Your Personal Micro Blog(s)

-- got a phone mount for my bike, really amped to go for a ride today... family out to the cinema.. turns out they took both car keys so theres no garage key im now sat in my room listening to music and watching the weather slowly get worse don't think i'll get a bike ride in today.. busy tomorrow, maybe monday

yeah can't imagine pedalling whilst gear changing to cause that much issue... if you get the chain stuck ( i did on my new bike actually, god knows how, i think i went from 7th to 1st too quick.. - maybe i pedalled it back when i was freewheeling..) and if you try to force it you can damage stuff... but in normal use, unless you are attaching some kind of engine or smt on there, it'll be fine..

the derailures are fine on a bike, unless you shock the bike by like dropping high drops, jumping etc.. they normally handle pedalling/gearchanges well.. even my sunrun (not sunrace - chinese copy..) on my old crappy bike lasted a good 5 years, the derailures still work fine, just make sure it's well greased up.. although the shifters are godawful terrible..

also i'm still not certain if i prefer full suspension or no suspension... the non suspension is insanely responsive, like i went into 1-1 (1st on both sides) gave it a good old push on a steep hill and the front wheel went whizzing up into the air! something ive never had before on my other FS bike. (that thing you just bob up and down and is pretty much impossible to do a wheelie with ) also think the gearing on the new bike is really low, like 1-1 is just crazy, you can pedal above avg speed and be around walking speed.. it's pretty insane.. only issue is that at high speed the cadence isn't quite as low as i'd like.. but it's probably a good thing, since no suspension means any bumps could send me off!

 

Shimano and Sram are not compatible in RD (they have different pull ratio), you need Sram shifter and Sram RD for it to work out, but surely that is potential path for ugprade if going to replace shifter too.

Sunrace cassettes have bit less good shifting quality, but not really much less price, Under 16 euros Shimano Cassette seems to be working fine even when abusing. Sure it pings though, but Sunrace on that price point I found not to be much of option. Paying more for cassette then opens more options, but haven't seen reason to, weight savings seem to be most of reason to pay more for cassette and even that can be surprisingly small.

I bought 1X oval chainring from China, it weights next to nothing, wear is quite bad, but cost, well it was lot less than 10 euros and did work fine, but didn't see much point in 1X, 3X setup gives much more versatility, but sure 1X is faster to shift.
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Those Altus ones just are terrible sloppy and self destructive units, I had one of them that came with one of my bikes, real pain to live with, after some time it became automatic as poor Altus had so much sideways freeplay that it randomly did change gears

I get lot of chainsuck on mud, also when riding on deep slush it can kinda freeze on drivetrain parts and it is no fun, cassette can get so clogged up that there is only 1 gear that works without skipping etc. I have dreamed of closed drivetrain quite few times.

 

I think the biggest 1x advantage is ground clearance, since a smaller cog is less likely hit the floor, but that is only MTB specific. I haven't found my current 1X setup to be more reliable than 3x, but my previous bikes didn't have other factors like rear suspension, so maybe it does help, but other things on my current bike have other negative impacts? It may also be lighter which is very important to road bikers, but I personally don't really chase the grams too much.

That said, if I had to buy a new bike, I would want it to be 1X. I do think its better, but equally its not revolutionary to how I ride. I think a dropper post makes a bigger difference for MTB.

 

That might be, I remember sounds of Aluminium 44T makes on rocks, but it was still more of pedal/cranks hitting, with 1X I just did not like the climbs so much and from some reason it is 70% climbs when I rode

Anyway, for compatibilty of parts, best to check these pages always, there is so much that nobody can remember it all:
https://www.sheldonbrown.com/drivetrain-mixing.shtml
https://sheldonbrown.com/speeds.html

 

I mean, my bike comes from the factory with Praxis, Deore, and Tiagra all in the same drivetrain.

Since then, I think Shimano has actually rebranded the Tiagra component to now be Deore. Since all the reviews call it a Tiagra, whereas the Shimano website calls it a Deore.

