Cycling UK Forum

I don't have any special knowledge about headsets, but is it possible that this is supposed to be tight, an "interference fit".

If that is the case, maybe cooling down the bearing by putting it in the freezer, then popping it into to the frame before it warms up will work.
Cooling it down might cause it to shrink in size sufficiently that it will go in without having to force it in place. Once it warms up though, it might be difficult to get it back out again, which could be a good thing if you don't want it to move around when you are using the bike.

Paulatic wrote: ↑16 Jun 2024, 10:05am Lack of servicing a Bosch can be costly.

Mapdec. https://youtube.com/watch?v=2As4Lqqh7KQ ... PRw56rzsOO

So that raises the question, when is it appropriate to get the motor serviced?
(Before it goes wrong I guess).

My Bosch motor has done 14000 miles (just short by a few miles edit, and about 5-6 years old). I haven't had it serviced. It isn't giving any trouble yet. Should I let the bike shop have a look at it?

I don't need convincing in the merits of hub gears. I have been using hub gear bikes since I bought an Orbit Orien after reading Chris Juden's review of it in cycle magazine maybe 20 years ago. That bike is no longer in use unfortunately since I trashed the rear drop outs by failing to tighten up the track nuts on the rear axle. Lesson learned: Avoid hubgear bikes with aluminium dropouts unless they are of the replaceable type.

The OP's tick boxes were
* hub gears
* disk brakes
* step through frame

I don't have experience of step through frames though It might not have to be that long before I have to start thinking along those lines.

I have two bikes in use currently. They are both diamond frames (with a "cross bar").

One is a fahrradmanufaktur T100. It have has V-brakes. A 8 speed Nexus hub. A Heebie chain glider covers the chain from the elements. I believe Fahrrad Manufaktur do Mixte and step-through versions of this bike. https://www.fahrradmanufaktur.de/de/fah ... tybike.php. It was cheap to purchase (10 years ago) but not manufactured cheaply.

The second is a Trek Electric bike, District1+. This has disk brakes and a full chain case (made of plastic, but still going 4 years of use). It cost much more than the OP's budget of about £1000 (about twice that). Again I believe Trek do Mixte and step through variants though not all of them have the chain case.

Bikes that fit the OP's tick boxes do exist but you have to look around and also you may not find that your local bike shop is prepared to sell you one. Your local bike shop tends to want to sell you one of the bikes that they currently have in stock, which almost certainly isn't a hub geared bike. I travel to bike shops that I know have the type of bikes I like to purchase. These are Chris's Bikes in Girton, Cambridge and Walton street cycles in Oxford. Chris's Bikes was on a recommendation from a family member and Walton Street cycles is one of those old fashioned bike stores that stock everything but seem to disappeared off the high street elsewhere.

About disk brakes. They are good but there are caveats. I had another hub geared bike made by Koga. It was once one of the first bikes to market with the then new Alfine group set. It worked very well and was beautiful to look at but it had a very harsh ride, particularly with respect to the wrists and shoulders. This was because it was a rigid frame bike, with narrow 32mm tyres (to fit under the mudguards). Disk brake forks have to be made very stiff with no give in them to handle the braking forces.

Also disk brake tend to be very hard on the wheel rims and spokes. For reasons I won't go into I tend to commute on my Trek electric bike fully laden with camping equipment. The back wheel struggles to cope with the loading. I am on my third back wheel now. I had to ask Walton Street cycles to make me a bomb proof wheel (still going 1 year latter). The previous factory built replacement wheel died after 3 month.

I don't have this problem with the V-brake operated T100 (but it does doesn't have electric assist so it is much harder work and a much longer journey time).

Sweep wrote: ↑21 Feb 2023, 7:47pm edit - apols if already posted in this thread - I did read somewhere once that if hoping to remain unspotted almost in plain view very close to a road, it's a good idea to be upwards of driver's view rather than below - makes sense I suppose - hopefully they are looking at the road, not to the sky.

I once tried to use that technique of being above the drivers eye line on a sunken single track road going through woodland with steep earth banks either side of the road. However I had forgotten that the driver of an off-road 4x4 vehicle had a high viewing position and could see above and beyond the earth banks... I wasn't a well hidden as I thought I was

If you are looking for a recumbent tricycle then Saddle Safari in Marlow, Buckinghamshire, might be worth a look. One of the owners uses an electric ICE 'bent trike (not sure what model) I believe because of a disability of some kind. And they sell and have ICE trikes to try out.

