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My winter commuting adds up to about 2000 km/week, and when it's super salty and wet like it is most days now I need to lube daily or there's visible rust and more importantly it doesn't shift right. Light oils don't work either, right now I'm running motorcycle sticky stuff which holds up a little better. Grease can work but is too much work to apply. Imma get some chainsaw bar oil and try next. Cleaning chains simply doesn't happen, I let the brine do that, I just spray on more lube. I've taken to hosing the whole bike down with fresh water when I get home after a brine ride though, otherwise it gets encrusted in salt. I mean, seriousy, look as this poo poo:   Anyways, consequences are that my bike gets absolutely filthy this time of year and it needs cassette/chain (+ a bunch of bearings and shifter cable) every spring. Another thing I should try I guess is putting a rubber flap fender extender or something up front and try to keep the brine spray hitting the chain down, that would probably help some. The other bike with better fenders, hub gears and a chain guard isn't nearly as bad for maintenance, then again it runs fine with a crusty chain which a derailleur doesn't.
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Jan 25, 2023 06:39
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| # ¿ May 21, 2024 06:56 |
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yes, that's a zero too many. Regardless of which bike I ride it's over an hour in the saddle daily but unless conditions are exceptionally bad it's still not much more time than it takes to commute by car or motorcycle and much quicker than public transport. I sleep more and better from biking too. Except yesterday I had to do some late night shifter cable cleaning, hope it worked. Salt gums up the works over time and top gear gets unreliable. I loathe road salt, I get that it's there for a good reason but personally I think I'd rather deal with the ice.
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Jan 27, 2023 06:24
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Crumps Brother posted:Seriously, this right here. I posted about one previously and they're basically magic for mounting any tire. i didn't know those existed. If I can find one for anywhere close to that price here in the eurozone imma get one of them. Stupid schwalbe marathon plus hard-rear end tires to mount grumble grump.
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Feb 10, 2023 18:31
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ChocNitty posted:All the tire tube patch kits i've used work like poo poo, and the tubes continue to slowly leak air.
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Feb 11, 2023 19:48
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Slavvy posted:Am I meant to clean the brand new discs with solvent or something?
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Mar 11, 2023 08:41
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Slavvy posted:Well gently caress does that mean I've contaminated two brand new sets of pads? I just rode it up the street a couple of times. The discs didn't appear to have anything on them based on my touching the center parts. It's certainly a possibility your pads are contaminated now. Had you wiped the discs out of the box with a white rag or paper towel with solvent on it you might have come to a different conclusion about their cleanliness. Then again my impression is that brake noise or not on bicycles apart from cleanliness mainly depends on the luck of the draw, the phase of the moon and who knows what else. But when I had calipers leaking hydraulic fluid onto the pads I sometimes had a squeal so terrible and loud that it was outright shameful, also very bad brake effect. The new not leaky calipers I replaced them with work way better and are much quieter, but not always, depending. Something you can try is to go over the discs with brake cleaner (for good measure) and then bed the pads in by braking hard from speed a few times when they're as wet as possible - water seems to help sometimes getting rid of squeal for some reason. Pouring water from a bottle and hitting the brake at speed is both fun and safe (no it isnt'). Decontaminating pads is a thing people try. I've tried the soak in brake cleaner, then sand the friction surface down a little method, with questionable results at best. Some claim you can bake them in the oven and boil the gunk out, never tried it.
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Mar 11, 2023 09:29
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Honestly the last disc rotor I replaced wasn't very dirty either, not anything like car rotors which are normally greased up to the point of feeling sticky. It was a shimano rotor, but after I took it out of the bag I wiped it down with some solvent out of habit and sure enough, the towel showed a bit of dark something on it. Maybe not enough to contaminate a set of pads, but still not "clean" to my personal working-with-bike-brakes standards of clean at least.
