01-22T09:16:00.001Z

So continuing from my last post, I have a new set of cranks as you may have realised. You could guess from the chainrings that they are some kind of vintage style crank with the small bolt pattern. However they are not the famous Spécialités T.A. Pro Vis, nor are they the very similar Stronglight 49D cranks, they are from the less well known French manufacturer Nervar. From what I have gathered, Nervar cranks were found on a lot of high end French constructeur bikes as well as Schwinns and Peugeots, you can read more about Nervar here. They are the Nervar 631 cranks, which are somewhat of a rarity, which is a shame because they are beautiful cranks that take the common 50.4 BCD pattern that the Stronglight 49D and Spécialitiés T.A. take, but use the standard 22mm extractor threading.

This is how they looked originally

You might be wondering why I have new cranks? The Stronglight 99 cranks I had previously were great cranks with a nice gearing range and a narrow Q-Factor, as well as being very light. About a year or so ago the left hand crank came loose once so I babied it home, however a few months ago after some riding I noticed a clicking noise when pedalling. I think it came loose because when I installed it, it didn't seat properly on the taper and must have worn itself out a bit. I had no idea what this was for a while but I realised it was the crank, tightening the left hand crank a bit didn't really alleviate this. They worked fine, but the clicking was driving me nuts, and I love any excuse to buy more vintage bike parts on eBay.

These are very light cranks

The cranks came with a 54T chainring still attached which is of no real use to me, they look to have smaller holes for an inner ring which could be attached with spacers. The arms themselves are quite nice and chunky with a squarerish profile with a textured flute on the outside. They are definitely forged as you can tell by looking at the chainring spider, and generally have a nice feel of solidness and robustness.

The 50.4 BCD pattern differs from newer designs because it lacks a spider like modern arms, in a multi-ring setup the inner rings are all attached to the outer ring which is then attached to the crank. This has the advantage of allowing a near infinite number of combinations, single, double or triple are all possible with the same crank arms with only a swap of the bolts, spacers and chainrings which are also still quite plentiful new and used in a large range of sizes from 26t to 67t. The downside to this style of crank is probably chainring flex, due to the distance between the fixing to the crank and where the chain pulls on it. However I have never had a problem myself with the Stronglight 99's which were previously on my bike which also have a very small 86BCD.

The factory spec is a 117mm ISO BB spindle, however I used the118mm Shimano UN54 that I had previously. This gave a chainline of 45mm, a road double should be 43.5mm, and I should have used an ISO square taper instead of a JIS taper; ISO cranks on a JIS taper should sit slightly further out. However I have found that with older cranks and BB's to get the chainline perfect you need to just install it and measure. This means a 115mm JIS BB would be pretty much bang on, I did notice that the Q-factor was a bit wider when I was riding it compared to the Stronglights. The arms themselves are a fair bit beefier and felt stiffer than the Stronglights or T.A. arms, they are a bit tarnished as well and I had to chase the extractor threads as they had a little bit of damage which made it difficult to start the extractor in the thread.

Finally then, onto the polishing!

Before

After

Shiny!

Look what the postman dropped off...

2012-01-14T13:04:00.001Z

Just arrived in the mail, these chainrings and crank bolts. The arms to go with them are on their way, but they aren't matching TA models or Stronglights. Polished to perfection, you could easily shave using them as a mirror. The only thing is that they don't have ramps and pins like modern rings, oh well. Also the chainring bolts I got are used off eBay and look a little scruffy compared to these French jewels.

Locked up in London

2012-01-04T22:12:00.000Z

Here's a few bikes I've seen around London locked up in various strange ways, as well as some just plain interesting bikes. The one above was spotted in Soho, I still have no idea why it was locked up upside down, unless it was a prank...

A nice Pashley princess with Brooks Brick lane panniers (not cheap!),
only thing was that it was locked up around the stem! Removing the
stem with an allen key would free this whole bike.

Some cool small wheel tandem in Chinatown

A Bakfiet spotted in Hammersmith

A cute Raleigh RSW in Brick Lane

Big bike rack at Liverpool St Station

And finally, an ex-Royal mail Pashley Mailstar

Sachs Torpedo 3 speed hub and a nice big front rack and basket

Royal Mail branded front dynamo light and drum brake

Made in Stratford upon Avon

The Mailstar has the rack independent of the steering
which is the best way to bear a load on the front.

Hebie Kickstand and SRAM/Sachs 3 Speed Torpedo hub with drum.
Note the braze on reaction arm bracket.

Note the thick 13g spokes and protector over the
drive side axle end to protect the indicator chain

This bike was made to be tough, kind of like
the bike equivalent of a ute or van.

There's quite a lot of nice old, and strange bikes locked up around London. Thanks for reading!

A new year and a new problem

2012-01-02T20:26:00.002Z

Happy new year readers, hope you have all had a good break and done some riding, or some mechanic'n. Continuing on from my last post where I managed to strip both rear axle nuts and find a broken low gear pawl inside the hub, I found a nice parcel from my favourite online shop for Sturmey Archer parts SJS Cycles containing two new axle nuts, a pair of new gear ring pawls as well as a few small bits and pieces. You can see in the pic above how much more thread the one-piece drive side nut and the domed non-drive side nut have compared to the plain nuts I rounded out before.

I put the new gear ring pawls in and greased the whole thing back up with the proper Sturmey Archer internal grease, this stuff is really quite thin. I put it back together but noticed something very odd, there was a loud clunking rattle noise when freewheeling in high gear. You can see in the video below that this rattle caused the indicator rod to pop in and out which meant that the clutch was riding up and down over the pinion ends.

This certainly didn't happen before and I had no idea why because I was using the proper grease, I disassembled the thing about 3 times and made sure it was all correctly assembled with all the pawls facing the right way.

Short version:

Eventually I figured out that the problem was grease related, so don't put too much grease on the inside face of the ball ring or the bit it touches on the gear ring otherwise they will stick together and you will get a horrible rattling sound in high gear.

Long version:
I thought it may have been the actuator on the driver (the thin metal plate cover shown below and numbered 19 on the exploded diagram) which is only seen on the later style Sturmey hubs, I fiddled with it for ages but there is only really one way to put it on. I initially thought it might be sticking or something, and loosened it a bit with no result. Later I figured out it has nothing to do with it really.

Then I figured it out, there was too much grease on the face of the gear ring (13) where it touches the ball ring (17), this caused them to stick together when freewheeling which would cause the planet cage (8) to spin the pinions (12) underneath the ramps on the clutch (34), which would make it bounce up and down against the clutch spring (35). Normally they shouldn't stick and the ball ring should rotate whilst the internals stay stationary, you should be able to hear both the gear ring pawls and the low gear pawls. I knew my assembly was correct because all the gears worked perfectly, and I guessed it was grease related because it was very intermittent depending on how fast you spun the wheel.

I popped it open for hopefully the last time and removed most of the grease from the gear ring face and the inside of the ball ring only leaving a little bit of grease on the pawls. I put it back together and voila! No more rattling and only a beautiful distinctive Sturmey Archer freewheeling sound!

Another thing I observed was a change in the way freewheeling sounds in normal gear. When freewheeling in normal gear the clutch is pulled back into the gear ring, so the only consequence of the sticking is that the internals are spinning but you won't hear the gear ring pawls, only the driver pawls and the low gear pawls both of which are very quiet. Cleaning the excess grease off means you can hear the louder gear ring pawls and the low gear pawls.

This sticking problem doesn't happen on the older hubs because they are oil lubricated and have a different clutch and gear ring design.

Mileometer:

Since the drum brake conversion I removed the Lucas mileometer because the XL-FDD front hub is too large a diameter for it to reach the striker pin. I adapted a reaction arm clamp meant for the rear drum brake in a smaller diameter and attached it to a fork, it works quite well except it's a little less stiff. I've been riding it for a while now without the ticking sound, now that it's back I'm not sure if it will drive me nuts. Only time will tell... Otherwise the Raleigh Superbe is now back on the road ready to go.

a bit of bad luck...

2011-12-29T23:42:00.003Z

I've struck upon some bad luck with my Raleigh Superbe, I've managed to strip both rear axle locknuts. The non-drive side I stripped last night whilst adjusting the wheel position when I was truing the back wheel last night. Today as I did a test ride to scout out a commute route, I found I suddenly couldn't shift into first gear, I had a quick look and noticed that the right axle nut had come a bit loose. I tightened it up and felt it give, a lot like how they normally give when they strip their threads...

Looks like very few typical bike shops in London carry Sturmey Archer axle nuts, let alone know all that much about them; I called about 2 or 3 major shops and the most they could come up with was a non-drive side locknut. The threading is the same from the older hubs to the current crop, after some googling I found that they are 13/32" x 26tpi which is a non-standard BSC (British Standard Cycle) threading, essentially they are unique to Sturmey Archer hubs.

From my experience with older hubs the drive side locknut usually came in a one piece unit integrated with the indicator rod window, at one point in time they changed it to a two piece unit, so the locknuts were the same on both drive and non-drive sides and the indicator rod window bit was a separate bit you screwed on top, I guess this may have been to save money. They discontinued this and went back to their old one piece design soon after, I think I know why now because the two piece units have less thread area and are more likely to strip, I was unfortunate enough to have these on my Superbe. I've ordered a new set however, a one piece drive-side locknut and a domed locknut for the non-drive side; I observed in a bike shop that the new Pashleys, also with Sturmey Archer rear hubs have domed locknuts, probably because they look nicer but they also have more thread area which reduces the chances of stripping.

My previous order also arrived, I got some Sturmey Archer grease for internal use. Sturmey Archer changed from oil lubrication to grease lubrication sometime in the 80's, the current crop of hubs don't have oiler holes like the old hubs and they require a special type of grease. The grease itself is a special super viscous grease, it has the consistency of custard. Knowing myself, I would have expected to be more of a retrogrouch and would have converted the hub to oil lubrication, however the drum brake hubs can have problems with oil leaking into the drum sometimes which would be not so nice... so I opted to stick with the factory grease. Grease lubrication also means less maintenance, requiring an overall every few years instead of dropping oil into it every few weeks.

Earlier on, I was slightly undecided whether to completely overhaul the hub, however I was quite glad I did because when I opened it up and took it apart I discovered one of the low gear pawls was actually cracked! I did notice a slight click noise when I shifted into low gear when riding it sometimes, but I'm not sure if this is related or not. I bent the pawl a smidge and it broke in half like you can see below, good thing I found this now otherwise it would have turned the hub internals into a metallic mince pie. New pawls are also on their way so hopefully it should be smooth sailing from now on.

That's all for now, hopefully I should be able to get my Raleigh up and running again soon. Thanks for reading.

Raleigh Superbe drum brake conversion part 2: First impressions

2011-12-27T01:59:00.001Z

So on a not so cold Christmas morning in London I woke up, opened presents, ate breakfast,chopped up some brussel sprouts and worked on my bike all whilst the smell of turkey was wafting from the kitchen. Continuing from the previous night on Christmas eve when I built my wheelset, I had a plan of attack. Firstly I would have to tension and true the wheels, spread the fork to fit the new wheels, file out the fork ends, fit the rear wheel, fit the brake levers and setup the brakes and then refit the dynamo wiring.

Front wheel:
First step was the front wheel, I wasn't sure how difficult this step was going to be because it required a bit of finesse and brute strength at the same time. The default front spacing for old Raleighs is 86mm or so, modern front wheels are all 100mm so I had to spread it an additional 14mm which is a fair bit. Just using two hands pulling the two dropouts apart this was suprisingly easy, the forks yielded to my hands and spread quite easily to 100mm. Next step was the dropouts, the factory dropouts are keyed to fit the standard front hub which has matching ridges which prevents the wheel from falling out.

The 9mm axle of the XL-FDD front hub is a tad too big for the keyed dropouts, I filed the backside about 1mm or so and it fit perfectly. I then noticed that now the fork ends were not parallel from the spreading, so a quick go with the pliers fixed this. Front end now done!

Rear wheel:
Now for the back wheel, one thing I didn't realise until I laced up the back wheel is that the X-RD3 has a bit of dish to it, the drive side flange sits closer in to the center by about 12mm. Spoke lengths both sides were the same at 270mm and I was able to centre the wheel easily, however the next problem was unforeseen. I was hoping to not have any of these problems, but you can't predict everything. What I realised was that the drum actuation arm pivot rubbed on the dropout, so much so that when the wheelnuts were tightened it would prevent the brake from returning... dang! This occurred because the actuation pivot arm sticks out the same distance as the inside locknut on the axle, and as well because the shape of the Raleigh dropout covers it as well.

I ended up just adding another locknut on top to space the dropout further giving the brake actuation arm about 3mm of clearance, this also had the positive side effect of reducing the amount of dish as well, this set the over locknut distance to about 120mm or so which mean the dropouts had to be spread to fit the wheel in. Now the brake worked perfectly with no interference.

