Bicycles!

[eizbaer]

So my wife’s (insert Borat) bike has a belt drive. Thus, the drive side rear triangle has an opening so you can get said belt replaced. There’s a little aluminum piece in the chain stay to close it and (hopefully) make it rigid that’s held on by 4x M4 screws. Or supposed to be…
When the bike developed a clicking noise I discovered one of them had buggered right off and one other was, while not loose, definitely not tight enough either. No loctite. Again. QA really doesn’t seem to be a thing in the bike industry…
Luckily it was indeed a regular M4 screw. And while I had to cut one down as it was too long, at least I could just go fetch one from the collection.

 

[Adunaphel]

I feel that bike manufacturers seem to leave final assembly and QA to the LBS...

 

[eizbaer]

I feel that bike manufacturers seem to leave final assembly and QA to the LBS...

Which, in turn, means Giant don't have their brand stores (yes, it was a brand specific store) QA process under control... which, to me, is the same as their factory QA not being ok. also: that piece right there im 95% sure was put in at the factory, not during assembly at the store

also, of course, the bike decided to be dead flat this morning. nice. and so, since I only have 28mm tubes and the thing has 47mm tires... thaaaat's a bit of a stretch. off to decathlon I go, where you actually get a volume discount as soon as you buy more than two of their honestly already very reasonably priced tubes. lol.

anway, there's some schwalbe city style APOCALYPSE REINFORCED whatever tire on there. which is fair enough... and the actual changing the tube took me all of two minutes. off and on, without any tire levers, super easy. and then the struggle started.
it honestly took me half an hour of wrestling the tire, pumping up, flattening it again, re-pumping, half a liter of soapy water... until I got the bead to seat all the way around. because the tire itself is so ridiculously inflexible because of its reinforcing, it just does not want to move out of the tire bed. ugh. what a nightmare. in the end I got it there by inflating it to 6.5 bar (far above its 4.5max rating) and hitting it a bunch. UGH.

 

[Adunaphel]

With winter on its way, I was in dire need of a decent headlight on my road bike for the commutes. Requirements were

• Mounted below the handlebars, preferrably under the Garmin
• Proper cut-off pattern so I'm not an asshole
• Good visibility in pitch dark
• Please don't break the bank

The XAND LED Op de Koplamp (Dutch wordplay on upside down headlight) in 800lm guise was a good match on all four at €60.

It has 3 modes, 100lm for being seen, which should suffice for most ocmmutes, a 400lm "low beam" and an 800lm "high beam" which will blind oncoming traffic, but is VERY useful in dark forests. Did a short test ride through some properly dark stuff, and was impressed.

 

[eizbaer]

Well, in a cycling first for me, a wasp managed to get stuck in one of my helmet vents and proceeded to sting me right to the (upper left) forehead. Bloody bastard!

edit: guess that's one more off my cycling bingo card...

 

[DanRoM]

Shit.

My Hammerhead Karoo took a slight fall from hip height, not even directly to the ground. While the display works, it just doesn't start anymore. No reaction to pressing the buttons to switch it on. When plugging it in to charge, the splash screen shows for a few seconds, then goes dark again. The battery charging screen does not show. Nothing rattling inside the device.
That was far too gentle to have killed such a device, but I fear I have actually managed to do it.

 

[eizbaer]

Shit.

Dito, I guess…

That was far too gentle to have killed such a device, but I fear I have actually managed to do it.

Yeah that sounds like incredibly bad luck. as you say, that really shouldn’t do anything to the thing.
I remember losing my wahoo on a very rough gravel trail some time last year when it wasn’t quite mounted properly (Chinesium mount was a bit tight, so I didn’t get it in right). Rolled and bounced along for a good few meters over all the rocks at probably 30+ km/h… nothing. No scratches to the screen, even.

 

[Eye-Q]

Eww, that sucks. Since the screen works briefly when plugging it in to charge the unit isn't completely dead so maybe some magic button combination which only the Hammerhead support knows might revive it. Or you could ask in the Hammerhead community if someone else had that issue and whether they were able to fix it.

 

[Adunaphel]

Shit.

That sucks a lot, man. Makes me extra glad I managed to catch mine when the combined mount of my new headlight decided to come loose on a stretch of cobbles...

 

[eizbaer]

The smart move would be to use a leash (?)… all the head units usually come with a little connector somewhere, but somehow, even after it flying off on me, I still don’t have the emergency leash thing.

 

[Eye-Q]

The Karoo comes with a Lanyard as well, and I've used it ever since I bought it. That doesn't help when you take the headunit from the bike in the garage to charge it in your apartment/house and it slips out of your hand though...

 

[DanRoM]

Exactly what happened.

And I actually don't have a lanyard, that wasn't included with the used unit I bought.

I already checked prices and availability for a replacement. Luckily, because the successor is out (€500, holy shit), getting another used one of the same generation as mine won't break the bank.