Certain parts of bikes are an absolute minefield for compatibility. Its madness, but I don't blame everyone for having their own standard, makes their lives much easier

 

At least it used to be that Tiagra was for road bikes and Deore for mountain bikes, but then there has been Deore, XT and Deore XT, also there are parts that are not part of any group, also 8spd Acera and 9spd Acera can be totally different level.

They suffle things from time to time like GPU makers used to shuffle their numbering so that it was pretty difficult to know what one was getting based on those numbers alone.

It really gets confusing especially at higher end parts where compatibility I think gets much worse. With 8spd you could put almost anything there, with 7spd one had to be careful if it is freewheel or cassette type, but pretty much anything else did go fine.

8spd was very robust and had almost perfect range of gear ratios too, shame that it is pretty much dead these days.

I think Sram and Shimano was compatible even with shifters at some point, but can't remember for sure.

Deore seem to have quite different level of parts even within same speed range these days, bit like cashing with the good old name phase going on.

 

Finally got around to doing front brake pads on the zafira the other day, safe to say we got the use of of those. (yes i know ideally it'd get new discs and calipers but its just used for carrying junk and other rough jobs so meh)

old


new set in


Pretty big difference afterwards.

 

Interesting, disc looks like kinda new, but yet if it had of been there very long, but other bits looks like if they had been pretty warm at some point as it is such dark rust color.

Having some friction surface certainly will help with stopping

 

soo again about bikes

i feel like i ride with too low cadence, or that everyone else rides with too high cadence (imo) i normally do about maybe 60-70rpm just cruising, but in top gear that doesn't really get me that fast on my bike, maybe 14mph or something around there, is this normal? just on flat roads this is.. i feel like 100rpm is just not relaxing at all... and that 14mph or so is just too slow.. maybe i'm over-estimating what i can manage, bikes just don't go that fast..

i remember on my other bike in top gear you could really notice it, and once you got to say 80-90rpm you were really flying..

come to think of it the top gear on my new bike feels like a rather tall geared fixed gear bike.. what do i do to go faster

 

Oh yeah, bicycles.

Haven't touched mine since I got my license. I remember my chain always came loose when I tried to jump it though. Riding it on the road just never occurred to me.

 

Depends what sort of bike and gearing setup you have. If its a mountain bike, typically they are geared fairly low, on the flat I can run out of gears on mine.

If your using a 1X system, and don't mind sacrificing your lower gears, you can put a bigger front chain ring on the bike to get a higher top speed. Outside of that, you would have to look towards swapping quite a few parts, in order to get a cassette with a bigger range. Which can get expensive very quickly.

 

pulled apart my £10 chainsaw motor because the primer bulb died.
any ideas where i can get one for cheap?

 

A chain guide or clutch should sort that out. A clutch would involve replacing the dérailleur and possible other parts though.

 

Your body will adjusts to it with time, but there is some points not usually brought up.

According to scientific studies, most energy will got to move legs up and down at higher cadences, like over 100rpm.

Other point is that less power you are using, smaller your cadence needs to be, higher cadences are for higher amount of power to save knees.

Also it is really really personal, there is no single fitness level or leg weight and so no single cadence rpm can be correct one, use what feels natural, don't force pedals down, that is too low cadence typically, but if you are huffing and puffing barely moving, that is way too high.

Idea is to spin, rotate cranks, not push pedals down, cadence is just something that has to be ok for your body and fitness to allow doing that, for some it can be 50rpm, for someone else 110rpm, you need to experiment and find what works for you.

Then there is gear ratios, crank lengths and alike to consider, some bikes are geared so tall that you can use top gear only at speed downhills while pedaling 90rpm, others can be so that you are spinning like mad even at uphill.

You put data of your two bikes here and it will tell you cadence you will have at chosen speed:
http://home.earthlink.net/~mike.sherman/shift.html

For my bike 44T chainring is only for summer use, during winter there is no point using that as rolling resistance, weight and resistance from clothing is so much higher.

60rpm is 31kph and 90rpm is 46kph which is quite tall gearing for MTB, as I can spin quite easily over 125rpm at downhills, that gives me much more than 60kph top speeds.