Brake setup:
Now all there was left to do was install the levers and setup the brakes. The Tektro FL-750 levers are beauties, they are super minimal and go really well with a vintage bike like the Superbe. I decided to route the brake cables through the vestigial rod brake guides on the handlebar, this didn't seem to effect the braking at all. The standard brake cable assembly from Sturmey Archer have a road end on one side which slots into the actuation arm, the other end is a standard flat bar end which goes into the lever. The FL-750's take road bike ends so I had to use road bike cables with a pinch bolt at the actuation arm end, this allows you to get the exact length for your bike.

First impressions:

The first squeeze of the lever gave a bit of a squishy feel, I put this down to the drum shoes not being worn in to fit the curve of the drum perfectly. I took the bike for it's first shakedown ride by going down the canals towards Hackney marsh, I brought a fair few tools just in case the unexpected happened; luckily I didn't have to do any adjustments the whole ride. The modulation of the brake is excellent, second only to discs. You can easily feather the brake very lightly, if you squeeze harder it will give you a nice progressive increase in braking force. I rode over and did some practice stops on hardpack with loose dirt covering, you could very easily just feather the brake to the point just before lockup, known as threshold braking - I've never been able to do this with any rim brakes let alone the road brakes that were on it before.

The power of the both the front and back brakes was lacking to be completely honest. Out of the box they were quite weak, about the same stopping power as a average single pivot caliper brake. The power was limited by the brake lever hitting the bar though, even when the cable was adjusted to the point just before it was dragging. I suspect though that both brakes aren't quite worn in yet, that the brake shoes haven't worn into the curve of the drum; I've used the 70mm version of these brakes on someone else's bike that were worn in, and the lever was a lot firmer. I'll have to do a longer term review as they supposedly take a few hundred km's to wear in; even during the ride I found I could adjust them tighter and tighter without dragging as the shoes slowly were wearing themselves in.

The dynamo worked as advertised, now that the lights were the full 3.0w instead of the 2.0w that the Sturmey Archer AG hub put out the headlight was noticeably brighter. I honestly couldn't tell the difference in dynamo drag, I have read though that the drag is reasonable, not as good as the top end Shimano units though.

On the way back I stopped for some liquid refreshment, overall I'm very happy with the new wheelset, the initial braking power is a bit disappointing however this should change over time. I also did a quick weight check, before the upgrade it weighed in at 19.8kg, after the upgrade it's a shade over 20kg. I'm not 100% sure however as my scales are just cheapies that jump all over the place at around that weight. Happy riding.

Raleigh Superbe drum brake conversion Part 1: And so it begins...

2011-12-24T18:41:00.002Z

Continuing from my previous post, my spokes finally arrived and I was able to start to lace up my drum brake wheelset for my Raleigh Superbe. I decided I had had enough of rod brakes which just seemed outright dangerous in the wet, they have a tendency to not work at all in the wet and when they do work their modulation is atrocious if your rim is out of round radially - they tend to pulsate as imperfections in your rims cause the brakes to grip harder. Also I wanted low/no-maintenance as well as a modern 3.0w dynamo; the Sturmey Archer AG currently on it only supplies around 2.0w or thereabouts. This is the fourth or fifth wheelset I have built now, so I think I'm slowly getting better at figuring out spoke length because this time it was bang on correct front and back, in the past I have got them a little too long and have needed to grind the extra spoke from the backside of the nipple otherwise they would puncture the inside face of the tube when inflated.

The picture above shows 6 spokes laced up to give test the spoke length, which I learnt from this book, it allows you to put a little bit of tension on the wheel. I've found it's pretty accurate however you just have to keep in mind that once you have all the spokes on you will get more tension and thus slightly longer spokes.

When I got the X-RD3 in the mail I also ordered a Mk III indicator rod to go with it, for some reason I couldn't thread it into the axle key, I spent like about an hour or so trying desperately even resorting to spraying some WD-40 up there to clear gunk with no result. To this end I figured I'd have to pop open the hub and have a look, I thought maybe there was a broken or stripped thread or who knows what. Anyway it all looked fine and I was able to thread it in fine once I took it apart. I now know that the axle key must have moved out of place because I loosened the bearing cones too much and it must've shifted out of place.

I'll have to tear it down later to clean it out and refresh the grease once I get the proper Sturmey Archer grease, the factory uses a very thin grease (rated at NLGI #00 for those who know what that means) which stops the pawls from sticking in cold weather and is thin enough to lubricate all the internals by capillary action. The newer style hubs are different because they don't use thin oil like the older units; from what I gather the grease means you don't have to add oil every month or so but will need to be replaced ever few years according to this article. Because I sprayed a bit of WD-40 up there which mixed with the grease I'll need to do it anyway, but I'll have to order the special grease first.

the indicator rod fits fine!

It was interesting to pop open one of the later hubs to see the difference as I'm only really experienced with the older hubs, and then only 70's era AW hubs. The Sturmey Archer storey is really interesting, their origins, rise, decline and then resurrection by Sunrace is written about here, it's really quite tragic as they started out very innovative but were so starved by their company parent Raleigh of funds which forced them to design products which were good for their bottom line but not for improving their hubs.

Sturmey Archer's most ubiquitous and famous hub is the AW model which is solid and reliable but not without it's fatal flaw, between normal and high gear there is a neutral, most users will know of this when the hub is a little bit out of adjustment the pedals will just spin when pushed on with no connection to the drivetrain. This wasn't always the case with their hubs however, originally their early 3 speed hubs defaulted to the low gear when there was no pull on the indicator rod, and there was no neutral position, the AW introduced this "feature" as a cost cutting measure as well as defaulting to high gear.

Going forward in time, since the sale of Sturmey Archer to the Taiwanese company Sunrace in the early 2000's they have been making somewhat of a comeback. The current crop of hubs feature a new clutch design which was derived from an older Sturmey Archer design from the 80's that never saw the light of day, schematic drawings here. You can clearly see the different design of the clutch which has ramps to prevent disengagement in high gear as well as eliminating the neutral position. The X-RD3 I have features this type of clutch which you can see pictured above, I'm quite impressed by the insides. Compared to the AW's I've opened up the machining on these modern hubs is a lot more precise, the pinions and all the internal parts are a lot beefier generally.

The driver now has it's own pawls which you can just make
out under the grease

Even with these changes, the overall the design is still very much the same, the Sturmey Archer cone wrench still fits, the bearing adjustment is the same and all the parts are more or less the same. You can still do the same things with the new hubs as with the old, like service the hub with very basic tools; the ball ring can still be removed with a hammer and punch just like the old AW's. The thing that fascinates me about these hubs is how simple they are inside, they might seem complicated when they're hidden in their shell but really they have few parts and are easy to disassemble and reassemble. However the same can't be said for internal gear hubs like the Rolhoff or Shimano Alfine hubs which feature a hell of a lot more gears.

Back to the build now, I managed to realign the axle key and found the indicator rod threaded in perfectly, so I slipped the unit back into the shell and put it all back together, more or less ready to go now. Now to start on the front wheel, the XL-FDD is a big boy, the flanges are about 110mm in diameter and it weighs 1350g by itself. The spoke holes are made for 13g and 14g spokes, I found them a little big but they fit the spokes I had fine without the need for brass washers. I used DT Swiss Competition double butted spokes, I would have preferred to use straight gauge because they are cheaper but they didn't have one length in size and it was only £10 more so I just went for it. I would ideally liked to have used the DT Swiss Alpine III triple butted spokes but they didn't have them in the lengths I needed.

All the lacing is now done and they just need to be tensioned and trued. I'll probably do this in a few days when I can do it on the Raleigh itself, I'll need to spread the forks and file out the dropouts to get the front to fit. I'll probably do this on boxing day when there's nothing else to do, stay tuned for more updates...

Part 2 continues here...

Mudflaps etc

2011-12-24T17:47:00.001Z

As you can see in the above picture, mud and road crap is a bit of a problem. Picked up on rides around London not in rain necessarily, but just on wet roads and on wet dirt. The difference between here and Australia is that when it's cold the wet doesn't evaporate quickly (if at all) because it's cold and there is not much sun; this means the ground is always wet as it rains every few days even for a little bit. This makes mudguards even more important. The model I have on my randonneur bike are the SKS chromoplastics which originally came with a front mudflap; stupidly I cut the it off when I got them not knowing how useful they actually are. You can see in the photo that road grit and mud gets sprayed all over the drivetrain and downtube from where the mudguard stops, this is what mudflaps are for.

So to counter this problem I bought a mudflap meant for a Brompton as I couldn't find sheet rubber readily, in Australia I was able to get rubber sheet really easily from Clark rubber, I haven't quite found the equivalent shop here yet. The mudflap is made from a thinnish plasticky material that is quite floppy, about 1mm thick, normally I'm used to quite stiff mudflaps like on my Raleigh Superbe which is 3mm thick rubber. However I've made a few additional holes to mount them on the SKS mudguards.

I've used the strut bolts on the sides to get it to wrap around which gives it more stiffness and also keeps water from coming out the side. I would have liked it to go down further but it should be good for now, it sits around 12cm from the bottom to the ground, as you can see in the pic below the bottom of the mudflap is just about low enough to prevent most of the crap getting thrown from the front wheel onto the chainrings.

I'll have to take it out during my days off before next year to test it out. Thanks for reading and merry christmas!

Tunnel under the Thames

2011-12-22T00:51:00.001Z

Inside the Greenwich foot tunnel

From where I am currently living in London there are only a handful of places to cross the Thames, there is Tower bridge which is a bit busy and further west, the Rotherhithe tunnel which looks a bit haphazard and the Greenwich foot tunnel which I discovered partly by accident. There is a well signed bike route from Catford all the way up to Greenwich, at which it disappears into a little roundhouse entrance which marks the start of the tunnel, it goes across the Thames and pops up at the other side at Island gardens.

It's currently under some maintenance but is open all hours and all days except for weeknights when they work on it. Currently the lifts aren't working so I had to lug my Raleigh up 8 flights of stairs and down 8 flights of stairs, my legs hurt just thinking about it; this is one of the few instances where weight does matter. Although another school of thought just says to man up and grow some muscles. One tip that I heard from when the lift was in operation, you aren't allowed to cycle through there because if you do, the attendant at the lift won't let you put your bike in the lift.

The entrance at Greenwich

I was quite impressed at how well the whole route was signed, it was the Sustrans signed National route 21 from Catford to Greenwhich and then National route 1 from Island gardens to East London. Having the route signed telling you where to turn in mostly quieter backstreets allowed me to avoid stop-start type riding along backstreets that you typically take to avoid busy A-roads. National route 1 leads onto the east London canal paths which criss-cross from the old docklands towards central London as well as north towards Hackney. I ventured east towards Islington and ended up at the Barbican where I had a look at the OMA exhibition that was on there.

The canal paths often narrow to less than 1m with little
headroom when there is an overpass, it's custom to ring your
bell in advance to avoid a crash and going for a swim.

Finally, at hipster central - London Fields in Hackney.

I was delighted to have found a relatively easy route towards east and central London, all up mileage was about 25 miles or thereabouts all done on the Raleigh. This is the kind of riding I enjoyed as a kid, wandering aimlessly and exploring new and different parts of a city on my bike. I still enjoy it immensely.

In Bruges

2011-12-20T22:41:00.003Z

I've just come back from a weekend in Bruges, it's a pretty amazingly beautiful town which has mostly preserved it's medieval heritage and thrives on tourism. I stayed at a place just out of the old city walls and cycled in about 3km or so which was a piece of cake. Cycling is in the blood of Belgians, one of the first glimpses I had in Bruges was an elderly man watching cyclocross in his loungeroom. All across the town there are plenty of people riding doing everyday errands, even in mild rain people just kept on going around doing their normal things. Here are some pics:

Gazelle town bikes are a common sight

Derailleur bikes were reasonably common too

Your typical Bruges street with the cycle path in red

Cool bike with a porteur rack

The bike racks had this fishmouth to hold your bike,
worked quite well as long as you had a seattube. Mind you
most people just put their bikes in these racks with only
the wheel lock, theft obviously isn't a problem in Bruges.

Panniers seem to be the most popular luggage style

People typically have steel loops on their front wall
to lock their bikes to.

Cool french bike with a nice vintage chainguard

The bike lanes from the B&B I stayed at

Most streets are two way for bikes and mopeds

Some kind of registration?

One of the hire bikes, an English 3 speed
with Sturmey Archer gearing.

