Today I did something to my bike thread...

Wow! That's both impressive and scary. I have to ask what you were doing to cause that!

Yeah, it was lucky that it didn't go at speed.

On the plus side though... You need another bike. Silver linings and all that.

... fitted a new GP4000SII and Continental tube.

I generally find it a little difficult to get these tyres on without resorting to using levers for the last part. But of more interest might be why I fitted them in the first place.

On Wednesday, I was desending lovers leap outside Eniskerry. Anyone who knows the road will know this is a steep hill and when I gently applied the brakes to moderate my speed, I heard a noise like you'd hear if the tyre picked something up from the road. Immediately afterwards, I heard a rumbling noise followed by lots of vibration.

A blowout. :eek:

Luckily the tyre somehow stayed on and the rIm never touched the road. The tyre was messed up (as was the tube) but I managed to gradually stop without incident.

But that's not the cautionary note.

After I fitted the new tyre tonight, I tweaked the brake adjustment and then saw the reason for the blowout: the RHS brake block was too high and would have made contact with the tyre wall when applied The bolt wasn't tight so I guess it must have gotten loose at some stage and actually shifted on the descent.

All sorted now but I think I'll be checking my brakes more often from now on.

Blowouts at 59.3 kmph (thanks Strava) are no fun :eek:

My thumbs are killing me. Like really bad

I've had some tough tyres-onto-wheels in my time but this afternoon was a right pain in the hole. The fact I put the wrong tyres on the wrong wheels didn't help. I was going for a 23mm front and a 25mm rear, which I managed to feck up. Double thumb pain.

My thumbs look kind of yellow now. That's probably not good.

I only put these on the bike to give them a lash to sate "stuff" before selling them, hopefully.

They look nice though. And make a lovely freewheel sound! It's a Reynolds Assault/Strike Combo.

Lovely "Woosh, Woosh" sound.

Rogue-Trooper wrote: »

WTF David?!! Paint that bloody shed already will ya?!

(Do I sound like your missus yet........??!!) :P

It's gonna take more than paint to bring that back

Cee-Jay-Cee wrote: »

Spent about an hour adjusting and then re-adjusting the Crud Mk3 guards so as to get them sitting so they don't knock off the tyre and rattle on rough ground. Finally managed to get them sitting right and now have to figure out a way of marking the position so that if I remove them, I can refit them in the exact same position without having to faff about adjusting them afterwards.

I use electrical take to mark the position on my frame.

My son complained recently that his 7-year old Carrera Vengeance (Halfords hardtail mountain bike inherited from his older brother) was making some funny noises, so I suggested he oil the chain. This seemed to solve the problem until reports came back some days later that the pedals were moving around a bit and the chain had come off.

Upon further investigation, I saw that the problem wasn't in fact the chain. It looked like the bottom bracket has disintegrated as the cranks were moving around a lot.I removed them to have a closer look and saw that BB bits - balls, bearing cages, etc - were coming out of the BB and after some jiggling, the axle itself dropped out :eek:

Post-removal pic:


It's the square-taper type so I had a go at removing it. No way! A quick browse of the internet came up with a number of suggestions, but the one I liked most was to use a QR Skewer to hold the tool firmly in place while I used a spanner. In the end, I didn't have enough leverage and I had to use a hammer on the spanner to "shock" it off. I removed the drive-side first and the other side came off easily afterwards - this is a pic of the setup on the non-drive side:



And yes, I did check the internet about seventy billionty times to confirm that the drive-side has a reverse thread: clockwise to remove

The shell of the BB revealed the spec - 123mm BC 1.37 X 24T - and I then discovered I actually had one in a box somewhere.



I cleaned up the BB shell and greased everything up before installing the "new" BB. A quick ride afterwards revealed all was fine again (well, about as fine as a properly used, 7-year old Halfords mountain bike can be). And then I remembered an earlier comment that the brakes weren't great ...

I was on a roll at this point, so I decided to replace the rear disc pads - the old ones were down to the metal - and I also topped up the brake fluid on the front brake for good measure.

