Cycling UK Forum

Ah, got you. I have those. I think they do 0.1 mm. I could always check with and without a shim to see if it makes a difference. I'll wait for the tools and let you know.

Thanks. I don't have an instrument which can measure such small dimensions precisely enough. Hmm, must have a look in the microscopy stuff in the cellar to see if I still have a grating.

Thanks. I have ordered the Shimano disassembly tool and a torque wrench so I will be able to compare the splines, but not with a Shimano hub. I'll look around the bike park at work... - see if anyone would like me to take their wheel to bits.

Thanks for the clarification. I'll buy a tool. Maybe I should have a torque wrench too. Other screws on the bike have recommended torque.

I live in Germany, where the law about liability is different from the UK. I might be confusing that with consumer rights law - I'll have to look. But surely you have seen equipment (usually electronic) with a sticker over a crucial screw that say removal voids warranty? My bike doesn't have one but the concept is the same.

Just to clarify: the Teasi has routeable maps for Europe, which includes the UK. It has more limited maps for elsewhere. All depend on the quality of the Open Street Map.

How does the ring, which retains the splines and is not obviously loose, affect the play in the splines? Are they tapered? If not it will make no difference, as others have written in the posts I have found. The torque would be to ensure the ring does not unwind by cyclical stressing.

So I go and buy the tool and a torque wrench? It might invalidate the warranty.

Anyone else know anything about this?

I have a Teasi one 3 which I bought in May 2016. It is about half the price or less of a Garmin. I have used it to follow routes loaded onto it as GPX files and also to record my own routes, both for cycling and walking. I have occasionally used its in-built route-finding function and address / feature search, mainly around cities. I have added a separate file of points of interest (POI): Bett-und-Bike. I have also added my own favourites.

It works OK based on the map data available to it, which is Open Street Map. Here in Germany the mapping is excellent. I notice that some rural areas of the UK are incomplete - for footpaths anyway. I asked it to route me to a nearby shop to which I knew the route and it proposed something rather long. I checked OSM and saw that the agricultural roads I know were not identified as open to cycles - so the Teasi was working correctly. I edited OSM.

The model I have does not contain a compass. It gets its alignment when you move, which can be confusing when you start or go through a complex junction. The newer "extend" model has a compass, so the map should always align.

The GPS can be slow to find satellites and it uses only GPS, not Glonass and not Galileo (few do). The accuracy when I have been recording seems to be typical of GPS without correction. I have compared my tracks with satellite imagery on OSM in edit mode.

The built-in battery is not a problem as I have a USB power outlet on the bike. Without recharging you can get around 6 hours riding if the backlight is turned right down. You could also use a USB power pack which takes two AA cells to recharge it. I have a tiny one from Hama which can charge 2 AA cells and then use them as a power pack. In German: https://www.amazon.de/dp/B003O6VFJC.

The device very occasionally freezes. This seems to happen most when you are following a route and recording at the same time, you go off route and it tries to navigate you back to the route.

I have never updated the software on my device - deliberately. Others have had big problems, particularly with the first Tahuna version which came out last August.The Teasi Tool tries to update your device as soon as it detects a new version on the server. So, all the Teasi devices in the world started trying to update within a few days of the software update. That crashed the server. The software was not robust enough against incompletely downloaded update packages and caused lots of problems. The following update was a bit better according to the GPS Radler website (http://gpsradler.de, in German). The most recent update seems to be OK for most people - at least there have been a lot fewer complaints. I am thinking of trying it. My advice would be never to be an early adopter of changed software.

In fact you do not need the Teasi Tool to upload routes or download your recordings. You can copy the GPX files to the Teasi disk or SD card.

To summarise: the Teasi works well for me. It has a big screen. It guides on downloaded routes well, including directing you back if you go off course. Route planning seems to work but I have not used it much for cycling. I have heard that the Teasi navigation functions are actually better for cyclists than Garmin but I could not comment.

I have a Shimano centerlock disc rotor SM-RT64 mounted on a SON 28 dynamo. The rotor moves very slightly relative to the hub. I can detect this when the wheel is off the bike by pushing the rotor by hand. I think this has been present since I had the bike but I'm not entirely sure. A while ago I adjusted the steering to reduce play.

Poking about the internet finds a few contributions about this but various opinions about whether it is normal or not. The fixing is by splines, so some say there must be some space between them so you can remove the disc. It is said that under normal conditions the load on the splines is aways in the same direction, so you shouldn't notice the slight movement. Others say there should be no play.

Does anyone know about this? Is it a fault? Is it common? I'd like to go informed to the bike shop where I bought the bike, if necessary. Otherwise I can foresee disagreement between me, the shop, the bike manufacturer, Schmidt (dynamo) and Shimano (disc). The bike is two years old and the manufacturer says components are covered by their respective manufacturer guarantees.

Thanks for the tips and sympathy, Brucey.