Cool Belgian bicycle tax disc. This would make for a cool accessory

The canal path provides a nice route towards the city centre

It almost felt like how I imagined the Netherlands to be, maybe because this was the Flemish part of Belgium but also because of the prevalence of city bikes and people doing day to day things on them, from old ladies to young boys. I wish I had more time, there is a whole network of canals and paths outside of the main touristy area to cycle around. That's all for now, thanks for reading.

A time for giving (money) and receiving (bike parts)

2011-12-19T22:03:00.002Z

So I've eBay'd, trawled online shops and done a lot of research over the past few weeks. Now I have a bunch of parts that will complete my drum brake wheelset for my Raleigh and I'm excited, can't wait to build up my all weather commuter. Here's what I have so far:

Rigida AS26 alloy rims in 26 x 1-3/8 ISO 590 size - New
I bought these on eBay and they were advertised as generic rim, turned out they were Rigida rims; quite plain twin hollow, non-eyeletted type rims but they were £20 for the pair. They appear to be raw aluminium so I'll give polishing them a crack.

Sturmey Archer XL-FDD 90mm drum brake & 3.0w dynamo front hub - New
This didn't come with any cables, only the reaction arm clip, the wheelnuts and the wiring terminal cap, I had to do a second order for the cable assembly. The unit itself is massive and very impressive with a nice polished finish, it feels like this will give me nice strong braking.

Sturmey Archer X-RD3 70mm & 3 speed rear hub - Used from eBay
This was pretty cheap at £25 and it was laced up to a MTB 26" rim. Seems to freewheel fine, however the drum is a bit rusty but works fine however; probably just needs a bit of a scrub. I could see the LHS bearings once the brake plate was off and they looked good, but I'll pop open the hub to have a quick once over anyway. The bearings differ from the XL-FDD in that the bearings are normal cup and cone, the setup is exactly like traditional Sturmey hubs, the old Sturmey cone spanner even fits on the RHS cone.

Tektro FL-750 flat bar levers - new
These are a bit of an old school style lever, much like old MAFAC touring levers. They seem to take road style cables but seem to work ok with flat bar style cables, I'll have to see when they're hooked up.

Here is the 70mm brake drum of the X-RD3 compared to the 90mm of the XL-FDD front hub; the 90mm version is noticeably bigger. I've tried the 70mm version before and it's quite good but I want to be able to have enough power to do stoppies. The hub shell is also considerably larger, I'll have to do a ride report once I get them running.

I wasn't sure I'd get all these parts in the mail so soon, I'm just waiting for the front brake cable assembly and the spokes then I should be pretty much good to go. Hopefully the rest of the parts will arrive this week and I can get cracking this weekend, don't be surprised if the next post is me building wheels and setting them up on Christmas day, fingers crossed that I won't have any show stopping problems as there will be absolutely nothing open this weekend.

more little things...

2011-12-10T18:07:00.001Z

Continuing on from my last post I've got a few more old goodies for my Raleigh Superbe. First up is a Lucas mileometer, this is a mechanical odometer which were popular before electronic bike computers came into prominence in the 80's. It's effectively just a ticker which counts revolutions of your wheel and keeps track of your mileage, it makes a slight ticking sound as the pin hits the star on the unit attached to the front wheel axle.

I did a little bit of research before I bid on this, there are several different types made for different wheel sizes, this is marked on the underside of the unit on the flat. Mine is marked M26 which is for a 26 x 1-3/8 wheel which is correct for the Superbe. The unit reads out in miles and 1/10ths of a mile in red, I'm not sure of the accuracy but it's probably not too far off. The unit itself is completely sealed and not serviceable, I tried using an electric drill to zero the thing but ran out of patience, I would have been sitting there for hours! The side of the unit is stamped "Joseph Lucas Ltd Birmingham - King of the road" nice to keep the Raleigh all English. When riding along the striker hits the star wheel and makes a ticking sound, I've covered the little pin with some black heatshrink to make it a little bit more quiet.

The other little doodad I got was an alloy seatpost, now like I proved in my previous post about weight it makes not that much difference for a typical commuter. However one of the cotter pins was coming loose and I needed to service them; a steel seatpost is perfect for propping up the crank to whack cotter pins on. I figure as well though, if I can save weight without losing any function, why not? The original seatpost is 25.4mm as with most old Raleighs and is marked Sturmey Archer. The new one was just a cheap £5 one I got from eBay, luckily it is fluted and pretty nice looking, it's marked Made in England 24.58mm. Even with the slightly larger marked size, it fit in perfectly. Just for fun I weighed them both, 132g vs 74g which means a weight saving of a paltry 64g, pretty negligible but at least now I can whack out cotter pins to my heart's content.

That's all the upgrades for now, however I have just won an auction on a Sturmey Archer 3spd drum brake hub and have bought some 26 x 1-3/8 alloy rims from eBay. I just have to make an order for a front drum/dynamo hub and I'll be ready for a fully drum braked, enclosed drivetrain all weather bike ready for the winter onslaught, hopefully it'll snow this year so I can at least partly assure myself that the money I waste on bikes is worth something. Thanks for reading.

The road to Brighton

2011-12-10T12:11:00.001Z

So I decided to ride to Brighton following an alternative route that goes through mostly backlanes and some short sections of busier roads. I followed the basic route from here which I mostly followed, although I started at Kingswood rail station to skip riding through the busier parts of London and start on quiet streets. I've plotted the route below including some course notes, I took a wrong turn at Colgate and did a bit of a diversion on some busier roads but got back on track quite quickly. I took my randonneur bike which was perfect for the job, I would have like slightly lower gearing for some of the hills; the lowest gear is 34 x 26 and some of the short sharp hills are up around 12-15% approximately.

View Kingswood to Brighton in a larger map

Much of the scenery is your typical English countryside; the haze and smell of log fires wafting from farmhouse chimneys over green pastures. There were lots of nice little proper country pubs, too bad I didn't have enough time for a proper lunch. The roads were still a little damp from the rain and there was a fair bit of horse poo on the road too, so remember to pack some mudguards.

Much of the route is quiet country backroads with very few cars, there were a few other cyclists about as well as a few horse riders. Most of these backroads are only wide enough for one car so people tended not to drive too fast anyway. I found almost all the cars very courteous, they would wait patiently until it was safe to pass and generally gave me a wide berth when passing. As I powered on towards the end my legs started to cramp up, I wasn't sure I was going to make it. Southern railways only allows bikes before 4pm on the London-Brighton route so I was in a bit of a rush as well.

There were a few hills along here and it was pretty windy as it was reasonably high up, at the top of the last hill you could see right over the the ocean, phew! After this point it was pretty much all downhill into Brighton. Once on the train I got to use the special carriage which combines the toilet as well as a bicycle storage area, there are seatbelts strapped onto the wall which you can hold your bike with.

I'll probably give it a go another time and leave it a bit earlier in the morning, overall distance is about 70km or so and took me about 4 hours including stops and getting lost a few times. Thanks for reading.

Let's get bent!

2011-12-03T00:26:00.001Z

As I have a bit of spare time these days, I decided to go down to Dulwich park to try out some recumbents, the www.londonrecumbents.com shop is based there and hires them out, from really low-end kiddy recumbents to some quite nice serious ones. I had never ridden one before so I was recommended to try a highish position one to begin with. What I started on is the orange machine pictured here, it's a HP Velotechnik; It's full suspended with a 20" rear and a 16" front wheel running on a SRAM dual drive setup. It combines a 3 speed hub with a 7 speed cassette which gives you quite a large range of gearing.

Initially I almost rode the bike into a bush, it's slightly harder to balance because your centre of gravity is lower than an upright but I quickly got used to it. As the riding position on the Sprint was reasonably upright it wasn't too far a stretch from a normal bike. Starting off was a bit strange, but you just give it a strong kick to give it some initial momentum and you're off. The suspension was quite good and smoothed out a lot of bumps, you could get up quite a lot of speed and it still felt very smooth over rough ground. One niggle I had was that the front wheel would lock up quite easily, even on bitumen. It didn't help that the ground was a little wet but I suspect it was because the front wheel was a fair bit more forward and the bike had a rear wheel bias. Also the BB5 disc brakes were made for larger wheels not tiny 16" wheels and were probably too strong.

SRAM dual drive and Avid BB5 discs

I quite enjoyed riding it, it was just something different. I have been always somewhat fascinated with recumbents because there is a lot more scope for design. The basic design of upright bikes has barely changed in the last 100 years, componentry has changed a lot though. As much as I love racing bikes, they all tend to be very much the same, blame the UCI rules or lazy manufacturers but there is bugger all difference between a Scott CR1 and a Specialized Tarmac.

I took it back and swapped it for a more sporty model, the Challenge Hurricane. Recumbents tend to be classified by their seating position, high, mid and low. The Hurricane is a mid or low racer style, the seat is a fair bit lower than the Sprint and the steering is done by a tiller with the front wheel a lot further behind the bottom bracket. This gives the bike more of a front wheel bias and introduces a slightly more complicated chain run. You might notice that the chains on both bikes are enclosed in black tubes, this is to stop it rubbing on your legs. I didn't notice any extra noise, the only thing I did notice is that when you kick the pedals backwards to get them into position it wouldn't spin freely. Otherwise I didn't notice any extra friction when pedalling forward.

The Hurricane features 20" wheels, rear suspension and the same SRAM dual drive 3x7 drivetrain. This model also had Magura hydraulic rim brakes, brakes I hadn't seen since the 90's. However I was surprised by the braking, there was no locking up like the Sprint; I think this was probably attributed to the higher front weight bias. The handling was completely different, because it was a tiller style it was a lot twitcher but a lot more natural feeling. I felt that subtle shifts and movements would cause it to turn, more like an upright bike. The lower riding position, thinner higher pressure tyres all made this bike feel a lot faster. This thing just flew on the flats compared to the sprint.

Cockpit shot

The steering and braking felt a lot more direct due
to the front weight bias

I had to take this shot one handed whilst riding
which was a bit of a challenge. I don't know if you can ride
these no handed like an upright.

After riding both of these, I had this sudden urge to find out more about bents. I'd always been somewhat interested in them, particularly a certain model called the Velokraft Nocom. It's the most impractical recumbent you can get, super super low ground clearance and almost all carbon fiber but amazingly fast and beautiful.

yummy...

Well one day when I have space, money and time. I don't think I'd be too keen to ride any of the low racer style recumbents in traffic but I can imagine myself riding one on the weekend over long distances. It was a really good experience to ride both of these bikes and it's given me a newfound respect for recumbents. I'd always seen them as a bit odd and almost comical, but now I know better.

Thanks for reading.

A weighty issue

2011-12-01T11:43:00.001Z

A lot of cyclists are obsessed with weight. Typically one person's first assessment of a bike will be to lift it to see how much it weighs, as though it is some kind of metric to its worth or function. I find this somewhat amusing and misleading, almost a bit naive in some aspects. Weight does matter, well if you are doing a lot of climbing or are going to be lifting the bike up stairs or manhandling it a lot. I myself tend to be the type that weighs most of the individual components during a bike build, for example when I built my Cinelli Xperience which weighs a respectable 8.2kg. However this hides the fact that when setup for actual riding with lights, computer, water bottles, spares and tools it weighs more like nearly 10kg. I can see the point of being obsessed with weight when you are doing long distances, lots of hills and/or actual racing, however most people don't actually do this very often.

Where it becomes somewhat pointless is when (lack of) weight is used as the primary factor for assessing bikes when it's somewhat unimportant: utility or town bikes. From my own experience building and fiddling with many kinds of bikes, I have a reasonable idea of typical bike weights with regard to type and function. Weight only really becomes a synonym for performance or quality when talking about racing/road bikes: 6kg for the high-end machines and 11kg for the heavier low-end machine.

It seems absurd to start to use weight as an assessor for bikes that are meant to carry things (this is code for bikes that are for practical use). The further you get away from racing the more absurd it becomes, however what is truly absurd is when comparisons are made between racing bikes and utility bikes. People will often lift town bikes and comment on how heavy they are compared to a race bike, however it's like assessing a 2 tonne van by commenting on how fast it accelerates compared to an open wheel sports car, rather than assessing it's capability to help you move house. A lot of people in the Anglophonic world have forgotten about the usefulness of the bicycle as a tool for transport and can only really see it from a narrow racing-oriented perspective. This is particularly a shame as the English have a rich history going back to the early 20th century of producing some of the world's best transport and utility bikes; I find it ironic that what we now call Dutch bikes are really what was once known as the ubiquitous English 3-speed.

How much does weight actually matter when climbing a hill though? I've always maintained that an extra 5kg makes no difference when you are hauling 15kg of shopping on your bike. I've used the climbing calculator at http://bikecalculator.com/tripMetric.html to determine the difference weight actually makes on a typical 6km commute with 2 hills, flats and some headwinds.