 

[eizbaer]

Ugh... our cargo bikes front light stopped working.

so that only took 2.5 months... but today, without any announcement whatsoever, I got a package with a new replacement front light. it's a different light, but by name only. for some reason it seems the same light is sold under both cubes own acid (original) and RFR (replacement) brands. the new one for some reason supposedly has 120 instead of the original 110 lux - it's the exact same light, though. and it'll probably drown exactly the same as the original unit. oh well.
I already put a 15e amazon light on the bike, rated for 70 lux, which does its job well enough for the moment. i fully expect that thing to not survive the winter though, so I'll have this replacement ready to go now. at least it should plug straight in, rather than need crimping and soldering and what have you, like the cheapo amazon unit did.

with the upcoming public holiday next thursday and associated "bridge day" i'll see if I can get started on overhauling my daily driver bicycle (I call it that... but I actually seldomly ride it, but on our holidays I do), which has been annoying me for a while now with a completely destroyed BB and other ailments (i.e. the 3x8 being used as a 1x5 actually). the bike is now about 20 years old, as are most of the parts on it. Since the actual frame is fine, I'll just take everything off (I actually hope I can manage, after that time - worst case: fire), give it a good clean and start re-assembly with new and or spare parts. I still have a set (two, actually...) of old mavic aksium wheels, which, while not great, are perfectly usable. I got a chinesium front fork (alloy, so should not be too dodgy), cause the original suspension one has completely collapsed. I should also still have an SLR boost saddle somewhere and I picked up a random stem and dropbar combo in a sale. new headset, new BB and... to be honest, I completely splurged on a GRX 1x11 group in said sale also, so that's going on there as well. since the frame is so old, it doesn't have flat mount brake... mounts, not even post mount, no, it has actual side mount thingies and for some reason there is not supposed to be an adapter for this. but it does exist on aliexpress of course. lets see where I end up
still need to decide on some rubber. I guess I could go with the classic schwalbe marathon or something, but I don't know yet. literal last piece to worry about.

 

[Eye-Q]

since the frame is so old, it doesn't have flat mount brake... mounts, not even post mount, no, it has actual side mount thingies and for some reason there is not supposed to be an adapter for this.

Without knowing the frame I guess it's IS2000, there are inexpensive adapters in german shops as well, for example here in all variants for front and rear mostly in stock. Then again, when you change the fork anyway you can get one with post/flat mount anyway so you'll just need an adapter for the rear.

 

[eizbaer]

I guess it's IS2000

that's what that stuff is called! yes! I think what sort of turned me off that particular adapter, cause I stumbled across that one for sure, was that it goes to postmount and then I'd have to stack another flat mount adapter on top of that. not an issue, as such, but if I can get an adapter that goes all the way directly...

you'll just need an adapter for the rear.

true that, I just ordered one off of aliexpress for similarly cheap as the postmount thing you linked to when I ordered all the other chinesium stuff. cutting out one adapter from the stack should be good. or something. I dunno. stacking adapter just felt wrong

At least I think something along those lines was my reasoning, I don't actually remember - it's been a while since I got the stuff. And I don't actually even remember where I put the damn thing. hmm...

edit: here it is - paid a whopping 3€ for it.

looking at the thing, the adapter stacking issue may have been with the resulting rotor size or something. i dunno.

 

[Adunaphel]

After a little over 5000km, the rear tyre on my bike was looking a tad worn, so with the autumn ahead of us with lots of wet roads, wet leaves and wet everything else, I figured that ti might be a good idea to add some fresh rubber to the equation to keep myself as safe as I can be around traffic. After a lot of googling and research, I landed on the Schwalbe Pro One in 32mm, supposedly similar to the GP5000 in terms of rolling resistance and grip, but slightly more durable, slightly more usable on wet roads and you don't need to WWE them onto your rims. And of course tanwall to make the whole combination slightly less monochromatic.

(Yes this was before I realised I had mounted the rear tyre backwards and had to remount it in the correct orientation)

 

[eizbaer]

Welp, decided to bite the bike and order one of these (the coupling thingamajig, random shop pic):

The „original“, not one of the cheapo single bar things that let the kids bike flop around all over the place. If our daughter does want to ride for herself, her bike is off in a matter of seconds and the thing folds up onto the rear of the bike.

 

[eizbaer]

Alright, it arrived and I put it on my wifes bike just now. The nice thing is, with a pair of proprietary (read: overpriced) nuts (deeeez nuttssss), the whole contraption just swaps over to another bike in a minute. barely any more involved (actually, I'd say easier) than taking the kiddie bike on and off. also less than one minute once you figured out what you're doing...
which is the biggest issue with this thing. it's very much an over-engineered german product. there are so many plain dumb design decisions in there simply because someone decided to build this to last FOREVER. too many different wrench sizes, for one. mounting the thing for the first time is actually a complete nightmare because of it. everything is set with an actual fixed screw, rather than just "tightened down" with ratchet strap kind of things. very annoying to install for the first time and, arguably, not something someone "with two left hands" should be doing, because they're definitely going to screw it up at some point.