At lower end 60rpm gives me 4.5kph which I used a lot during deep snow or spring mud / summer trail climbing (not real trails, just root infested ruts in forest), thanks for being MTB there is not really too slow speed, it is very easy to ride less than walking speeds or even stop and jump from standstill etc.

Even my front fork seems to have rusted solid now, so no longer wasted energy...

Anyway tires affect a lot to how bike feels to speed up, Continental Race King Race Sports are fast, very prone to punctures too, but super fast for knobbly tires. Also gearing needs to fit to your natural cadence and your weight/fitness/hills around you, there is no point in 1X setup for example if you are not fit light person or if hills are murdering you every time, then lower gearing is needed.

Sometimes top gearing can be too low and you will run out of steam spinning legs so fast, for example if cassette top gear has 12T instead of 11T that is quite big difference in practice, best to use calculator to get good picture of the situation and see if there is something to be gained by replacing chainrings or cassette.

Oh yes, I'm running 36-11T cassette and 22-32-44T triple at front with 26x2.2 oversize tires, never learned to like those big wheel sized, just not so alive which I mostly like with bike.

Mostly I ride on road with MTB these days and it is sadly very little riding my body allows me to do, but when I could ride, quite few road bikers learned that it is not the bike, it is the rider (and few carefully chosen upgrades to make MTB quick on road).
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From China, get many, you will need many, but it is cheap:
https://www.aliexpress.com/wholesal...id=SB_20190414111825&SearchText=chainsaw+bulb

 

Something was absolutely screwed up with it because it didn't really shift right either and sometimes required multiple presses of a trigger to shift, however I wasn't really riding it on the road so I just found a gear I liked and stuck with it. However like I said I haven't ridden it in over 6 years and I really don't care anymore. If I 100% have no choice but to ride it, well, it still technically functions, and it's a sort of road/mountain hybrid so I won't have to stab car culture in the back (if I can find a place to cross the road that gives plenty of visibility from both directions).

 

Good rear derailleur and gear cable replacement would probably make it work fine. Sometimes shifters go bad, but based on your description I would think it is one of those lower cost bikes that have such RD which has very loose spring and they are kinda prone to that.

 

Ah, those are often known as "recreational" bikes. For the money I honestly can't fault them, but they are basically the compact crossovers of the bike world
They aren't as good on tarmac as a road bike, and they aren't great off the road either, as they will start to feel way out of their depth quite quickly. They are to some extent designed to look like mountain bikes, but since most will spend their lives on tarmac, they are designed with that in mind. So you get this weird set of compromises that are made. But just like a compact crossover, they are perfectly fine to take along gravel tracks, and if you aren't too bothered about the potential of damage, they will get you further than you might expect.

But to be clear, the rider will make a bigger difference than the bike, and if it was a $400 bike, despite being covered in stickers stating that the bike is not suitable for off-road use, it will actually do a decent enough job to actually have some proper fun on.


This video covers super cheap mountain bikes pretty well, and is also a good laugh too:

 

Yes, I did out of curiosity test 1952 year dutch bike on root infested forest path once, only single gear, I believe front chainring was something like 52T at least, rear sprocket was perhaps 18T, certainly not any way intended to offroad, but it did work out fine,until there was an incline, at that point I did found out steel it was made was rather flexible and no, despite I gave all my strength to it, there was no climbing, but easier parts you could ride it, very difficult though

Those recreational bikes are just fine to visit grocery store, short ride every now and then, but enthusiastic driving is not really what they are designed for. Also some construction choices / component choices can be lower end than what is lowest end you can buy from bike shops, supermarkets might have such parts.

Kinda like sports cars and 4x4 have their uses, recreational bike have their uses, jumping probably goes beyond intended usage scope


I did actually do short ride with MTB today, sidewalks here have quite tall corner stones so my typical ride involves some jumping as I can't be bothered to slow down at intersection crossing, it is more convenient to jump over the stone. Kinda wanted to go for longer ride, but sadly even short ride gave me some burn on joints.

 

RIP Cathédrale Notre-Dame de Paris, the Spire atop collapsed during this fire.

 

Wow thats really bad (itll need something more to describe it but i cant say it here) is anybody hurt?