I managed to remove the locknut from the PD-M324 pedal with a standard 10mm socket spanner . On examining the nut and Shimano tool TL-PD33 I noticed that the nut has sharp corners (a perfect hexagon) and the tool has rounded internal corners. The nut was not burred. The tool is like this because the walls are so thin and sharp corners would make a weak point. Nuts I have seen normally have sharp corners. Standard sockets have thicker walls so it is possible to make them strong enough with perfectly hexagonal holes.

The Shimano engineers who design the tools and specify the nuts aren't talking to each other. It's a classic engineering tolerance problem. I had thought that Shimano engineering was high quality. Ah well. Another illusion shattered.

The solution is to file the corners of the nut away until it just fits in the tool. I assume this will be necessary on all nuts from pedals of this batch. Of course you can't file the tool socket because it's hardened steel and there's no room to move a file. Also you would weaken it.

I have Shimano M324 pedals bought in 2009. The right cone worked loose. As the pedals have plenty of life in them and I plan to buy more for another bike, I recently bought the eye-wateringly expensive cone adjusting tool TL-PD33, as specified by Shimano for these pedals. The packaging states that it is for M324 and the pedals have M324 embossed on the cages.

The outer spanner fits the cone, but the inner spanner DOES NOT FIT THE LOCKNUT!! It is close and sort of grips the very edge of the nut until you try to turn it, when it springs off. I tapped it with a hammer to seat it but it doesn't help. Has anyone else encountered this? Is there some sort of version incompatibility (like computers)?

By the way, the link in the main article to the Shimano web site near the TL-PD33 is dead.

The rules changed on 1 August 2013 in Germany (I live here). You may use battery lights now on any bike. The previous 11kg rule was widely ignored and in practice the police would not stop a cyclist with good battery lights meeting the same rules as the dynamo ones, i.e. 10 lux at the front. If you can read German, it is explained here: http://www.adfc.de/news/batteriebeleuchtung-ab-sofort-erlaubt. The new rules are unclear but I would expect the police to continue to behave in the same way. There are enough cyclists with no lights at all to keep them busy.

Thanks for the suggestions. I think I have found a partial solution myself. I removed the mud flap on the front mudguard and refitted it with a stiffener (a piece of PET bottle) and a long extension piece made of wide black sticky tape stuck back-to-back to itself and sandwiching the existing mud flap. This is aligned exactly behind the front tyre and reaches quite close to the ground. You need a stiffener because the flap is now heavier and will bend downwards onto the tyre when the bike is parked. My original flap had already developed creases and two holes where it kept flexing as I parked. The way the flap was fitted to the curved mudguard made these creases inevitable. You can't fix a flat plane to a surface curved in two directions without creasing or stretching.

The extended flap now catches much more muck than the original flap, which was too short and mounted wrongly as well. The chain has remained clean for much longer.

Why the white spirit? and the clamping overnight?
I have never tried the white spirit and cant think of any good reason to do so, I would be worried about any greasiness stopping the rubber solution from doing its job properly.
Patches are normally set within a minute and no need for clamping.

The white spirit degreases the tyre and also slightly softens it, which makes the rubber solution stick better. Because there is slightly more solvent to evaporate (tiny residue of white spirit plus what has not evaporated from the rubber solution before it becomes "dry"), I leave it to dry out overnight. The clamp makes sure it is well stuck. All glues work better the more contact area they have. I have never ever had a patch fail using this method.

Like another poster I find Schwalbe's removable valves to be a pain and have often had leaks from them coming ever so slightly undone when removing the pump head.
Could this be why yours is letting some air out.

The tube with the slow leak is a Schraeder. The valve is also removable (standard for this type) but it is tight.

I must have a closer look at the Schwalbe Presta valves I have. I didn't realise that they are removable. I should imagine that you could accidentally loosen them with the screw on the plunger if you turned it too far.

I have an old Blackburn rack but I think it's made the same way at the back. I used two pieces of 90 degree aluminium angle filed away in various places so I could bolt them together with screws which just pass by the place where the bottom tube bends down away from the weld to the upper tube. This provided a stable platform to which I could then attach the D-toplight Permanent with its wider-spaced fixing points. It doesn't foul the panniers nor protrude above the top of the rack. If you are really interested in this, ask and I will take a photo.

I currently have a Brompton and a Schwalbe inner tube on my Brompton bike. The Schwalbe loses more pressure each week. I noticed because all the previous Brompton tubes have been consistent. I don't like Schwalbe Presta valves because they do not have a long enough smooth part to the stem to allow a lock-on pump rubber to seal properly and not wear away. Michelin gets it right. If a shop doesn't have them (French tyres in Germany!), I ask to see the valve.

I have never had a problem with puncture repairs done at home in the warm and dry. I abrade the butyl rubber (particularly if the patch goes across a raised line), soften it a bit with white spirit, do the usual gluing and sticking and then clamp the patch overnight.

Oh - another thing about Schwalbe I have noticed is that the diameter across the inflated tube (not across the circle) is not consistent because of differences in the thickness of the rubber. I don't mean at the join.