Cycling UK Forum

Brucey wrote: ↑14 Apr 2024, 11:05am I think there would be something wrong if you took a piece of stainless steel connected to a piece of anodised aluminium, spayed everything with salty water, left it a few weeks, and nothing showed any signs of corrosion.

Well ............. my boat has anodized aluminium spars with a collection of stainless steel fittings and none of 'em are even slightly rusty.

This includes the ss rivnuts I fitted five years ago, I used zinc chromate as a barrier and they are still spotless.

The bike shop tells me that this lovely red rust is perfectly normal and to be expected


I have no experience of disk brakes on a bike, so before I make a 'big fuss' I'd appreciate an opinion ??

Brother says:

"The best place for dinner is definitely Thai Up at the Quay, but not sure if timing works as ferry leaves from Parkston, not Harwich itself. 2nd best Samuel Pepys, or The Alma. Bike parking within sight might be tricky too. For breakfast I'd say The Rainbow Cafe in Dovercourt, parking easier."

My brother lives in Harwich, I'll pass this to him

531colin wrote: ↑8 Apr 2024, 11:57am Maybe I should go ride the bloody thing, it is nice to ride.......

Totally agree, nice to ride, be even nicer if one had more confidence in the engineering.

Being totally nerdy ( who, me ?? ) my ordinary allen key is quite a good fit. The hole in the bolt is 25mm deep, the hex portion only about 10mm, but it feels like quite a good fit and I'm reasonably happy that I could wrangle the bolt without mangling it.

rareposter wrote: ↑8 Apr 2024, 9:55am - it's the shop's problem to sort, not yours

Absolutely, but they have demonstrated that they need a bit of guidance and project management .......................

slowster wrote: ↑8 Apr 2024, 11:01am
Are the M8 bolts steel or aluminium?

Aluminium. But it's easy to slide 25mm of an allen key into the bolt, so it can be nice and solid and impossible (!) to mangle the edge ....

531colin wrote: ↑8 Apr 2024, 10:11am To replace the chainring you only need to use the 4 bolts that fix the chainring to the spider.

Yes! but I don't know if it was just the ring or the spider as well ............

AndyK wrote: ↑4 Apr 2024, 11:29am (a) would perhaps be excusable; (b) would be a sloppy mechanic in a hurry.

The state of the chainwheel bolt after replacing the out-of-spec chainwheel would I suggest dispell any doubt about whether (a) or (b) is correct:


You need to click on the picture to really see all its mangled glory !

mattsccm wrote: ↑6 Apr 2024, 1:48pm ...
I do the same thing when building a bike but always start with the adjuster a full turn or more out so there is scope to slacken the cable if need be.
...

Totally agree: any decent engineer would do that with anything .............adjusters are for adjusting !

Y'all might find the full story interesting, and again I'd value any comments.

The bike is a Specialized Vado SL, lightweight electric assist. It's a pleasure to ride and I'm very happy with it apart from one niggle.

It was delivered with he wrong chainwheel. We all knew about this and knew that it would get changed - spec is 'narrow wide' but delivered with a weird thing with splayed teeth. The other fault was that sometimes when changing onto the big sprocket the chain immediately jumped off again. Pushing the lever again put the chain back on the big sprocket and it remained there.

Bike back to shop to fix the gear problem. Mechanic says everything checked, new chainring ordered will fit sometime later.

Chain jumping off sprocket as before. I notice that cassette is running about 2mm out of true.

Back to shop. Narrow wide chainring fitted. Gears adjusted. Casette poked but not thought to be the problem.

Gear problem appears to be improved but occasionally still jumps off sprocket. Now possibly getting worse.

I have to admit that I was wondering if I was mistaken. The deraillieur makes big 'clunks' at the big end, the problem always happens on hills, and I can't really tell which gear I'm in ( the electricity makes it harder to feel exactly whats happening ) as changing down on a hill often makes the lower gear feel harder as the bike has slowed, the hill is steeper etc ..... so I clamped the gopro to the seatstay so that I could video the clunks and jumps ......... and sure enough it happened 4 times on a 8 mile ride: always on hills. Not every time, perhaps 25% of gear changes.

So what happens is this. Going down through gears as hill steepens. Push lever until it goes 'click' and gear changes. If changing to biggest sprocket the chain jumps off after about three quarters of a second. Push lever again and chain moves to big sprocket and stays put.

Thinking that perhaps a bit more tension in the cable might fix it I discovered the stuck adjuster. A small adjustment didn't help. Perhaps this afternoon I'll go and look at the low stop adjuster on the deraillier ........

rareposter wrote: ↑4 Apr 2024, 12:16pm (c) the mechanic has stronger fingers than the OP...

I'm sure that's correct, but no excuse .............

AndyK wrote: ↑4 Apr 2024, 11:29am (b) would be a sloppy mechanic in a hurry.

Thanks Andy, my view precisely.

This has nothing to do with the adjuster seizing on the thread. It was brand new, without any corrosion, but jammed hard against the end of its travel. Once backed off it turns easily.

Advice please:

Until recently I have always built and serviced my own bikes. The new one is complicated, was supplied out of spec and has been back to the supplier twice for rectification.

One issue has been the adjustment of the rear deraillieur.

Thinking that I might tinker with it myself, I found the barrel adjuster on the gear cable at the shifter jammed so tight against the end stop that I could not turn it without fetching a pair of pliers. Had I been out on the road it would have been immovable.

I know what I think about this, and I know what I'm going to say to the 'mechanic' responsible, but before I ruin my relationship with the supplier I'd appreciate any comments from those of you who are better engineers than me.