It's a great feeling when things work out

Daroxtar wrote: »

Not all today but in the last week....
Swapped out the Ultegra Crankset for an FSA Powerbox power meter. On the first test run I noticed a fairly pronounced clicking noise as the NDS pedal went through 3 o clock. Figured that it was the BB and seeing as it had about 5000km in all weather on it I did the decent thing and replaced it.
As soon as I started putting down a bit of power the clicking started again, especially when I got out of the saddle. Double checked everything, torqued the cranks, checked the chainrings and even my cleats and shoes and the only thing left was the pedals. So yesterday I got new pedals. No harm either as the other ones were 2 years old. Upgraded a few levels from look Keo Easy to Keo Max.
Still clicking.
Changed the cleats.
Still clicking.
Re checked again and had a good look at frame and BB shell and still she clicked.
Then I opened the QR to make sure the wheel was properly positioned, it was but when I tightened the QR again I gave it a bit more and lo and behold the clicking stopped.
Could have saved myself €150 if I did that first
I'm just going to keep telling myself that I really needed the pedals and BB.

I've been there! I had a creak/crack on my bike that coincided with pedal revolutions. Or maybe handlebar movement? A guy at work told me it was the seatpost - carbon in my case - so I took it out and used some carbon paste that came with the bike. It fixed it, or so I thought until it came back. I had the creak/crack for over a year and it was getting very annoying. Every so often, I'd go at it and try something new. Sometimes this would help but I always thought there might have been a placebo-thing going on.

I like buying shiney new things for my bike and if the shiney thing was something that could creak, then the decision to purchase was escalated. I purchased new saddles, changed the BB and the headset. No difference.

I then looked at actions that didn't require a purchase. I greased the seatpost and seatpost collar, lubricated all contact points between the saddle and seatpost, lubricated all the places where the cables and the frame came together, greased the dropouts and the QRs, checked the wheels, the frame and the pedals. No difference.

I then saw an ad for a reduced 105 groupset - something I always wanted. Like, with all my other work, surely if I changed the groupset, there would be nothing left to make a noise? It would have to work. Surely?

The groupset didn't help, the creak/crack was still there.

At this point, I was wondering did I have a bike at all, or had it morphed into a reincarnation of triggers broom - somehow capable of hanging on to a noise even though there was nothing of the original bike left unreplaced/unchecked, that could be causing the problem :mad:

I spoke to my friend again and he said I should really have another good look at the seatpost. I did and purchased some carbon assembly paste - the one I was using came with the bike and as there was only a small amount of it, I wasn't sure I was using enough.

When the paste (link) came in, I lashed it on and the noise went away. For ever.

I miss the noise now

How long is that stem? :eek:

iwillhtfu wrote: »

How long is that stem? :eek:

Just 140mm .

Deep clean of my machine yesterday evening. It's always clean and gets a quick rinse after each outing, I tend to cycle close enough to beaches so always want to get rid of any sand. Something very aestheticly pleasing about a gold chain

Maybe someone can help me with this. My chain was slipping so I got it replaced along with the cassette. Problem now is that it slips off the inner front chainring. Nothing to do with derailleur, think that I must have damaged the chainring by continuing to use the old, worn out chain for so long. The large chainring seems ok.

So I get a new chainring but I can't get the bolts out? I used the tool to try to hold the back of the bolt, and even got a friend to help but they seem stuck together. They just turn as one rather than separate.

Any ideas of how to get the bolts out? I assume that in some way the bolts and/or chainrings will need to be wrecked but how to go about it?

Thanks

Leroy42 wrote: »

Maybe someone can help me with this. My chain was slipping so I got it replaced along with the cassette. Problem now is that it slips off the inner front chainring. Nothing to do with derailleur, think that I must have damaged the chainring by continuing to use the old, worn out chain for so long. The large chainring seems ok.

So I get a new chainring but I can't get the bolts out? I used the tool to try to hold the back of the bolt, and even got a friend to help but they seem stuck together. They just turn as one rather than separate.

Any ideas of how to get the bolts out? I assume that in some way the bolts and/or chainrings will need to be wrecked but how to go about it?

Thanks

Yes, worn out chainring due to using the chain for too long.

For the chainring bolts it depends on the design. Some require being held from the rear while opened from the front with either an allen key or hex head.