The race bike has been shown with a transmission efficiency of 95% to reflect lower rolling resistance tyres compared to the town bike's 90%. I won't go into actual drivetrain efficiency differences as that has too many real world variables that would be too complex to calculate and probably insignificant. Power has been locked at 150w which is average for an untrained adult. The only thing that it doesn't take into factor is traffic lights, however this is much too complex to model.

Race bike
10kg skinny tyres, drop bars for different riding positions, no cargo capacity, mudguards & exposed drivetrain.
16m59s, average speed 21.21km/h

Town bike
20kg, fatter tyres, upright riding position, mudguards, cargo capacity and enclosed drivetrain:
19m8s at an average of 18.81km/h.

Town bike minus 10kg (hypothetical)
10kg, fatter tyres, upright riding position, mudguards, cargo capacity and enclosed drivetrain:
18m36s at an average of 19.35km/h.

This gives you a difference of 2m10s which is about 11% or so, which is a significant difference. However let's actually see what is causing this difference. If you had a hypothetical town bike that was exactly the same except the weight was halved to 10kg you would get 18m36s instead of 19m8s. This means halving the weight only saves you 32s, or about 3% faster. From this you can deduce that the main reason the race bike is 2m10s faster is due to the better aerodynamics and less rolling resistance; less than 1/4 of this 2m10s difference is due to just weight.

This study does not really reflect real world factors however. It becomes apparent that though that the 20kg bike is probably something like my Raleigh Superbe and the 10kg bike is like my Cinelli Xperience. The Raleigh is able to pick up lots of groceries on the way home, doesn't make my clothes dirty, requires very little maintenance, is comfortable on crap roads and is very durable. It however is slower mostly due to the less aerodynamic position and less so due to the weight. The Cinelli is fast, handles beautifully on smooth blacktop, however is somewhat delicate, high maintenance/cleaning and can't really carry anything on the bike other than tools and a spare tube.

It should be apparent that to save 2m10s every trip you have to give up a lot of convenience and time spent maintaining, charging lights, cleaning clothes and fixing flats. It also means you have to give up being able to pick up very much shopping or cargo and will have to spend time going back to the supermarket to do so.

In conclusion, judging a bike by its weight is mostly pointless unless you are planning on riding up several alps mountain passes and/or are going to be lifting it a lot. It just makes assessing a town bike by its weight even more absurd. If you want to go fast, focus on aerodynamics - forget about weight because it's not important for the vast majority of riding people do. Which leads me to conclude that something like a touring bike is excellent if you want speed and cargo capacity and don't mind the higher maintenance and riding position compared to a town bike. Leave the race bikes for the enthusiasts that get up early and ride in bunches.

Happy riding

Adjusting rod brakes

2011-11-23T19:50:00.001Z

Following on from my previous post where I was fiddling with the rod brakes on my Raleigh Superbe and inadvertently broke them, I ordered and received a NOS Raleigh front stirrup brake assembly from eBay. It arrived today and I learnt a bit about how to setup rod brakes and their fiddly idiosyncrasies. The unit I got was identical the the original broken unit, the only marking was the Raleigh logo and some patent numbers stamped on the pads. The pads themselves were a little different because they had what appeared to be a leather insert on the braking face, I'd heard these were meant to be a bit better in wet weather than the normal rubber blocks.

Rod brakes - note that the pads are actually
facing the wrong way; see below

Rod brakes are mostly found on old roadsters and are different to calliper brakes because they use steel linkages to pull the stirrup holding the pads to the inside face of the rim for a braking surface. This means a few things, wheels are more difficult to remove and the brakes are not self-centering. Rod brakes have a tendency to judder when braking hard which can cause the tyre to skid; this is due to an out of round wheel. Calliper brakes don't have this problem because they depend mostly on lateral true of the wheel, any minor lateral wobbles can be tracked by the caliper which still allows you to stop smoothly and with control. Rod brakes when setup properly only really give moderate braking at best, good caliper brakes are superior in this aspect. The only saving grace of rod brakes is their low maintenance, simplicity and ruggedness, they are still very popular in the developing world on utility bicycles.

There are a few steps to adjusting rod brakes, they are a little fiddly but not really much more work than setting up calliper or cantilever brakes. The adjustment only really requires an adjustable wrench for the bolts as well as bending, very simple.

A: Keep a 2-3mm gap between the rim braking surface and the pad, use the adjustment nut at the top of the stirrup where the rod enters it to do this. Because the pads are both fixed to the stirrup, they are not self-centering. This means that squeezing the lever can result in one pad hitting the rim before the other. Ideally they should hit the rim at the same time, you can move the pad itself up and down a few millimetres in the holder to get it right, if it's really off you may have to bend the stirrup itself. Spin the front wheel to see if there are any high spots which rub.

B: Try to get the outside face of the pad flush with the outside face of the rim, this will ensure that the pad will get full contact with the braking surface

C: Don't get the pads too far in however as they can rub on the valve and spoke nipples as the wheel rotates, this could be quite bad if you were going down a hill and braked hard causing the pads to get thrown into the spinning wheel.

D: Get the height of the guides so that when A is adjusted correctly and the brake is squeezed on, the stirrup posts stay in the guides. If the height is too low, the stirrup posts could be pulled out accidentally when the brake is squeezed on hard which could be potentially dangerous. The guides can be rotated to help get the lateral adjustment (B & C) correct. You can also bend the part of the stirrup where the pads bolt on to get adjustment.

This is the correct orientation of the pads

Once this is done both the pads should hit the rim evenly and squarely without dragging on the rim or hitting the valves or spoke nipples. The NOS leather faced pads I fitted give a little bit more braking power than the crusty old pads that they replaced, haven't tried it in the wet yet, however just having them properly adjusted improves them greatly.

Please note that on later Raleigh models they introduced anti-vibration plates which offsets the brake pads from the stirrups, they are meant to face towards the rear of the bike so they sit inside the fork. This is how they were oriented when I first got the bike however I incorrectly faced them towards the front initially as they allowed better access to the bolts. Apparently they stop vibration during braking but I have not noticed any real difference either way.

Happy adjusting and thanks for reading.

Braking things

2011-11-19T17:16:00.001Z

Just as I was adjusting the front rod brakes, one of the guide posts on the stirrup snapped clean off, effectively rendering my bicycle without front brakes. They were working ok before and hitting the rim fairly evenly (rod brakes are not self centering like cable brakes). I should have left them alone but I couldn't resist fiddling; I was bending the stirrup using a wrench on the guide post which snapped with very little force, not happy Jan!

Another way of looking at it is that it's better that it snapped now than if I was going downhill at 35km/h leaving me with only the rear brake. The rear brake is more like a speed modulator than a brake, even though it's setup reasonably well. I'm not too confident it alone could actually slow me to a stop going down some of the hills in south London.

I still can't believe the post snapped off so easily, I actually managed to shear through one of the bolts on the rear brake with very little force as well. I have a suspicion that the metallurgy of bolts on Raleighs from this era is pretty poor, as bolts should be very difficult to shear with a 6" long wrench. I had the same experience with my Raleigh Twenty, which was from the 70's as well, I managed to do the shear right through a few bolts on that too. I don't consider myself ham-fisted (well I would like to think not) because usually bolt heads will round out before you can shear the tops off them in my experience.

Anyway, I jumped straight on ebay and ordered a NOS Raleigh front brake stirrup setup with new pads, not too expensive at £15 including shipping, it should arrive next week. As soon as I'm settled in to London I'm definitely going to at least build up a front drum setup, I totally need a dependable and SAFE bike to ride around.

Happy riding!

A few more things...

2011-11-17T17:19:00.001Z

I must admit, I'm a sucker for upgrading and fiddling, this is the second post about accessories or parts that will make the Raleigh Superbe just so... The thing that bugged me about it was that it was a '79 model, thus it had the late style shifter, lights and a mattress saddle rather than a sprung leather Brooks saddle. I'm normally not so keen on making newer things look older than they are, however the design of the Superbe is so timeless I decided I would change a few things.

The first thing was the shifter, the unit I got from eBay appeared to be a '50s unit according to this document. I had a 60's 3 speed shifter on my old 3-speed back in Sydney and that was mechanically the same as other units. I didn't know that the early units are subtly different, it has a cable entry hole which is a slightly smaller diameter than the late style ferrule I had. The later shifters have a slightly larger diameter and a slot which you slide it up which locks it in place. Thus to get the older shifter to work I had to drill it out a smidge, about another 1mm or so for it to work. The other thing I did notice was that the late shifter had a hard limit on the high and low gears whereas the early shifter allowed you to push it past both the high and low index points (the low limit is limited by the cable adjustment).

New style shifter above, you can see the slot style compared
to the plain hole in the older style unit.

The ferrule won't fit

Because of this I found the late style shifter occasionally wouldn't give the cable enough slack when shifting into high gear and it would slip a little, probably due to a bit of friction in the cable run and not completely letting off the pedals when shifting. The old style shifter however gave the cable more slack which gives it more tolerance and lets it engage into high gear properly. So far I haven't had any problems with slipping in high gear. The other slight differences I noticed was that the older style shifter was just built to a much nicer standard. The top plate is brass compared to plastic (the 60's shifter I had before had a thin steel cover plate), the tolerances were a lot tighter and there was a lot less play in the mechanism as a result. It also looks quite a lot more pretty. I have read and I feel that around the 50's and 60's Sturmey Archer's standards started to drop; however, most of the hubs I've played with were 70's era and were quite bulletproof as long as they were adjusted properly and weren't abused.

Older style shifter above; you can see how much
tighter the tolerances are compared to the new style below.
However the newer style has a plastic cover
which prevents dirt ingress

Installed, and it looks tops!

The other big thing was the saddle, my old 3-speed had a brand new Brooks B67 which was sprung a bit too stiffly for my somewhat meagre but statistically normal 68kg body weight; I found the B67 barely took the edge off bumps. I had read that Brooks increased the diameter of the springs for the new models as larger people were reporting breaking springs. This was part of the reason I went for an old one as they are supposedly more pliable, the other reason was I wanted something old that would match the rest of the bike and not attract too much attention.

To this end I found a B73 on eBay, reasonably well worn but in very good useable condition. There were no rips or tears, the leather is quite supple and well worn in if a touch dry. I put a bid on it and won it; about an hour after I paid for it, I was googling and found some comments that it felt laterally wobbly compared to their other saddles due to the vertical spring on the nose of the saddle, I felt a bit of buyer's remorse I must say. When trying to impress people by riding no-hands I typically steer the bike with my thighs on the nose of the saddle and I was a little worried it would affect this (obviously very important), however it after installing the saddle and riding it around for a bit I found I could still ride it hands free. The springs were a lot more softly sprung like I thought it would be and actually absorbed bumps in the road, perfect! I also love the look the the triple springs, so much more old school than the mattress saddle it replaced.

Well thus far I think this is all the upgrading I'll do for now... I'm quite tempted to upgrade the wheels to alloy rims and drum brakes, particularly for winter when it'll most likely be snowy. I've only really tried the rod brakes once after a bit of rain and it was a bit hairy to say the least. Anyway I'll have to see how it goes. Thanks for reading.

Winter in the park

2011-11-16T19:22:00.001Z

I headed down to Richmond park in the southwest of London to go for a ride today, I'd read about it as I've been trying to find a replacement for Centennial park in Sydney. So far every park I have been to hasn't been much of a roadie hangout, compared to Centennial which was just choc-a-bloc on the weekends with roadies and other cyclists. It's a touch far from central London, it took about 1 hour to get there from southeast London where I'm staying.

View Larger Map

It's known for it's extensive landscapes, woodlands and of course deer. There is a 11km road loop shared with cars along the roads which circumscribe the park. There is also a whole bunch of unsealed trails which criss-cross the park as well as one which loosely follows the road loop. Most of it is hardpacked dirt with a bit of loose gravel here and there which caused one slightly hairy descent. The 28mm Pasela tyres handled it pretty well, although I would have preferred something wider like 32 or 35mm for the unsealed paths. They are shared with pedestrians and have a 10mph limit, there are also some trails which are only open to pedestrians.

Oh hai bambi!

There are a few internal roads which are only open to
pedestrians and cyclists.

There is a lot of these marshy sort of ground cover

Most of the unsealed trails are hard packed dirt strewn with leaves

There are a few small climbs and some
not so small climbs

All in all a nice day, there is a cafe at the northeast corner of the park near the Roehampton gates which is conveniently next to the bike hire; the bike hire place has MTB's, hybrids and some roadies. It'll probably be a bit too cold to ride here in a month or two, but I'll definitely come back. Thanks for reading.