My only connection is that I am a customer of the shop (bicycle) and they are local to me.

There is also D-Tek in Little Thetford in Cambridgeshire too, of course.

These might be closer to you than Scotland.

PNG, GIF and JPEG are bitmap image formats.

I am not sure what you are trying to do but you might want to draw the image using a vector format. One of these is Scalable Vector Graphics (SVG).

There is a free program (zero cost, free as in freedom) called Inkscape that can be used to prepare SVG images. There are other programs too but Inkscape is the one I am familiar with. One is called Krita (again free). There is also a commercial program called Adobe Illustrator. (I haven't used these last two).

If you look on wikipedia, quite often you will see graphs and illustrations that have been prepared as SVG images. One of the features is that if you resize them, they continue to look sharp rather become pixelated at high magnification. If they contain small text, when you zoom in you can read the text.

Inkscape is quite a 'big' application. There is a learning curve to get to know how to use it. Very useful once you have learned it though.

Edit: Once the SVG is drawn, if you need a bitmap image format, you can export as a bitmap image.

Jdsk wrote: ↑29 Dec 2022, 6:49pm

Tangled Metal wrote: ↑29 Dec 2022, 6:40pm

Jdsk wrote: ↑29 Dec 2022, 8:32am
What's the toxic material?

And where and when was this?

Can't remember but semi conductor device manufacture uses various feed chemicals and they react to create other intermediary chemicals that ultimately,,IIRC, deposit the various layers onto the silicon wafers. Those chemicals are very nasty and toxic to life.

It wasn't my field but I did a module on it that wasn't examined at the university concerned. The lab read the MOMBE lab. That's metallorganic molecular beam epitaxy lab. 20 plus years ago they set the lab up and it was a big development of which £1-2m went into the it processing equipment used by the leak detecor sensors.

The department was among the highest rated for research in the UK and the lab was a big part of that. 5 star rated with a high proportion of its research rated as internationally important. It's closest rated was Cambridge metallurgy department and MIT's equivalent at that time. No idea about now though.

Thanks

Gas detectors are common around this sort of facility.

I can't think of a relevant gas that fits that description.

Jonathan

I don't really know but I think that arsine might be one of the nasties that they use, especially when making GaAs, but possibly also as a dopant when making silicon circuits.

I remember seeing a job advert for someone with experience doing IC fabrication or optoelectronics (in the UK). One requirement was knowing how to uses breathing equipment. Another requirement was along the lines of knowledge to not poison themselves, other members of staff or the general public.

I didn't apply I know very little about device fabrication despite having an undergraduate degree with "microelectronics" in the subject name

Audax67 wrote: ↑30 Nov 2022, 10:57am That said, the bike is still nimble enough to have fun, and allows me to do things I haven't done for years. The controller also makes full use of the 25 kph + 10% tolerance EU regs allow, whereas a chum's Bosch-motored panzerbike is limited to an anally-precise Ordnung-muß-sein 25 kph. To the untutored eye my bike also looks like a normal bike so the police are less likely to take an interest when I'm scudding along at 28 kph (rounding error, m'lud).

My bold.

I recognise that description. It appears to be what I am riding, a Bosch powered Trek Dristrict 1+

To the OP, I use this for commuting and it does cope with the hills (chilterns) but I wouldn't want to ride it if the battery ran down. The battery is removable. It has hub gears and a chain case so it is low maintenance. But it was not cheap.

Back in the day when my nephew was young and growing up in Spain, he once fed a donkey some carrots (asked the owner first). But the carrots had been at the back of the fridge and had frozen solid. It was the middle of summer, so baking hot. The donkey seemed to enjoy the carrots because they disappeared quickly with a lot chomping but also with a lot of drooling. So it would seem that at least one donkey likes carrot popsicles in hot weather.

crg wrote: ↑29 Oct 2022, 7:52pm Hi guys,

Brucey recommended using a semi-fluid grease (SFG) like STC3435 rather than grease or grease + oil in IGHs, esp those with leaky seals.

If you used STC3435 in any IGH please post your experience here.
Thanks

I used semifluid grease purchased from https://www.dingocroft.co.uk/ . I didn't buy it on line though because the store is only a mile up the road from my parents house, so I visited the store in person. I asked for "Landrover swivels grease". They seemed quite amused that I was using it on a bicycle, but hey...

Relevant info:

Hub details

A shimano 7 speed nexus hub. This uses pawls throughout. It does not have roller clutches like the 8 speed nexus and alfine hubs.
The hub is fitted in an electric (pedelec) bike.