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Mar 11, 2023 11:34
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Having struggled mightily to remove them in the past, last time i assembled square cranks I anti-seized the tapers and put some blue Loctite on the bolts. Seems to work fine a few months in at least, and hopefully I won't need more than a minimum amount of fire to remove them when the time comes. I guess I should check them for tightness though.
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May 31, 2023 09:14
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EvilJoven posted:
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Jun 1, 2023 09:45
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Slavvy posted:I would never, ever bother with tubeless on a road bike or commuter though. The extra hassle isn't worth it.
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Sep 25, 2023 09:08
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How does sealant do in freezing temps?
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Sep 26, 2023 10:13
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So I have this old cargo bike where the front wheel is flung way out in front of the box. I retrofitted it with hydraulic discs years ago, but I've never been happy with the feel of the front brake, I simply can't get it to feel firm. I'm thinking this might be because of the really long brake hose flexing, so I want to try to replace a bunch of hose with hard brakeline. I can borrow a tool for flaring automotive brake line, but I assume without having verified that car stuff and bike stuff use different hydraulic fittings. Does anyone know if I'm wrong, or know of or can think of a good way to mate bike brake hose with hard brakelines?
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Jan 10, 2024 19:03
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It's not impossible there's air left in there I guess, but it's unlikely. I've chased bubbles in all the ways I could think of, including removing hose and caliper from the bike and orienting it in a way that would allow bubbles to float upward to the caliper, flushing copious amounts of oil through it, way past the point I would be satisfied there's nothing left to bleed on any other brake I've successfully bled. Maybe it's just lovely hose. The only hose long enough I could find at the time was from Jagwire (which I think is a Brand) but it should be possible to just go to the LBS and ask them for what I need from their big 50 meter reel.
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Jan 10, 2024 20:17
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It's some deore XT model or other both caliper and lever. The caliper has started leaking and needs replacing so I thought this was a good time to fix whatever needs fixing to get this to work right finally. I guess I'll give the long hose another shot and do a very thorough bleeding procedure. Again.
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Jan 10, 2024 20:30
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nah, the leak is a recent development (front brake has been suboptimal since I installed it, but way better that what was before the mod which was no front brake at all), and it's still a very small leak. Doesn't take much to lubricate a set of pads enough to make them not work right though and it's only gonna get worse. There's copious amounts of road salt here in the winter and it's not kind to hydraulic calipers, among many, many other things. I replaced both calipers on my main commuter last year and I guess it's time for the box bike too.
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Jan 10, 2024 21:41
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Platystemon posted:My intuition is that the hose to the front brake on a bakfiets isn’t all that much longer than the hose to the rear brake on a normal bike, e.g. an nice touring bike in size XXL. Edit: I just spent some time googling thread pitches and stuff and that seems way to complicated, no adapters between bike and car stuff available that I can find. On the other hand I live in a metric country and can fairly easily get 5mm OD brake tubing (same dimension as standard bike brake hose), so in the event I ever end up trying the hardline route that's probably the way to go. Could be that standard olives work just fine, though I'll likely have to turn up some fitting supporting insert pins on the lathe since the ID is probably too big. Fiddly but seems doable. Invalido fucked around with this message at 12:55 on Jan 11, 2024 |
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Jan 11, 2024 11:53
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Yeah that's pretty easy. There's a sizeable vertical drop right next to where I park it outdoors, though not enough to go fully vertical. Good idea. I could just bench bleed it too, in the staircase or something, there's no routing issues with mounting the whole assembly on the bike already filled. That's probably what I'll do since it's cold outside.
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Jan 11, 2024 14:21
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I just got home from work and realized I have a micrometer and a bicycle, so I measured. Sure enough, there's measurable hose expansion at pressure. Not much, only about 2 micrometers at full ham fist near as I can tell (I had to strap the handle down since the measurement required both hands) and it's small enough that I had to repeat several times to be sure, but it's there. How much it matters is up for debate. If my math is right (assuming a 2.1mm ID, and that the ID increase is the same as the OD increase - doubtful about this) it means a bit less than a percent of volume increase in the tube from whatever it was before expansion, and a volume increase in 3 meters of hose of about 0.1cc. Those are my numbers, feel free to correct them or disregard them entirely.