Vélo'v... or bike love

2011-11-16T17:48:00.001Z

I happened to go to Lyon on the weekend and was able to give their bike share a go. It's called Vélo'v which is meant to be a portmanteau between vélo (bike in French) and love. I didn't realise that until I read it on the wiki page about it. Nonetheless, the Vélo'v was one of the most successful bike share systems in recent history, it operates on a similar basis as Vélib or the Barclay bikes. The usage is based on a €150 deposit and is free for the first 30mins, then €1 for the full hour and €2 for the second hour. Quite cheap, and it just automatically debits it from your card. There are long term membership plans as well, very similar to the other systems.

The bikes themselves are super sturdy and have similar special security fasteners and covers to prevent vandalism. They are based on a 3 speed Shimano Nexus gearing with front and rear dynamo lights. The front basket is steel with a sturdy rack and an elastic strap that goes over it, the front dynamo light is recessed into the basket's front. The front hub is a combined Nexus dynamo and roller brake hub, it took me a bit of riding to realise that the brake levers were setup Euro style (left front), it still doesn't make much sense to me as I am right handed and most people in the world are as well. The front roller brakes are pretty woeful on the flat, I wouldn't feel safe riding fast downhill on these. I have heard the newer Nexus roller brakes are a lot better, they are distinguished by the large cooling fins.

The rear mudguard is a large plastic unit which combines a skirtguard and a rear dynamo light, it's attached to the seatstay bridge and chainstay bridge only which makes it a bit floppy. I'm not sure if this was intentional as the rear of the mudguard is usually the bit which gets smacked about, maybe having something a bit flexible allows it to flex rather than brake. The dynamo lights appear to be the Dutch Spanninga brand, they are pretty good and are constant lights, unlike the flashing lights of the Barclays bikes. The tyres are the ubiquitous Schwalbe Marathons, they are the same as the Vélib and the Barclays bikes, a good choice. At the station I picked mine up from there was one bike which had a flat and another bike which had a dropped chain. The one with the flat had the seat turned backwards which is what people do to indicate a dud bike - nice one. One bad thing I noticed was that the kickstand is a nice strong steel unit, however the spring that holds it in the up position is often a bit weak so you'll hear a clank every time you hit a bump.

The rear light is recessed into the mudguard
to protect it from knocks and vandalism

After I was done with it I rode it back to the nearest docking station to my hotel, however it was full... dang. However the terminal (which is in French, English and Spanish) showed me the status of the closest 3 stations. There was 7 free spots at one down the block, however I had no idea where it was because it was presented in a table format rather than a map. Anyway I was able to return it quite easily by just pushing it into the dock.

Overall the bike system works pretty well, the bikes themselves are pretty good. I would even go so far to say that I think they are better than the Barclays bikes because of the better basket and better lighting system. What I would like to see on some of these bike share bikes is a rear rack, so you can have a passenger to give a lift to (AKA Backie, Dink). I bet though, that it's perceived as unsafe (open to being sued?) and that they want you to just hire another bike anyway.

That's all for now. Happy riding.

Riding around London town

2011-11-11T17:39:00.001Z

Right now I have a bit of spare time as I'm still looking for work. So I have been spending a fair bit of time riding around exploring. Generally I've found it a lot easier than riding in Sydney as there are a lot more backstreets and a lot less on-street parking. It's generally more direct to ride on the main streets, there are some sub-standard bike lanes and some hairy roundabouts but generally it's easier.

There are well signed bike routes around London which are usually a combination of on-road backstreets, main streets and some shared paths. The pic above shows a railway crossing with a C-channel for wheeling your bike up. A touch slippery on the way down though when wet.

Housing estates marked for redevelopment in Elephant and Castle

Crystal Palace gardens

Dinosaurs are back!

I took the Raleigh Superbe out to Greenwich yesterday, lots of slightly off-road leaf strewn paths which it handled well. The tread pattern on the Schwalbe Delta cruiser tyres lends it some traction on loose surfaces, they also are quite cushy combined with the sprung saddle.

It's still not too cold, around 10ºC or so during the day, there'll probably be snow in a few months time so I should get in as much riding as possible. I'll probably take a ride down to Brighton sometime soon. Anyway thanks for reading and happy riding.

Making the Superbe even more superb

2011-11-09T23:03:00.000Z

I gave the Superbe its first decent ride yesterday, I logged onto Transport for London's cycle journey planner which I was mightily impressed by. You put in your start and finish and it will plot a bike route to there using known bike routes/paths. You can choose slow routes on quiet streets, moderate or faster routes on busier more direct streets. It can output the map on PDF so you can store it on your smartphone for navigation, very useful and worked really well.

After 20km of riding, I discovered several things: rod brakes aren't that bad... at least in the dry, Raleigh three-speeds are mysteriously overgeared from the factory, the factory lights are woefully dim and that I needed new tyres. I heard this intermittent bzzzzzzt sound every rear wheel revolution all of a sudden, I thought it may have been the brake pads but on closer inspection I saw this:

The tyre was unseating itself and rubbing on the chainstay, I noticed this when I was fitting the new tubes, the bead didn't seem to seat very well on the drive side rear. Luckily it didn't blow when I was rolling downhill in top gear! I would guess that the wire bead on that side stretched over the odd 30 years. They appear to be the original tyres so I guess it's probably just a good idea to replace them anyway; they are Michelin brand and marked "Made in England". The other problem was the gearing, much like Raleigh Twentys the default gearing is too high, even for flat London.

The Superbe's stock gearing is 46t x 19t which gives you 47/63/84 gearing inches for a Sturmey Archer 3 speed hub. I found the low gear not low enough for steeper hills, the middle gear was a bit too high which meant starting from a stop was a bit slow and the top gear was only useable on downhills. Swapping the back sprocket to a 21t gives you a much more useable 43/57/76 which gives you a better climbing gear and a lower middle gear for starting with the top gear for cruising on the flats. I am quite happy to just coast down hills in exchange for this.

So off I went to order some new tyres and a 21t sprocket. I was a bit apprehensive at first to get cream coloured tyres, I was starting to really like the look of gumwalls which look really classic. My other bike Mr Ramen also has white/cream tyres which might be a bit overboard. I just bit the bullet and ordered Schwalbe Delta Cruisers in cream colour with a reflective stripe, you can't get the gumwall version with a reflective stripe; I think they are great for visibility at night having seen them myself on other bikes.

The other thing I had to do was fit a rack and my old dynamo lights from the Raleigh Twenty. I routed an extension to the rear light wiring along the inside edge of the of the rear mudguard. I attached the front light to the old style headset bracket by bolting it through - works perfectly. The only thing is that they don't look super vintage, but that may be a project for another day. Again, they are a huge upgrade from the factory lights.

Chain and 21t sprocket installation

Installing a new sprocket and chain on a bike with a full chaincase is a little bit harder than one without, but not that much harder. All you need to do is:

- Remove the lower bottom section of the chaincase near the rear sprocket and then the chainring cover. -- Feed the chain through the upper and lower cavities of the chaincase and then feed it onto the sprocket and chainring. Use a wire bent into a hook shape if you need, but I found it easy enough just to push the chain through
- After getting the correct length, join the chain with a chain tool at the open space near the rear sprocket, a little cramped but very doable.
- Replace the chaincase covers and you're done. Not as difficult as people make it out to be, worth it for the no-maintenance and clean trousers. Took me about 15 minutes.

I had the bike flipped over and took some photos because I was surprised at how clean and untouched the bike generally is. The rod brake joints all look like they still have oil in them, the lockring on the bottom bracket looks completely untouched; they are usually almost always chipped away at - this would indicate it's probably never been popped open. The owner said it had been ridden a little bit then stored for a long time, after having looked over the bike quite closely I believe him.

Look at that shine on the chaincase!

Pedals are marked "Made in Germany" with Raleigh logos and are ball bearing
units unlike the Raleigh Twenty. The bearings are in excellent condition and spin smoothly

The chain looks nice and clean, the exact reason
I wanted a bike with a chaincase.

The tyres arrived today and I fitted them straight away, they don't look garish at all, I think because they have a nice colour contrast with the dark green mudguards. I took it out for a quick ride, first impressions are they feel cushy and sticky. I would feel comfortable riding over crap cobbled and potholed roads that are all too common in London. On smooth road they are reasonably quick, not a race tyre but that isn't their intended market. The change to the 21t sprocket makes it just about perfect, low gear is now fine for the hills around south east London, middle gear is perfect for stop and start traffic and top gear is perfect for fast cruising on the flats and most downhills.

Thanks for reading, and happy riding.

My new bike: '79 Raleigh Superbe

2011-11-06T17:38:00.002Z

I've been searching for one of these for a while, scouring gumtree and eBay every few days. While they are somewhat common, finding the exact one you want isn't so easy. They come in two sizes, 21" and 23". My height suits me to somewhere inbetween the two, I can ride a 23" but any sudden jumping off the bike would probably destroy any chance of future progeny. It's difficult to find the 21" size, there would be the occasional one on eBay and gumtree but usually they wouldn't ship or some other reason. Also I desperately wanted one with a full chaincase, mostly for the low-maintenance and no chance of getting chain gunk on my clothes, oh and they look oh so cool.

What I find strange about these old Raleigh Superbes is that they seem somewhat anachronistic. Raleigh kept on making what was effectively a 1940's design for nearly 50 years unchanged. This one still has front and rear rod brakes with a full chaincase; these typically fell out of favour around the 60's and 70's as most bikes moved to cable operated caliper brakes and hockey stick style chain covers. It's a timeless design, although the vintagephile in me would have loved to have scored something pre-1960's, this bike was too hard to pass on.

I love the detail on the top of the front mudguard. Also
the bike came with the key for the fork lock, this locks it in the
straight forward position so anyone trying to steal it would
hopefully crash and die ;)

I picked this one up from a flat on the fourth floor of a housing estate in south east London, not too far from where I'm currently staying. I went up what could be called the tiniest lift in the world and knocked on his door, as soon as the door opened, a waft of stale cigarettes and smoke punched me in the face; I can still smell stale cigarettes on the bike now. I took it downstairs, had a quick ride and paid for it. The average price for a bike like this is around £80-£200 depending on vintage, originality and condition, I got it for a smidge over £100. This one was nearly completely original, the paint is excellent and all the parts are there; This is pretty important on these old 3-speeds as little bits and pieces are specific to the bike and would be difficult to chase down and retrofit. The rear hub has a built in and fully functional Sturmey Archer AG dynamo hub and front and rear lights, more or less identical to the set found on my old Raleigh Twenty.

Woods valve disassembled with valve core and rubber tubing.
Now I finally know what those little rubber tubing bits are for in
those crappy patch kits you get at K-mart.

As soon as I paid for it, I put a bit of air in the tyres and the valve on the back tyre just lost it and wouldn't keep air. It was a Woods style valve which I had never had any experience with. No attempt to fix it would make it hold air, so I ended up just walking it to the station and back home. I went to the local shop to get a spare tube but they didn't have the 26 x 1 3/8 size; this used to be the most common size in the UK and Commonwealth but as mountain and road bikes have taken over in the last few decades it's faded into slight obscurity. It's also known as 650A (French system) or ISO 590mm, yes confusing I know. Anyway little did I know but standard MTB tubes will also fit, they are ISO 559 which is about 30mm smaller in diameter but close enough. Anyway, after putting in some new tubes and rim tape (the old ones inside looked like they were the 30 year old originals I took it for a ride.

The wobbliness is from my one handed shooting, not from the bike :)

Initial impression, remember to tighten axle nuts! After I repositioned the rear wheel, tensioned the chain and heaved 'ho down the road it just glided. Nice and smooth, I was suprised at how nicely it rode. Most bikes I have ridden this age usually have some weird rattle, something else is loose and it generally needs a bit of work. This one however was already in near original mint condition and rode like it came out of the factory. The rod brakes were suprisingly good, the front one didn't shudder under hard braking like most, the steering was nice and light; it was easy to ride no-hands mom! I don't think I could have been happier, it would have been difficult to wipe the smile off my face.

The bell that came with it is possibly the most awesomest bell ever, it's a spinning bell which I have never really seen before in real life, only in pictures. I had no idea they worked like this, yes it sounds weird to get so excited over a bike bell but I love this kind of thing.

Anyway thanks for reading and happy riding.

Biking on Boris' Barclays bikes

2011-10-29T17:43:00.001+01:00

Being in London, I saw these Barclays bikeshare bikes all over the place, they seem pretty popular. There are literally docking stations everywhere around central london. The hire rates are quite cheap, they are free for the first 30mins and go up from there. Unlike the bike share scheme in Melbourne, helmets are not compulsory here in the UK so you can just go up to the station, press a few buttons, put in your debit card and you are off. I just hired it to cycle a few blocks and partly to give it a go.

Each docking station has a post where
you can use your debit card to hire a bike.