Prior use
Previous lubricant?

The bike did about 2000 miles with the factory fitted lubricant before I used the semi-fluid grease.

Do you add SFG to existing lubricant or replace? If replacing, how did you remove & clean?

I flushed out all the existing lubricant with white spirit. When asked, Brucey suggested that was a bad idea and that I should add some gear oil (hypoid gear oil?) to make sure that some lubricant got into the right hand cone, buried deep in the hub.

I seem to remember Brucey suggesting somewhere that it was a good idea to run the hub with gear oil for a short while then pour it out to flush the existing factory lubricant and wear particles out of the hub. I didn't do that though (too eager to get started, failed to read all the advice first).

When I added the semi-fluid grease, I initially did this by removing a circlip and one of the planet cage assemblies from the hub mechanism. This exposed a rod buried in a channel inside the axel. This rod moves if you fit the cassette joint and operate the gear change by rotating the cassette joint. Using the squeezey bottle it came in, I applied semi-fluid grease into the channel in the axel and operated the gear change. This pulled grease into the channel in the axel. I kept on repeating this until grease leaked out of the seal near the cassette joint and right hand cone. I had the hub mechanism/axel on a slant so that gravity would assist the grease flowing into the axel. This way I made sure that there was grease in the right hand cone.

Then I replace the planet cage and the circlip, painted the whole mechanism in semi-fluid grease (filling all the gaps). I put a generous dollop of semi-fluid grease into the hub shell too before inserting the mechanism and pushing the seals in place to stop the grease pouring out.

Any precautions to take?

Once I started adding the lubrication I did stop or put down the hub because I didn't want to contaminate it with dirt. I had plenty of paper down on the floor to catch the spills and I wore my scruffiest clothing with the intent to bin them afterwards if necessary.

I made sure that the pliers that I used to replace the circlip were spotless.

I also made sure that I didn't allow the gears on the planet cage to rotate at any time I removed or replaced the planet cage (to keep the timing correct).

Quantity of STC 3435 used

I think a little over half of the free space inside the hub was filled with semi-fluid grease, the first time around.

How often (kms or time) do you change the grease?

I tipped out the semi-fluid grease after about a further 3000 miles (5000 miles total).

Do you add to the existing SFG or replace? If replacing, -how do you remove and clean?

I flushed with white spirit again. I retained all the grease and white spirit for examination. I then dried and reapplied the semi-fluid grease, taking care to work it into the right hand cone as before.

I used a powerful magnet to flush through the old grease to look for metal fragments. There plenty of these, they were like a very fine dust.

Pros and cons of SFG.

I have not replace the second lot of semi-fluid grease yet, 5000 miles on (10000 mile total). However I suspect that a lot of the grease has leaked out because I can now hear the pawls operating (previously they were silent when the grease was in place). I think seals have worn and the grease has leaked away. This did not happen with the first batch of grease. Some of the grease leaked out of the seals for the right hand cone. However some of this dripped on to the rear sprocket and then on to the chain (inside a chain case), so the chain remained well lubricated and clean. Not a bad outcome I suppose.

I also had some grease leak out of the seal on the left hand cone, which is bad news if you have disk brakes. I had to be careful to proactively remove that with a cotton bud. This seemed to be worse when there were big changes between day and night time temperatures.

I think the grease may also have affected the cassette joint. This has worn a bit and has some play in it. I think I will have to replace this at some point soon.

Edit: Did you use a different grease for the outer bearings (that support the axle)?

No, I did not use a separate grease for the wheel bearings. The left hand cone easily became wetted with the semi-fluid grease (and some grease leaked out that route).

For the right hand cone I took the steps described above to make sure that was wetted too.

Further update

The driver's insurance company phoned me up today.
It seemed to go well enough. They ask me if I was injured and I said no.
Then they ask me if the bike was damaged and I said "Yes it was damaged
and it is currently at the bike shop who I have asked to write up a report on it.
But the bike shop haven't finished it yet."

They said fine, give us your email address and mail address, we will reply with an email address to sent the
photos of the damage to the bike and forward the bike shops report when it is ready.

The bike shop are being slow, although the bike only went in on Tuesday 1 Nov. They said they couldn't see any damage. I told them they need to look at the forks. I would have hoped they could spot that without the need for prompting.

An update,

The driver has been in contact with me again. He has passed my details to his insurer. And he has provided me with a reference number or case number that his insurer gave him. He told me to expect a call from the insurer (so that I don't confuse it with spam call or a nuisance call).

