A Belated Update From Tewantin Part One - A new arrival in the family

Golly it has been five months since I last updated this blog.   There is no excuse as plenty has been going on but I appear to have lost my interest in playing with computers.  I still use my Windows 10 tablet for emails and Face Book which I do sprawled out on my recliner armchair with Louis lying on my lap.  This makes typing up a blog  rather difficult.  I have a little time on my hands for a few weeks so I have dug out my big laptop, updated it to Windows 10 and set it up in my study and will try and bring this blog up to date.  I will do this in several parts.

This first part actually follows on from my last blog about my camping and cycling updates in January .  When I got home and dried out my camper trailer I could turn my attention to a big cardboard box which had arrived while I was away and my house sitter had put in the garage.  I had bought myself a new bike.

The reason for the new bike is because I use my folding Bike Friday Pocket Expedition most weekends. I fold it to put it in the boot of my car and have to remove the chain to to so which is a messy business.  Bike Friday now sell a folding bicycle which uses a belt drive, an eleven speed internally geared rear hub and disk brakes.  Before Christmas I was talking to an older member of my cycling club who had bought himself a nice new road bicycle for his eightieth birthday.  He had had comments from friends and family that is was silly to buy a new bike at eighty, he is now eighty five and still riding.  Rather than being thought silly I decided to buy myself a new bicycle while I was only seventy nine. I now had the most expensive bicycle I have ever owned at $4,300.00 without a saddle or pedals.  Please, I am not silly.

I unpacked the big box and, assembled the bicycle, fitted a saddle and pedals and there was my new member of the family.

The new bicycle

Now what is wrong with that?  It is anonymous.  I had ordered the bike painted canary yellow, as one does when one is old but not silly, with yellow cables.  I didn't read the fine print that you get yellow decals with yellow cables and they are there.

I carefully peeled them of and as you can see they were there.

There it is

I also found that I could not mount my pannier rack as the fitting bolt was too small.

The rack should be attached using the long transverse bolt which also clamps  the right hand chain stay to the bike

I emailed Bike Friday who agreed that putting yellow decals on a yellow frame should have been queried and they would send me black ones and they would also send me the optional longer bolt to fit my rack free of charge.

I'm a Bike Friday

Silk

New World Tourist

 My Bike Friday friends on Face Book thought that it should be called "The Yellow Peril" but this could be construed as racist so it is named after the European wasp.

The Wasp for short.

After a few rides I decided that the gearing was too high for my feeble legs and installed a smaller front cog and a shorter belt which I could buy in Brisbane.  The difference can be seen seen between the anonymous picture and the Wasp picture.  I had also been having trouble with the wheel coming out of alignment and while replacing the belt it became obvious why.

WARNING for Sue - Technical content follows

  A belt drive requires that the length of the rear triangle be adjustable to tension the belt.  Disk brakes also require that the disk calipers mounted on the frame maintain the correct rotational position with respect to the disk mounted on the wheel.  Bike Friday have developed a way to meet both requirements with specially designed rear drop outs.

The belt side

The domed nut clamps the wheel axle to the drop out which with the two Allen Headed Bolts loose can be adjusted to set the belt tension by rotating the drop out using the adjusting Allen Screw.  When the two bolts are done up tight the drop outs should never need adjusting, at least on this side.  See below.

The disk side

 Here we have a similar set up with the disk caliper mounted on an extended drop out.  As the drop out rotates around the top Allen Bolt during adjustment the caliper and disk maintain the correct rotational position. What could go wrong with that.

This is the bit that Bike Friday forgot.

Newton's Third Law States:

For every action there is an equal and opposite re-action.

When I am riding along and slam on the rear brake  the caliper grabs the disk and pulls it backward to slow the bike.  This produces a re-action which causes the drop out to want to rotate in the forward direction and the two Allen headed bolts cant cope and the wheel moves forward.  I had to re-adjust this several times and I was thinking about solutions to this such as lock washers under the bolts.

When I replaced the belt to lower the gearing I found that Bike Friday had modified the disk side caliper to fit another screw to prevent the wheel moving forward and on my bike the screw appeared to strip the thread in the drop out. I managed to bodge a solution.

Replacement Drop Out                                                      Bodged Drop Out

The bodge was to find a nut which I could wedge in the drop out and screw which would go through the drop out and provide the re-action force preventing the drop out to rotate.   Bike Friday agreed that this was a production fault which had caused the threat to strip.  They airmailed me two replacement drop outs.  Which when fitted appear to do the job.

Finally with the new belt fitted the position of the caliper fouled the rear rack stay and another bodge was required.

The rack mounting bodge

As you can see I had to space out the the rack stay to stop it fouling the red caliper actuator which rotates.  This is OK for me as I don't intend to carry large loads but would be a liability with heavy panniers.

I actually love the bike to ride but believe that Bike Friday had not thought things through before releasing a new design on the market.

Finally I decided to check the faulty drop-out's "stripped thread".  It is not stripped but has been tapped out to a slightly larger American thread while the replacement have metric thread.  My bike had the American threaded drop-out but had a metric threaded screw which barely held in the tapped hole and could not cope with the re-action force.