The bikes themselves are built pretty sturdily. The drivetrain is semi-enclosed with a chain tensioner connected to a 3 speed Shimano Nexus hub. There are heaps of covers and security bolts to stop people vandalising them, they are reasonably hefty but are made to be tough. The tyres they use are the venerable Schwalbe Marathons which are known for being heavy but near impossible to puncture.

They have a built in dynamo in the front wheel hooked up to front and rear LED lights. My gripe is that they are both flashing LED's not constant. The Vélib in Paris had quite decent front dynamo lights (some kind of Busch + Muller setup), however for a city bike flashing lights only are useful for being seen, no seeing where you are going. Flashing lights are harder to track when moving, even if some people believe they draw more attention.

My bag secure and snug in the basket

The basket design is a bit naff, it's a U scoop shape in profile with a bungee cord that goes over the top, the sides are completely open. This means if your bag isn't secured it'll come off around a corner or when you hit a bump. Personally I think the good old wire basket would have done fine, although I have read that the reason they didn't use that was because they were afraid of people leaving crap in them. Still it fit my bag with the strap over it and held it quite securely.

Full mudguards, skirtguards, mostly enclosed drivetrain and
plenty of anti-vandalism protection over the parts.

The bike rides pretty well, the seat is adjustable with a quick release, the controls are standard Nexus bits including the hub roller brakes. It rolls quite well and you can get reasonably quick on the flat. It's probably not the best hill climbing bike but the weight is there for durability which is more important - it's much easier to just grow some lungs and some legs rather than whinging about weight. After riding it for about 1km I chucked it straight back into a docking station at my destination. If you find the docking station is full you can get a 15min extension.

Overall I was pretty impressed with the bike share, I'll probably be getting a subscription. For £3 you can get a key with it which means you can just stick it in the dock right near the bike rather than having to go through the debit card rigamarole every time. It's really convenient for just going short distances and you don't have to worry about locking it up and getting it home. I'll probably report back after I've used it more but the first impression is a positive one.

Baguettes and Bicyclettes

2011-10-28T00:13:00.003+01:00

Here are some typical French bikes and their riders, taken over the course of the week:

French postal bike. Note the front rack and built in kickstand for extra stability.

Panniers seem to be the most popular type of bike luggage

Nice panniers

Full mudguards and dynamo lighting is pretty common

An old work trike and town bike in a Parisian side street

Vélib (the Paris bicycle share program) is quite popular

Add caption

you often see one pass you by every couple of seconds

In some streets the bus lane is shared by bikes

Nice old Peugeot

Nice porteur rack

To Versailles!

2011-10-26T00:53:00.002+01:00

Through the Bois de Bolougne

I've been in France for the last week and had a few days in Paris so I thought I'd ride to Versailles from Bois de Boulogne, which is this massive park in the 16th arrondissement. I did a fair bit of googling but couldn't really find that much definitive info on where to hire, so I just went to the Bois de Bolougne and went from there. There was one small stand which had bikes for hire, quite cheap only 12€ for the whole day. The bikes themselves were really simple city bike style bikes, 3 speed shimano hub, mudguards and rack. The Bois de Boulogne is massive, there are many bike paths both paved and hardpacked dirt. I'd like to come back just to cycle the park, there is also a roadie cycle loop around the hippodrome at the south west corner of the park where I saw quite a lot of club riders training.

St Cloud Park

After riding the bike for about a minute, it felt like the front tyre was flat. I noticed quickly that there was no valve and that the tyres were solid rubber! I had read a lot about them before and have been pretty skeptical because nothing has been able to successfully better the pneumatic tyres; they are used on aircraft where a blowout would be much much more dangerous all the way to wheelbarrows. In a nutshell they ride like shit, have bugger all grip and weigh a tonne. Also we discovered that one bike was stuck in top gear (which I got stuck with grinding up a hill) and another slipped gears.

After exiting the Bois de Boulogne there was some steep hills after crossing the Seine, through some backstreets and down to St Cloud Park. At the end of this was this tiny little town Marnes-la-Coquette. We passed through this we ended up at the Forest Fausses Reposes which is a large woodland on the edge of Paris on the way to Versailles. It's a large forest with lots of walking tracks and a nice smooth road going through it.

After the forest we went through to the commune of Versailles, after some back streets we finally reached the Chateau itself and its gardens. The view from the Palace towards the garden seemed surreal, particuarly as there was some kind of bonfire nearby which created a fog over the garden. The queue to get into the palace itself was enormous, probably about 300m long or so. Maybe next time...

It started raining a bit which made for some of the cobbled roads around Versailles a bit hairy, particularly with the solid tyres which bounced the bike around like worn out washing machine. We ended up catching the train back to Paris and finished the trip with a long version of a macaroon. The ride was more difficult than I thought, I had this idea that it'd be a ride that would be completely flat and all on off-road bike path. No such luck. Still I'd recommend it but probably on a road or touring bike, preferably with decently wide tyres for the cobbles :) I'll probably take Mr Ramen next time.

Moving!

2011-10-15T01:46:00.003+01:00

Hey readers,
It's been a while since my last post. The reason why is that I've been quite busy preparing for my move. I'm moving to London for a few years just to work for a bit in my industry (Architecture) as well as for a change of pace and to do some travel, as well as some cycling in the UK and Europe. I'm only taking one bike though, my trusty touring bike Mr Ramen. Hopefully I'll get some nice touring in the countryside. I decided to leave the Cinelli Xperience behind because it's not as versatile, and I'm not really sure what type of riding I'll do over there. Whether I'll join a racing club again or will just be happy riding through a valley in the Swiss alps :)

I managed to pack my bike into the box that the Cinelli came in, I was quite surprised at how small you could make it once you removed the fork, wheels and dropped the seat. I bound it all together with some rope and wrapped all the tubes in old rags and clothes to stop it getting scratched.

The airline restricts luggage size to a sum of 200cm of the width, height and depth. I managed to pack it into 86cm x 75cm x 30cm, total weight was about 16kg including helmet, shoes pedals, mudguards and packaging etc. Not too shabby.

All done! I had to check it into oversize luggage but it was included into my check-in luggage allowance. Hopefully it'll arrive in London in once piece. Wish me luck!

Tweed and traffic lights

2011-08-07T11:17:00.000+01:00

This instalment of the Sydney Tweed ride is the third one so far in Sydney. Originally it started in London organised by the http://www.lfgss.com/ forum. However it's got a pretty broad appeal, the majority of bikes and riders there are not hipsters on fixies. It's mostly everyday people on city bikes, vintage road bikes, mtb's, hybrids, folders, tandems and cargo bikes. However no one has shown up on a penny farthing so far, that would be beyond cool.

I've attended both previous Tweed rides, the pace is somewhat, slow to say the least. This year was different as the Bourke, Kent and King St cycleways were complete and were a featured part of the route. However having 300+ riders on such narrow bike paths at one time was chaotic to say the least. The problem I have found with the cycleways is that the light phasing is terrible. The root of the problem is this: the City of Sydney controls the actual design of the cycleway but the RTA controls the light phasing and intersection design. A big part of the problem is that the RTA basically operates with the ethos that automobile traffic takes priority over everything else. Even to the point of objecting the addition of car parking spaces in an effort to revive a derelict retail strip because it would slow down traffic as people parked in these spots:
http://www.smh.com.au/nsw/writing-on-wall-as-rta-grew-too-big-20110722-1hsvk.html

I've criticised the intersection design of the cycleways before, however the large crowd at today's tweed ride just exacerbated the problem. The basic hierarchy of the intersections on Bourke and Kent puts Motor traffic right at the top, pedestrians a distant second and bicycles under that and only on demand. The pedestrian lights will turn green once the traffic for the road parallel changes to green as well - this is usually automatic during the day however it changes to "on demand" mode during the wee hours of the morning - it is activated by hitting the crossing button at the traffic lights.

The 3 seconds you got a green light for the bike lane meant that the 300+
group got split up into bunches of about 10 or so

More waiting

The bicycle lanes will only activate when the magnetic sensor detects a bike, if this happens it will generally be phased the same as the pedestrian light. Quite often they don't even work if you aren't directly over it and won't work at all if you have a non-steel bike. Basically you can say that the RTA takes a very pessimistic view of the usage of the bike lanes; "Well I doubt many people will be using it anyway so what's the point". I have no idea why they don't just phase it automatically with the pedestrian lights, this only slows down traffic turning right or left across the bike lane for a measly 5 seconds that the pedestrian/bike light phase usually goes for. This is also on not so busy roads like Bourke St. The majority of the traffic goes along the Eastern distributor and South Dowling st.

A typical Bourke St cycleway intersection showing the light sequencing

This method of light phasing has been universally applied to all intersections involving cycleways in Bourke, Kent and King St. Basically cyclists are given a few seconds of green light, otherwise they are given a red to allow cars turning right and left from Bourke across the bike path. However the cars get something like 30 seconds or a minute, regardless if there is traffic or not. The bike light phasing is so comparatively short that often cyclists will run the red bike light because there are no cars turning at all.

The intersection of Albion and Bourke St

However I truly do not understand why they implemented this light phasing on the intersection of Bourke and Albion Streets. Because Albion St is one way there would be no traffic turning into which would cross over the cycleway, yet it will only give bikes a green light if there is a sensor to detect it. The same goes with the pedestrian crossing adjacent to it, people just ignore it and jaywalk because there are no cars coming towards them. See below for the google maps location of this intersection.

View Larger Map

Generally speaking, I find that the RTA gives very little priority to pedestrians or cyclists. In the Sydney city CBD cars are king. You often have to hit a button to "apply to cross the street" in which you will wait for a minute and get 10 seconds to cross the road whilst cars go as they please. Typically as well, drivers often fail to give way to crossing pedestrians, they take the attitude that you are intruding on their space as a pedestrian. So many times I have been crossing the street whilst I have been given a green pedestrian light and drivers waiting to turn have honked me. Walking up George St is really an exercise in giving way to cars, there are plenty of plans by Clover Moore to pedestrianise the CBD which would be great. Hopefully the amalgamation of the RTA into Transport NSW will help this.

Rainy ride

2011-07-17T05:35:00.001+01:00

I was a bit worried this morning that there might be a bit of rain, not too bad I had the Cinelli with some mudguards on. Went down to La Perouse and around to the shipping container terminals.

Barbed wire isn't so nice

2011-07-12T14:04:00.015+01:00

I was watching this stage of the Tour de France and my jaw dropped in disbelief seeing Juan Antonio Flecha and Johnny Hoogerland being wiped out by a France television car. Soon after I thought to myself, "oh dear this will be in the news tomorrow and I bet there will be all these neanderthals thinking Awesome!" boy was I right... Reading the comments on the smh.com.au website I found this comment:

"And then the cyclists blame it all on the driver when they are hit at 80 km/hr with no protective gear on them & no sense of the rules of the road applying to them"

This comment made me think a lot about the type of mentality that some people have towards cycling generally in Australia. It's a culture of victim blaming - that it's the cyclist's fault for not wearing "protective gear" and that somehow absolves a negligent driver for nearly killing them. I get this sense that many people have this mentality that cycling is a high risk activity and that if you get hit by a car, it's your own fault - regardless if someone sideswiped you because they didn't check their blind spot or they didn't give way to you when they should have. This kind of thinking is somewhat common in Australia, scarily.

You can draw parallels to victims of sexual assault, that if a woman dresses in a certain way it's her own fault if she gets assaulted - that she accepted the risk, that the victim is to blame and that the attacker bears no responsibility for their actions. This kind of thinking disgusts me.

People have to take responsibility for their own actions, but the duty of care owed to others should be proportional to their capability to cause damage to others. For example a pedestrian has much less capability of causing damage to others than an aircraft pilot flying a 747 full of passengers. Likewise a person driving a car owes a higher duty of care towards others than they would if they were walking or cycling. When was the last time you heard of a cyclist losing control of a bike and then running into a child care centre full of children?

Sunday ride to the Gong

2011-07-10T11:01:00.002+01:00

Today's ride went through the Royal national park and along the coast through to Wollongong, battling a constant headwind which at times felt like you were going nowhere. However the sun was shining and it was still a great day. I stopped at the Thirroul antique store where I picked up this Reynolds 653 frame but had no such luck this time. The part along Coalcliff where Sea Cliff bridge is, is possibly one of the nicest most scenic places to ride along in the Sydney area.

Finally, arrived at the Gong.

Old bikes and longnecks

2011-07-05T15:08:00.000+01:00

As a child I remember loving riding my dinky little white BMX because of the freedom it gave me, I always felt like I was flying on two wheels - I loved riding through puddles after it rained. As a teenager I remember spending countless weekends by myself wondering around on my rigid GT Palomar MTB exploring the surrounding suburbs. What I really loved was exploring new places and suburbs, I'd remember just packing my backpack with some food, some tools and a spare and I'd head off in some random direction and see where I'd end up. At that stage in my life I was obsessed with bikes, mountain bikes in particular. I'd spend so much time bugging the guy at the local bike shop, I was one of those annoying kids who would hang around there after school every day.

