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by Samuel D
15 Oct 2023, 2:04pm
Forum: Bikes & Bits – Technical section
Topic: How to set bearing preload on pedals without a tabbed washer? 11 mm cone & 9 mm lock nut
Replies: 15
Views: 2448

Re: How to set bearing preload on pedals without a tabbed washer? 11 mm cone & 9 mm lock nut

Brucey wrote: 13 Oct 2023, 2:55pm FWIW there appears to something betwixt the locknut and cone.
I thought so too at first, but no. Might have been excess grease moulded into a circle by the dust cap or something.
by Samuel D
13 Oct 2023, 2:14pm
Forum: Bikes & Bits – Technical section
Topic: How to set bearing preload on pedals without a tabbed washer? 11 mm cone & 9 mm lock nut
Replies: 15
Views: 2448

Re: How to set bearing preload on pedals without a tabbed washer? 11 mm cone & 9 mm lock nut

I couldn’t find an EU source for that DMR tool and had to order from the UK. Between the shipping and the import duties it ended up being expensive.

On the plus side, it did work perfectly despite the terrifyingly thin walls of the socket:

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So that’s that. We’re on the road again at last.
by Samuel D
17 Sep 2023, 5:25pm
Forum: Bikes & Bits – Technical section
Topic: How to set bearing preload on pedals without a tabbed washer? 11 mm cone & 9 mm lock nut
Replies: 15
Views: 2448

Re: How to set bearing preload on pedals without a tabbed washer? 11 mm cone & 9 mm lock nut

rjb wrote: 17 Sep 2023, 2:01pmA thin walled 11mm box spanner may give you sufficient clearance to allow a 9mm socket to slip down the inside. Perhaps one of those small box spanners that came with those milremo or mafac tool kits from the 1970's. :wink:
Unfortunately not. I have some thin-walled sockets made by Snap-on and even that 11 mm socket did not have a lot of clearance in the bore of the aluminium pedal body. My 9 mm deep-offset ring spanner (by Toptul) didn’t reach the lock nut, never mind my fatter 11 mm one reaching the deeper cone nut.

It’s a horrible design, seemingly aimed – absurdly – at saving maybe 20 grams per pedal rather than being easy to service. But I had very little information to go on when shopping for it. Most manufacturers don’t even list the bearing types their pedals have. Shimano is a clear exception and probably worth the premium for that and their generally sensible designs with good manufacturing quality.

Ranting over.
by Samuel D
17 Sep 2023, 4:58pm
Forum: Bikes & Bits – Technical section
Topic: How to set bearing preload on pedals without a tabbed washer? 11 mm cone & 9 mm lock nut
Replies: 15
Views: 2448

Re: How to set bearing preload on pedals without a tabbed washer? 11 mm cone & 9 mm lock nut

Thanks for the warning, SimonCelsa. My wife isn’t likely to push the pedals as hard as you do, but I will still get the lock nut as tight as I reasonably can.

I did notice the lock nuts on the new pedals were on pretty tight.

A bit more context. Her bicycle is nearly ten years old and has spent all of those years outside (city commuter). I have periodically given it some maintenance, but one pedal seized recently and the bicycle sat for weeks because I couldn’t seem to find the time and energy to tackle all the other problems it likely had.

But the other day I did give it a thorough overhaul, extending to disassembling the Shimano Nexus SG-3R40 3-speed IGH with attached BR-IM31-R roller brake for cleaning and lubricating with the correct Shimano special greases. I had never given the hub a glance, not knowing enough about IGHs to crack it open. So I feared the worst when I did finally open it. Instead I was impressed to see it had withstood over nine years of neglect without a trace of internal rust or obvious bad wear, although the grease certainly looked to be on its last legs. Impressive engineering.

By the way, I managed to take this IGH apart and reassemble it with correct bearing preload without using a vice for the axle. Just in case anyone living in a flat is considering the job.

The seized pedal bearing, on the other hand, looked like an artefact from RMS Titanic. One cup of the Joy-Tech front hub had a fair bit of corrosion too (the higher one with the bicycle on its stand). Balls were rusty on that side. I kept that hub though. The cable housings had perforated vinyl covers, were therefore rusted, and therefore in turn had set into kinks from parking accidents. Chain was a mess. Bell had rusted solid. Etc. We live near the sea here in NL and things rust something shocking.