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Jan 11, 2024 17:27
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kimbo305 posted:Did you measure front and rear expansion? Are they the same expansion even though you (and not sure you claimed this) get better braking feel/performance from the rear brake? Nah, this measurement was on my commuter bike with nice brakes, I just wanted a reality check to see wether hose flex is a thing or not. I wanted to check the bakfiets too but it's been sitting all winter because of a wrist injury and I can't get a firm brake lever on the front right now. Guessing the leaky caliper has something to do with that. Maybe the master cylinder is hosed too, so I'm replacing both. I spent a bunch of effort rebuilding the thing last winter with major frame repair (rust), new paint, new box, new center stand and a bunch of replacement components - the only things making it not a great bike at the moment apart from the weather is the brake and a lovely (though new) bottom bracket so I really should get those sorted. It's not the greatest winter bike but it sits on studs and I like using it for at least local errands even in the snow so it's time to get off my rear end and order some parts.
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Jan 11, 2024 18:57
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I aimed the parts cannon at the cargo bike over the weekend. New bottom bracket (dumb word, it should be called crank bearing or something similar). New handle and caliper on the front brake and a new caliper at the rear too since it was pretty corroded and probably not long for this world. I bled everything on the bench and it seems to have worked, everything feels about as firm as I would expect. Front is still slightly spongier than the rear but not dramatically so, better that ever probably. I need a new bleed kit because the syringe is leaking past the piston under pressure and made a mess and the reservoir cup thing has damaged threads so I had to strap it down with rubber bands. Also I found I have a warped rotor up front (I'm pretty sure I know how that happened) so I'll need to true that up or replace it before I bed those pads in - it wasn't possible to do today regardless because the nearby streets and bike lanes are real snowy and icy. I made it to the nearby recycling place with a load or garbage anyways and everything felt good apart from the racket the brake rotor was making and some funky brake handle angles that need adjustment. I'm calling this a preliminary success.
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Jan 21, 2024 21:20
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yeah I'm glad too, provided the brakes actually stop the bike the way I hope they will. I have a new brake rotor now so I should be able to test that as soon as the road conditions aren't abysmal.
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Jan 22, 2024 20:10
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I need saddle input. Any advice is appreciated. It's for a bakfiets style cargobike with a bolt upright riding position and pretty bumpy handling. I want the saddle to be wide and ideally well sprung for some amount of suspension. The saddle must withstand being rained on a lot without getting ruined or absorbing rain water only to later inject it into the rider's rear end. The comfiest saddle I've used on the bike so far is the Selle Royal Drifter. These work great for about a year until there's delamination or cracks forming leading to water problems. Brooks saddles don't really like rain in the long run I think? Never had one. I have no experience with suspension seat posts but I'm open to the idea of putting the springyness there rather than in the saddle if it would solve the saddle issue long term. The post is 25.0 mm which isn't super common and because of the wonky frame geometry (high rake angle and a lot of stickout) I've had issues with off-the-shelf steel tube seat posts bending until I got a custom lathe job out of massive aluminium that has held up great. Anyways, have lathe now, willing to turn if necessary.
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Feb 23, 2024 14:10
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The WTB rocket looks too skinny, it looks more like something I might put on my commuter bike. I need something more akin to what you would find on a cruiser. For reference this is the Selle Royal Drifter which is comfy for about an hour at a time which is all I need on this bike: If I were to go the Brooks route without needing a sprung seat post I think a B135 would be more like what I'm looking for:  But the not-leather all weather coating of the C67 is interesting, especially if it's long lasting. Also it's "only" €130 which is cheap for a brooks it seems. I guess I'll read some reviews and research seat post suspension. Getting away from springs in the saddle itself would give more options for sure.