I'd spend so much time working on my bike flipped upside down in the laundry, I'd be forever fiddling with the derailleurs and brakes (they were cantilevers so you could fiddle with them forever) for no real apparent reason. I then upgraded this bike to a Haro Vector MTB with Rock Shox forks on the front and V-Brakes, this was a revelation! At the time it was about $500 or so which seemed like a lot to a 15yr old.

A few years later the bug wore off, and my bike sat unused outside for years. I maybe rode it once in about 5 years. My obsession moved onto cars, vintage VW's in particular which consumed my passion for another couple of years. It wasn't until I moved out of home from suburbia into inner city Sydney. I took my bike with me as well as my old '63 Beetle, I would ride to uni and for short trips which made a lot of sense. I left it outside a friend's place locked to a pole with a cable lock one night and came back to find it gone, the theif lifted it over the no-standing sign by using a shopping trolley to stand on. Even though this bike, which I barely cared about, never maintained and always neglected - I felt my heart skip a beat. I had a lot of memories with this bike, it's buggered headset which was eternally loose and inappropriate downhill tyres, the many times I went out, got blind drunk and rode home. It served me well and this was the end. I got a lift home with my friend, slumped over in the back seat, upset over my crappy old bike.

About a week later I was walking home from uni past Redfern station in Sydney when I saw an old aboriginal woman wearing my helmet and pushing along my bike with a longneck in hand, along with a guy who was also longneck in hand. I immediately went right up to her and said "hey that's my bike give me it back! I'm a poor student and that bike was stolen last week". She replied that she couldn't give it to me because she had borrowed it from her nephew. I had thoughts of just grabbing the bike and running, although I was a bit worried because there was two of them. She introduced herself as "Sandra" who lived on The Block and suggested that I could go speak to her nephew myself at his house, I asked where his house was and she replied Northcott. For those not familiar with Surry Hills in Sydney, the Northcott centre is a public housing block which is somewhat notorious to say the least. I refused and she asked me for my phone number, she said she'd call me in a few hours and we parted.

Soon after I was kicking myself, I was thinking I should have just grabbed it and ran, they were both most likely drunk anyway and would have no chance of catching me. I spent the next couple of hours re-enacting myself grabbing the bike and pedalling away furiously with the pair left dumbfounded. Suddenly my phone rang and it was Sandra, she told me to meet her at the place we met in 15 minutes. It was at a public place about 20m from a police station, but I still took my flatmate with me. I had imagined that they'd probably be waiting for me with even more people waiting to mug my poor student ass.

I arrived there and Sandra was there, gave me back my bike and my helmet and apologised. She said her nephew had bought it off some dodgy friend for $30 and he had no idea that it was stolen. All she asked for was some change for the train which I gave her. After all this, I ended up riding this bike for a few years again still, eventually I started putting more miles on it and finally did some maintenance. Only about a year ago I donated the bike to the local community bike workshop The Nunnery.

I wasn't too upset this time as I'd actually chosen it's fate and I had 4 bikes at the time. It was better to give it to someone who could use it rather than it rotting away in my backyard. Funnily enough I was walking home a month ago and I came across this house with about 50 bikes all piled up in the front yard, all chained up - one of them was my Haro.

This made me a little sad, that some hoarder had got it and that it was only going away from rotting in my backyard to someone else's a few blocks away. I guess it kind of balances out my luck.

Giving old hubs a new breath of life - Part 3

2011-07-05T13:35:00.001+01:00

Continuing from my last post...

After some riding, the cassette is holding up well with no slipping, the gear range of the 13-26 cassette is more useful than the old 14-28 from before. The only observation I have made is that the 13t track sprocket/locking is difficult to shift up from. The track sprocket has teeth that are shaped to retain the chain at all times, not to allow easy shifting. The original uniglide sprockets, although they didn't have ramps like modern sprockets have beveled and angled teeth to allow easy chain movement. I might see if I can track down a uniglide 13t top sprocket or file the teeth of the track sprocket down a bit to match.

A hyperglide sprocket on top of a track sprocket - you can see the difference in tooth profile

The tooth profile is also more pointed compared to the square profiled track cog

I've also switched to a 9sp chain as well, the 8sp was requiring too much trimming and was too noisy. With the 9sp chain on it now, it's dead quiet and shifts a lot better without any trimming. Supposedly 9sp is about the limit you can easily friction shift with, I find it quite easy - similar to running a 7sp cassette with a 5/6/7sp chain. I would guess maybe even 10sp is ok with a bit of practice.

The only problem left to deal with now is profiling the track sprocket so it's easier to shift, I already gave it a go with a file but the steel is pretty hard so might give it a go with a big file or worse yet the angle grinder :) That's all for now.

Giving old hubs a new breath of life - Part 2

2011-06-21T15:41:00.002+01:00

Continuing on from my previous post about adapting old Shimano 600EX hubs. I have done some riding on them, it's a bit dangerous really as I can't stop staring at the pretty shininess of the front hub whilst I'm riding. The radial pattern really is so damn sexy, if not the most practical of lacing patterns. Otherwise the wheels have held up fine other than one minor detail...

The 7 speed cassette only left about 3mm of thread for the lockring, not enough! You can see a few marks on some of the threads in this pic from the top sprocket slipping off.

In the last post I documented how I used a Dura-Ace track sprocket as the top sprocket/lockring on the rear hub, however it wasn't completely engaged with all the threads on the freehub. I was riding along and shifted into the top gear and felt it slip and then heard a clack. The top sprocket had tightened down then popped over a thread - a sign that there wasn't enough thread engagement for it to handle the torque of pedalling. The normal uniglide lockring threading is somewhat loose anyway which isn't a suprise as it's segmented with the freehub splines.

The root of the problem is that I am running 7 speeds on a freehub only meant for 6 sprockets. According to http://www.sheldonbrown.com/cribsheet-spacing.html a 7 speed cassette with spacers has a stack height of 31.9mm. My setup is actually an 8 speed cassette with the top two sprockets removed and the dura-ace track sprocket put at the top.

8 speed cassette with top two sprockets removed and my dura-ace track sprocket comes in at 31.4mm

Freehub width measures at about 29mm

This meant that my cassette was 2-3mm too tall for the freehub, 8 speed spacers are 3mm so if I used the thinner 2.5mm 9 speed spacers I could reduce 5 x 0.5mm which would get the stack height down to 29mm or so which is bang on correct. The only problem was that I may have to use a narrower 9 speed chain to suit.

with 9 speed spacers it came to 29.2mm stack height

Tightented down properly the top sprocket finishes flush with the freehub, just like the proper uniglide cassettes do.

reducing the cassette stack height gives me more clearance to the drive side which means I can respace the wheel more to the right to reduce the amount of dish.

I was a bit nervous about tightening the lockring because I was afraid of overloading the threads and damaging them. However since it was now engaging all of the freehub threads this didn't happen and I got it down nice and tight. I took it for a quick test ride out the back and it worked fine, although the friction shifting was now quite tetchy, trimming was required on most shifts. This is most likely due to using the wider 8 speed chain (7.2mm pin width) on a cassette with 9 speed spacing. I've got a 9 speed chain on order so that should fix that, the pin width of it is 6.8mm which is less than half a millimetre, however it should make a big difference.

In hindsight, I should have seen that the lockring engaging only half of the threads would not hold, particularly in such a highly stressed part. It needs to be strong enough to withhold the cranking of a heavy-set cyclist going up a steep hill fully loaded. Anyway, now I'm quite confident that it's up to the job because it's fitting like how it was intended to. That's all for now.

Continue to Part 3...

Mr Ramen Part 5: New wheels

2011-06-13T12:02:00.000+01:00

Check spoke length... OK

Continuing from my last post which showed the rebuild of the Shimano 600EX hubs, I went and built them into some new wheels. The rims I used were a pair of Weinmann box section double eyeletted rims which I got off ebay used. I decided to lace the front wheel as radial, mostly for bling factor - I love the way radial lacing looks especially on a high flange hub. In fact it's probably best done on a high flange hub because there is much more meat between the spoke holes on the flanges. I've used Damon Rinard's spoke calculator in the past and it's served me well. This time the spoke lengths were spot on.

Partly laced, one more side to go. The extra thickness of the later Shimano 600EX hubs is reassuring

I had to decide how to lace the rear hub, originally I had wanted to lace it 3-cross drive side and radial non-drive side. However after a bit of reading, this is actually the opposite way to do it. Radial lacing tends to lower spoke tension - typically the drive side on a wheel dished for a cassette has higher drive side spoke tension. Radial spokes tend to run lower tension so putting them on the non-drive side only would further imbalance the tension. This seemed really strange to me as my Campagnolo Zonda wheels are laced radial non-drive and tangentially drive side. Also many other factory rear wheels are laced this way. The correct way to do it is to lace the drive side radially which comes closer to evening out the tension on a wheel dished for a cassette. However this requires a rear hub with a largeish body which can transfer drive torque from drive side to the non-drive side.

This was all just to complicated so I just gave up and laced the thing 3-cross both sides, it's a tried and true pattern. Funnily enough the spokes from the previous wheelbuild I had done for Mr Ramen were exactly the same length so I just reused them. Fit perfectly.

However, there was one slight problem. The front wheel built up perfectly nice and straight from the get go, however the rear rim had a big hop in it laterally, like 3-4mm. I did notice when I bought them that one of the rims had a slight dent in them from possibly hitting a pothole. Oh well, I got them for $40 so it's not a huge loss. I ended up pulling apart another spare wheel for the Araya 20A rim which I laced up. This took a little bit of work to get true but I managed to get it nice and straight. Cosmetically other than the Araya sticker it's difficult to tell it apart from the Weinmann on the front. They are both box section and double eyeletted.

The Shimano 600EX rear hub has a convenient oiler hole

High flange radial lacing bling

All done

I've so far ridden it about 5kms so far, hasn't imploded yet which is a good sign. It's actually a bit dangerous because I find myself gazing at the shininess of the front hub whilst I'm riding when I should be watching the traffic ahead of me. Happy riding.

Giving old hubs a new breath of life

2011-06-13T10:43:00.003+01:00

I've been meaning to rebuild the wheels for this bike, originally I had nice old high flange Shimano 600 wheels with polished Araya rims. However I managed to snap the axle in the rear hub, it was a freewheel style hub with inboard bearings on the drive side so it was not entirely unexpected seeing as I tend to jump off kerbs a lot - also the width of the 7 speed freewheel pushes the bearings about as far in as you can go without going to a modern freehub design. The rims were needed for my roadster so I just chucked on a random wheelset that I had lying around.

I rebuilt the hubs and repacked it with some fresh grease

The hub on the left is stamped CD which puts it the '78 year, the hub on the right is EG which is '82. There are subtle differences like a ridge between the bearing cup bulge and the middle of the hub body on the EG hub. Also the EG hub has thicker flanges with countersunk spoke holes.

I managed to pick up a pair of Shimano 600EX hubs that came with the Airlite, however the rear hub is quite rare being a high flange version of the first freehub designs. The front one was similar to the previous front hub with some subtle differences. This pair was stamped with the date codes EG which dates it to 1982, this puts it right into the Uniglide era. The advantage of this hub is that the drive side bearings on the rear hub are brought right out near the end of the axle which effectively eliminates problems with broken/bent axles which typically plagues freewheel hubs.

Shimano 600EX high flange Uniglide hub. Date code reads EG and the drive side bearing cover reads Shimano 6D

The only problem with the older Uniglide hubs is that the freewheel bodies are not interchangeable like the newer style ones and Uniglide cassettes don't have any shift ramps on the sprockets so you end up with poor shifting under load. Modern Shimano cassettes won't go on these old Uniglide freehubs because they introduced a wide spline to index the sprockets together (for alignment of shifting ramps) so they only solution to adapt them is to file off the tab on the sprocket.

You can see the wider tab directly to the right of the arrow in the pic

This is the sprocket with the tab filed off. Fits nicely on the old Uniglide freehub now.

With this modification you can basically use any modern sprockets with shifting ramps etc. The only limitation is the smallest sprocket which acts as a lockring, luckily the threading is the same as track cogs so I got hold of a 13t Dura Ace track sprocket to use for this. The only problem with this is that the spacing behind a track sprocket is 5mm, the spacers typically used for 7/8 speed cassettes is 3mm, so I will have to grind the backside of the track sprocket down to 3mm to match. Also the stack height is a smidgin high as you can see in the pic below, it is only engaging about 3 threads on the freehub. There are about 6 threads in total.

The cassette on the hub with the track sprocket on. Slight problem.