I’m getting to the point. I had lubricated the headset with some Mobilith SHC 1500 grease that I bought expensively from CTC member csowter back in 2015 when he offered it for sale. That 5+ year old grease was still mostly red and in good quantity. The headset bearings looked near enough like new!

Hence my great interest in treating these new pedals to the same red grease.
by Samuel D
17 Sep 2023, 1:52pm
Forum: Bikes & Bits – Technical section
Topic: How to set bearing preload on pedals without a tabbed washer? 11 mm cone & 9 mm lock nut
Replies: 15
Views: 2448

Re: How to set bearing preload on pedals without a tabbed washer? 11 mm cone & 9 mm lock nut

Just found confirmation from member Cowsham that this DMR tool is likely to work with XLC pedals, now that I know what to search for:

viewtopic.php?p=1792941#p1792941
by Samuel D
17 Sep 2023, 1:47pm
Forum: Bikes & Bits – Technical section
Topic: How to set bearing preload on pedals without a tabbed washer? 11 mm cone & 9 mm lock nut
Replies: 15
Views: 2448

Re: How to set bearing preload on pedals without a tabbed washer? 11 mm cone & 9 mm lock nut

Thank you, all. Nice to see familiar names.

I can’t get a screwdriver to jam the cone nut. There just isn’t enough space alongside the 9 mm socket for anything I have in my toolbox that might be big enough to work. I had to place my macro lens very close to the pedal for the photos, which exaggerates by perspective distortion the size of the bore relative to the more distant nuts. In fact an 11 mm socket barely clears the bore. Of course you can get away with tilting the 9 mm socket a little to give more space on one side, but even so it’s too tight for a suitable screwdriver.

I could maybe spend most of an afternoon find some bit of scrap metal and filing it to work, but I didn’t sign up for that when I paid €18 for these pedals.

Drilling a hole in the side and using a set screw against the cone nut is an interesting option. That might work.

However, since slowster – amazingly – found a tool that might work, I think that route makes most sense for me.

I do wonder how XLC intended customers to service this. Though the pedal appears to be a rebranded Union SP-828 model with minor differences, actually. I searched for a Union tool too without success.

Having opened and greased the other pedal too now, I see another oddity: although both outboard bearings had 14 of the microscopic balls as advertised, and one of the inboard bearings also had 14 balls, the other one had 16. Counting error in the factory?

Think I’ll pay the surcharge for well documented, well manufactured Shimano pedals the next time.
by Samuel D
15 Sep 2023, 12:02pm
Forum: Bikes & Bits – Technical section
Topic: How to set bearing preload on pedals without a tabbed washer? 11 mm cone & 9 mm lock nut
Replies: 15
Views: 2448

How to set bearing preload on pedals without a tabbed washer? 11 mm cone & 9 mm lock nut

Hello, all. I return and bid you good tidings after an extended leave while I started a family, moved to The Netherlands, etc.

I was servicing my wife’s bicycle the other day and had to fit new pedals, opting for the XLC PD-C21 model as a low-cost option with user-serviceable cup-and-cone bearings. Or so I thought from the website description:

“adjustable, reduced weight cone-bearing constructed of 14 3/32 ball bearings allowing you to make adjustments or repairs with ease and keep your pedals running smoothly”

The reality is not so easy. This is what you see when you pop off the dust cap:

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That’s a 9 mm lock nut sitting on top of a cone with flats spaced at 11 mm.

There is no washer between them, and anyway the axle isn’t keyed to take a tabbed washer. So turning the lock nut tightens the cone as soon as the two make contact.

I’m familiar with this system from certain Shimano pedals, for which Shimano provides an expensive special tool (TL-PD33, TL-PD63, TL-PD300, or TL-PD400). None of those would work with 9 mm and 11 mm nuts unless I’m mistaken.

Suggestions for setting the bearing preload?

The nuts are recessed pretty deeply in the hole, and an 11 mm socket barely clears the hole diameter, just to make matters more difficult. This is how it looks (after I recklessly pulled everything apart to use better grease, that red stuff):

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I do have about 4 mm of threaded axle clear of the lock nut. Would a washer help me even if not tabbed?

Someone made a special tool of their own for this, but that’s beyond my current machining abilities.
by Samuel D
24 Mar 2021, 10:07am
Forum: Bikes & Bits – Technical section
Topic: Best wishes for Brucey
Replies: 613
Views: 73483

Re: Best wishes for Brucey

I feel awful about this. Poor Brucey.