And of course I continue to remain uninjured !

I have not heard from the insurer yet however.

Jdsk wrote: ↑23 Oct 2022, 10:02pm Sorry to hear about that, and glad you're OK.

Usual rules: keep contemporaneous written notes of all communications.

Do you now have the driver's name and address?

I misspoke: I have the driver's name and telephone number, I do not have his address or car registration number.
I don't believe he is trying to be evasive however, I just failed to ask for these when I had the opportunity.

Are you sure that you only want compensation for the damage to the bike? What's the value of the bike?

I would be quite happy just to have the bike back in the state it was in before the collision.
I don't have any injuries and my clothes and luggage were undamaged.

Edit: Value of the bike, about 2K when new. It's a pedelec, Trek District 1+ . 3years old, done about 10k miles, well maintained.

Yes, inform the police immediately but I wouldn't expect much to come of it.

Jonathan

Thank you Jonathon

Resurrecting an old thread...

I was my turn to get knocked off on Friday 21 October.

It was about 9pm in the pouring rain (dark unlit road, no moon, but had a 70 Lux B&M lamp on the front). The driver pulled out of a side road to make a right turn across my path while I was going straight on on the major road. I was almost level with the side road when he pulled out so I only had a fraction of a second to react. I believe he did this a "rolling turn", he never can to a complete halt at the giveway line. I was in primary position in my lane because the gutters were full of rainwater. I struck his front right wing at a glancing angle as he was part way through the turn and removed his wing mirror for him (which I had the pleasure of picking up off the floor and handing back to him later on) . I ended up on the floor on my back with the bike on top of me and my feet pointing in the direction I had just come from.

Surprisingly I was pretty much uninjured. And I has able to continue my journey with the bike after straightening the handle bars and checking that it was still ridable.

I exchanged names and telephone numbers with the driver, (but I didn't get address or car registration number !). There was also a lady motorist who arrived shortly after the collision who offers to act a witness (although she said she didn't see the collision, just the aftermath as I was getting up of the road. I have her name and phone number too.

I have exchanged a text message with the lady witness (just to confirm that I got home safely) and I spoke by phone today (Sunday) with the driver of the car I collided with. I told him I was uninjured but the bike was damaged. He said he will contact his insurance and ask them how to proceed.

The damage to the bike: I think the forks are not straight. The front wheel is not central between the forks even after reseating the wheel's axel/quick release in the fork ends. I don't think it is merely that the wheel is out of true.

I am concerned to get the driver or his insurance to put the bike right but I am no longer a CTC member so I don't have my own insurance to go to help for.

Is it wise to report the incident to the police? We have already exchanged details and I have the contact details for the witness.

Edit: what do I do about dealing with the drivers insurer?

Cugel wrote: ↑15 Oct 2022, 11:19am

Mike Sales wrote: ↑15 Oct 2022, 11:06am

Cugel wrote: ↑15 Oct 2022, 10:52am

I see that you and the pooch both had a wee bite of that fine fly agaric. A report of your trips would be welcome, inclusive of the nature & appearance of the faerie you came across (and that of any goblins).

As you will have realised, a chaw of that particular toadstool enables humans to understand many creature-languages, including that of dogs, so you'll be able to tell us what the hound imparted about his own experiences.

Cugel, always fascinated by alternative realities.

I was once woken in the middle of the night by a group of friends, one of who had eaten fly agaric. My house was the nearest available refuge. Her experience had nothing to recommend it as far as I could see. Between vomiting sessions she was in no state to report visions.

Apparently the trick is to eat just the right amount, which will still make you throw up but otherwise leave you wandering in strange lands for a bit. How to judge the right amount? Gawd knows! As with other psychedelics, the effect on the imbiber will be largely determined by their overall mental state as well as by any physical effects. There are bad trips and good ones.

I did have a friend (a flat-mate, when we were students) who habitually went up the fells to pick psilocybin mushrooms, which he dried and made into a tea. I was too leery to risk a cuppa myself but had many a fine evening enjoying the mental rub-off that occurs when such a tea drinker becomes a bit of a jolly elf themselves. I never saw any harmful effects in this madcap - quite the opposite really.

More than half a century ago now but very memorable experiences.

Cugel

I believe the correct way to deal with the toxins in a fly agaric is to strain it through the kidneys of your reindeer.
It is a bit hard on the reindeer though (and they can take flight).
You all have a reindeer, don't you?