Not much thread left for the locking/small sprocket

After a quick cut with the cutting disk, grinding and then sanding...

Voila! 3mm spacing

Whilst not sitting entirely flush, it's sitting with the correct 3mm spacing now. I might try using thinner 9 speed spacers (2.5mm) to try to get the cassette stack height lower so the lockring will sit properly flush with the freehub body.

I've given it a test ride and it works like a charm, I'm still a bit paranoid about putting too much force on the top sprocket because the thread might give seeing as it's only engaged on three of them. Now with a cassette hub I have much better choice of gearing and I can more easily customise it to what I want.

Continue to Part 2 here...

Falling off

2011-05-30T15:58:00.000+01:00

I came off my bike a few weeks ago, it was during the Sunday club run, I was at the front of the bunch coming into a right hander. The road was a bit wet so I took it a bit slow, as soon as I started banking *whoop* and I'm on my arse. I was probably only going at about 20km/h or so. The front wheel just gave way without warning. Normally you can feel the front tyre give a little when it's at it's limits but this one just went instantly. I later discovered that I had a slow leak on the front and it probably contributed to the crash because it was only at about 10-20psi.

The first thing I was worried about was my bike (yes silly me) I was fine. I had a slight cut on my thumb and the side of by bum was grazed a bit. My shorts weren't ripped or anything but I was just sore. Little did I know that I got a decent sized road rash spot, I found this out when I had a shower when I got back home. Damage to bike, some road rash on the derailleur and the brake lever. Otherwise it was working fine, more damage to my ego.

you can just see the alloy lever through the faux carbon on the Athena levers

As soon as I washed it off I used some gauze and bandages to cover up the wound, what I can advise is to get the damn non-stick type dressings because these kind of wounds ooze like hell and changing your dressing is very painful because they stick to the wound. I googled a bit and found that many people use these dressings called Duoderms, they are effectively like a plastic sticky patch that forms a second skin. It keeps the wound moist and allows it to heal whilst keeping it waterproof and clean. They are a hell of a lot more comfortable, it really does feel like a second skin and it cuts down the pain a lot. Only thing is that compared to the gauze and bandages it doesn't absorb any of the ooze so it'll inevitably leak out... Yeah I know, gross but the solution is to wrap the duoderm in bandages to absorb this.

1 week later

After about 1 1/2 weeks my road rash started to heal up and I started using Tegaderms, these are very similar to Duoderms but a lot thinner and about 1/4 of the price (Duoderms were $10 a pop at the chemist). It became fully healed after another week or so, the strange thing about these types of dressings is that the wound doesn't scab like normal. All the skin regrowth happens underneath and you end up with a much cleaner result.

Anyway, all this has been a good lesson. It's the first time I have had decent road rash after many times falling off my bike. Safe riding!

Yet another raleigh - Part II

2011-05-16T16:25:00.000+01:00

Continuing on from the previous story of the Raleigh Carlton Super course that I picked up off fleabay, I decided to do something a little different from my other bikes. I took off the Shimano 600 gear and I decided to make it fixed gear. When I say fixie I mean not necessarily fixed gear, but rather the trend of the appearance of a fixed gear track bike which has become popular in the last few years.

This is my first fixed bike, I'm well aware that the fixie craze reached saturation point a year or two ago. The vast majority are used for commuting in the city and will never be ridden fixed or see within 10km of a velodrome, in the last few years practical things like mudguards and racks have been appearing on fixies. It's a regression because it appears that most of these bikes are evolving to being what a Chinese peasant bike already does very well. Cheap transportation. I simply don't get why you'd bother to go all the trouble to achieve the track bike look and then slap a freewheel on it and never ride it fixed - riding fixed is rather fun and rewarding.

I'd always loved the look of Path racers. The exact meaning of this has been debated since the beginning of time on cycling oriented forums around the world. What I take it to mean is an older style bike - preferably pre WWII meant for racing on the track, what used to be known as path. Most of these paths were quite rough and unsealed so relaxed seat and head angles and long wheelbases were predominant. Also things like bolt-on seatstays, 7 shaped seatposts, big frames (by todays standards), ridiculous amounts of fork rake and wood rims are characteristic of this style.

I was partially inspired by the Pashley G'uvnor as well as the lads at Bishops cycles in NZ and the traditional British club bike. Sadly I gave away the 50's roadster frame I did have, dammit I should have kept it and bent back the rear stays. Still the Super course I had was reasonably old, but still had modernish geometry. The head/seat angles are at 72/73º– or thereabouts.

These are the Sugino Super Mighty track cranks I found in the back of a dumpster truck, they have a little bit of wear from pedal rub... Other than that they are pretty nice, 144BCD, 165 length perfect for this application. The gearing is 44x18, which I find is perfect for commuting. I haven't had any trouble climbing up any hills yet, although I have a 17t cog on order as I find I spin out the 18t on the flats when I'm going over 30km/h or so.

The bars I used are steel north road bars that I had lying around, they are the type which has the grips nearly parallel so they are not too dissimilar from albatross or moustache bars. I quite like the grip they give you, it's a bit like riding in the drops all the time.

I previously had MAFAC centrepulls on it, however out of curiosity (and also because it's a Raleigh) I stuck a Weinmann 610 centrepull on it. After riding with it for about 2 weeks I can certainly say they are a hell of a lot stiffer than the MAFACs. The arms don't flex anywhere near as much because they are much thicker, the bridge is thicker and stronger too. This means they don't need to be toed in anywhere near as much and you can pull on them harder to get stronger braking. Also the arms take standard road brake pads which are easier to setup than the smooth post canti-style pads.

So far the Brooks B17N that came with it hasn't broken, however I'm expecting it to do so soon. I really enjoy riding this bike, however I know it's not the most practical or fast bike in my quiver. It's really just a fun project. I have ridden it with a Carradice Nelson bag on the back which made it a whole lot more practical. If I was going to use this day to day, I definitely would leave the bag on there permanently and also fit mudguards and a rear brake. However I already have three other bikes which can perform this role so it's probably better to keep this one as a fun bike.

Anyway that's all for now :)

Light lottery

2011-05-10T13:54:00.000+01:00

I occasionally satisfy my geek side and my tightarse side by ordering various electronic gadgets and doodads from www.dealextreme.com which is a front end for factories churning out cheap crap from China. A lot of stuff on there is ridiculously cheap, mostly because it comes directly from the factory, dealextreme just handles the branding and customer service - they don't buy any stock themselves.

3 out of 4 ain't bad

I order iPod accessories, computer bits and pieces and one thing I usually pick up is bike lights. My experience with the stuff from there has led me to usually buy two of everything. There is about a 50% chance that most stuff from there won't last longer than a few months of continual use, however it is bloody cheap. I picked up some knog knockoffs and some skull jolly roger bike lights which come in twin packs, perfect.

Virtually identical

Three out of four aint bad eh? The knog ripoffs are almost identical to the real thing, I have the real deal in black next to the ripoff which is in white. They are virtually identical, except there is still dags of silicone left over from the mould in the knockoff (knogoff har har) and it's missing the ridge in the band on the strap. The internals look identical, down to the cap over the battery and the lens. The only thing that is missing is the knog branding.

Knogoff on left (white), real one on the right (black)

Missing ridge on the strap

The knockoffs went on my randonneur

The jolly roger on the Raleigh, now it looks like a BADASS FIXIE (not)

All in all, not so bad, total cost was $9.82. Dealextreme is like the $2 shop of the internet, as long as you know you're buying cheap crap it's all good fun. I've ordered heaps of bike lights from them over the past few years, none of them are still running after 6 months. The Ay Ups I bought however, have lasted more than 2 years and are still going strong. However they cost many many times more. I guess you get what you pay for.

Raleigh Twenty wheel rebuild

2011-05-08T06:11:00.001+01:00

My partner's Twenty was in a bit of a sad state, just riding it along you could feel the whole bike just wobble from side to side like it was a broken washing machine. The rear wheel had about 3 or four broken spokes and the rest were just waiting to break. So I decided to rebuild it and strip the hub and give it a good clean. The wheel was completely original and was dated back to 1975 which means it gave 36 years of service which isn't anything to sneeze at.

Covered in decades of leaked out oil and grease

So upon disassembly I found out that something like a third of the 28 spokes were broken which explained why the wheel was so wobbly. Once the rim was removed and cleaned I could see it had a Rigida stamping on it, I never knew a French company supplied Raleigh with rims. Anyway the rim appeared to be in good shape, and the budget was limited so I was going to re-use it and lace it up with new spokes. Although not before I would tear down the hub. This was the first time I had taken apart an AW hub. Removing the cones is easy enough although normal cone wrenches are a bit too fat to get at the cones, there is a special Sturmey Archer one you can get however. The ball ring took a bit of effort to get off, I had to lace the wheel up first because I found it impossible to remove when it was just the hub by itself, I didn't have a vice or anything else to stop it from rotating.

The wheel was built exactly the way it came except with new DT Swiss champion spokes with brass nipples and spoke washers underneath the heads, these are necessary to get proper bracing of the spoke head bend around the thin steel flanges of the hub. It can be a bit difficult to get spoke washers, but I obtained mine from a specialist hobby store in Sydney http://www.casulahobbies.com.au, they are the 8BA washers which fit perfectly for normal sized spokes. Also for your information, the spoke length on a 451 sized wheel with a AW hub and chrome steel Rigida rim is 218mm or thereabouts. Your results may vary.

Ready to build with washers at the ready

Once the wheel was laced up removing the ball ring was relatively quick, I used a punch and hammer to tap away at the little ridges. The steel is very hard as I didn't even make a mark after hammering at it for about 5 minutes beforehand. Once the ball ring was out it was pretty easy to disassmble the hub, I had looked at drawings before hand and even watched a few videos. They only have one set of planets, so as far as internal gear hubs go they are the most basic.

Inside you could tell that this was probably the only time it had ever been apart since it left the factory in 1975. There was decades of grease and caked on gunk everywhere, the bearings looked very good, there was no scoring in the cones or races and no cracked teeth in any of the planets. The clutch looked pretty good with no bad wear. I just cleaned everything with some kerosene, wiped it down and put it back together again. The seals at either end of the hub do their job really well, they are a labyrinth type seal which keeps the dirt and water out very effectively. For a low maintenance city bike it's a perfect application, they are also supposed to have very little drag as well because there is no physical contact between either side of the seal compared to lip seals which rely on a flexible rubber lip which contacts the other surface.

Completed wheel ready to rock

Brass spoke washers

The bearings got some fresh grease, as did the seals. The rest of the hub was lubricated with ATF (automatic transmission fluid) which is on the thinner side, I've been using this stuff for the past few years. The hub only requires a few drops, overfilling usually means it'll leak out of the gap between the ball ring and the driver, there is strangely no seal between the two other than a dust shield which goes behind the sprocket. Once together I gave it spin, it had that classic sound which you only get from a Sturmey Archer, it's a clacketly clack sound that comes from the high and low pawls which is very distinct. Music to a bike head's ears :) Happy riding.

Mudflaps et cetera

2011-04-16T08:01:00.002+01:00

It's been raining. All of last night and today it's been raining very heavily in Sydney town. So an appropriate time to sit at home, veg out and talk about mudflaps. So my roadster has nice full length mudguards from velo-orange and I have a Carradice cape and spats which means riding in the rain isn't all that bad at all. I wouldn't want my velo-orange mudguards any longer as they already catch on things. The beauty of mudflaps is that they don't catch on kerbs or other objects low to the ground but offer that extra protection from spray to your feet and your drivetrain.

I now had to make a mudflap. Having never had a mudflap on a bicycle before didn't help, I did notice the need for one as the front mudguard, as long as it is, didn't really catch all of the water flicked up by the front wheel. Off to clark rubber I went and I bought some 3mm fabric reinforced rubber sheet. I cut out a trapezoidal shape, rounded the edges and bolted it through the front.

Worked pretty well. A lot of extra water that the mudguard would miss would be caught by the flap. Although I found that water would be too easily deflected out the side and onto my feet. I needed something taller and wider.... Introducing Mk II mudflap :)

This shows the old one with the new wider and taller one.

MkII fitted

You can see it's a fair bit larger, mostly wider.

After a few wet rides, I can say it works a fair bit better than the old one, mostly because of the increased width, it's slightly taller as well which helps. More spray gets deflected, in a big puddle the water comes off the sides and some gets on my shoes, but most of it gets pushed off to the side so far that it misses. It's a big improvement on MkI in that regard. Here's a video of it in use.

Here's a slo-mo screencap of a pass through a big puddle, you can see most of the water being deflected sideways past my feet.

It's the most totally un-aerodynamic little device, but it works a treat going through big puddles. I've seen even bigger mudflaps that are so tall they wrap around the stays at the top. Maybe this could be MkIII? That's all for now.