Is there some way we can be informed about his status and hopeful recovery? Not every prying detail but the gist of things.

Just because I haven’t met him in person doesn’t mean I don’t feel close to him. We had many discussions here. He was a big influence on my thinking about bicycles and cycling and beyond. No doubt some of you would say the same.
by Samuel D
22 Feb 2021, 5:38pm
Forum: Using the Forum - request help : report difficulties
Topic: Gmail spam filter and topic reply notifications
Replies: 24
Views: 3426

Re: Gmail spam filter and topic reply notifications

admin wrote:For those who've had trouble with this, I think it should be sorted now.

I quoted the bit of your reply that I can understand and can confirm it now works at my end. Thanks for your efforts to resolve the problem. Appreciated.
by Samuel D
2 Dec 2020, 4:51pm
Forum: Using the Forum - request help : report difficulties
Topic: Gmail spam filter and topic reply notifications
Replies: 24
Views: 3426

Re: Gmail spam filter and topic reply notifications

Thanks for finally giving my new filter something to do, deliquium! Ha ha.

Works for me too, though I get an obnoxious warning that I’m only seeing the message because of my filter, so on my head be it. Thanks, Google.

On the plus side, while fooling around with this filter I took the opportunity (in Settings > Labels and Settings > Chat and Meet) to hide all the clutter that had gradually crept into the left panel of my Gmail web interface. You know, Hangouts, Snoozed (eh?), Scheduled (I make a point of living a scheduleless life, near as I can), all those priority labels I never bothered to figure out, All Mail (wot?), etc.

My left panel now looks like this and reminds me of the good old days when I knew what the heck was going on and where my data was:

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One reason I wasn’t seeing these messages in Spam was that my whole Spam folder was burried under the nonsense I’ve now removed, below the fold so to speak. Fixed.
by Samuel D
2 Dec 2020, 12:14pm
Forum: Using the Forum - request help : report difficulties
Topic: Gmail spam filter and topic reply notifications
Replies: 24
Views: 3426

Re: Gmail spam filter and topic reply notifications

Thanks for the suggestion, deliquium. I’ve now attempted to set this up (by selecting an email from the CyclingUK notifier in my Spam folder in Gmail, clicking the three vertical dots to the right of the time it was sent, and then selecting “Filter messages like this” – in case anyone else was wondering). Fingers crossed.
by Samuel D
26 Nov 2020, 9:53am
Forum: Using the Forum - request help : report difficulties
Topic: Gmail spam filter and topic reply notifications
Replies: 24
Views: 3426

Re: Gmail spam filter and topic reply notifications

This problem persists for me and is really quite a nuisance, because no matter how many times I tell Gmail that these messages ‘look safe’ and are ‘not spam’, it insists on throwing them in the bin. I’ve probably missed some of them in there.

This must be affecting a huge number of people even if they don’t realise it or complain about it (because they don’t check their spam folder before it’s automatically emptied). Consider how many people use the CyclingUK forum with a Gmail address for notifications.
by Samuel D
12 Oct 2020, 1:26pm
Forum: Bikes & Bits – Technical section
Topic: SLR, Super SLR, New Super SLR, SLR EV, etc.
Replies: 54
Views: 12363

Re: SLR, Super SLR, New Super SLR, SLR EV, etc.

Brucey wrote:part #4 (locknut at the rear of the caliper) is different, being B compatible; it is the only part of BR-R451 which is not 'A' compatible with BR-R450

What about the calliper arms themselves? Shimano shouldn’t have changed the various lever lengths, since the hand-lever compatibility didn’t change, but might there be some other subtle change – stiffness or something? I still haven’t seen a BR-R451 in the wild.
by Samuel D
12 Oct 2020, 9:41am
Forum: Bikes & Bits – Technical section
Topic: SLR, Super SLR, New Super SLR, SLR EV, etc.
Replies: 54
Views: 12363

Re: SLR, Super SLR, New Super SLR, SLR EV, etc.

Nice write-up.

The BR-R450 appears to be discontinued. The BR-R451 remains widely available. But what’s the difference between the two?

The BR-R650 is increasingly hard to find. I fear it’s on the way out, but maybe someone knows for sure.