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Feb 23, 2024 16:50
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So it looks like a suspension seatpost worth having would take some doing and need a real budget. Because of geometry (high rake) a telescoping mechanism wouldn't work well which leaves the ones with parallel links. I think elastomers are suboptimal for me since I ride this bike year round, it's bumpiest in the winter and cold rubber gets hard. I think I'd rather have coil springs. Since it's a very old bike with a 25 mm skinny post I can't find anything off the shelf that would fit and I would have to modify. Many designs have the spring inside the tube with preload adjustment at the bottom which would be a machining job requiring real skill (if I could even fit the spring inside a tube skinny enough which is doubtful), but something like the Kinect 2.1 looks like I could just lop off the factory tube and turn something up that would fit fairly easily:  So not cheap, requiring significant warranty voiding modifications and a successful outcome not guaranteed seems like the best option I've found so far. The brooks champion flyer looks sweet but I'm not sure a leather saddle is a good idea for my use case. Riding in rain is one thing but this bike gets parked outside more often than not - I don't have space in the shed for both it and the motorcycle which gets indoor priority so unless it's winter and the moto is in remote storage this bike lives outside. I would like to avoid having to mess with a saddle cover if possible.
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Feb 24, 2024 07:54
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I've had this bike for I think 12 years now, it's been outside almost all that time. There's been some corrosion issues but nothing unfixable so far, in fact it's probably in better shape than it's ever been. I had to replace the tin work and do some rust repairs and repaint the frame last year but I think a rebuild every decade or so is acceptable. It has internal gears and a chain guard with good coverage so the drivetrain fares well compared to my derailleured main commuter bike (always parked indoors) I also ride in the winter which is a real maintenance hog. Road salt isn't fun. You'd think that wanting a comfortable yet long lasting and properly waterproof bike saddle in TYOOL 2024 shouldn't be asking for the impossible seeing as motorcycles have them but maybe I'm just overly optimistic about the current state of technology.
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Feb 24, 2024 15:59
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If you're looking for witten guides about bicycle wrenching, I would suggest https://www.sheldonbrown.com/ Don't be fooled by the dated look of the site, it's Good Stuff.
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Mar 31, 2024 04:51
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wooger posted:Have they ever ridden outside in wet weather, or even through a puddle?
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Apr 2, 2024 06:53
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I used to wrench on upside down bikes for the longest time until I got hydraulic brakes and learned the hard way that air bubbles float upward. Doesn't always happen, but can. Jula has a bike stand that's robust enough for e-bikes that works well enough for the price. The caveat is you might not be able to easily clamp your bike so it balances well with that particular frame style.
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Apr 10, 2024 13:09
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TheFluff posted:Worth looking into, flipping the bike isn't exactly ideal for other reasons as well... https://www.jula.se/catalog/fritid/cykel/reservdelar-och-underhall/verktyg/mekstall-639447/ The only thing I had to fix was putting a few short screws in it to fix the rubber liners to the frame clamp (they like to fall off), also tossing the little parts/tools table in the bin so it folds up smaller. It works great for my e-bike and bro's too, which is significantly heavier than mine. The only way I can see you clamp that bike is around the seat tube though, so if it hangs way off balance there odds are it will always be really askew when you use the stand. The whole exercise is pretty pointless if you cant keep both wheels off the floor and have the bike at least more or less horizontal.
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Apr 10, 2024 16:53
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| # ¿ May 21, 2024 06:56 |
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TheFluff posted:Yeah, I looked at this after your previous post, but after lifting my bike by the saddle post I'm not sure how well it would work. The basket in the front makes it really front heavy when lifted from there. It's a great price though, so it's very tempting... You tested the balance with the battery removed, right? You could compensate for the front weight by adding a couple of kilos to the rear rack once it's up off the floor to balance thing out a bit I guess. Once you remove wheels things are likely to shift a bit too anyway.
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Apr 10, 2024 20:24
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