Cycling UK Forum

Comment taken from an article in the Guardian, Tory rebel MP from the Guardian:

One junior frontbencher, Michael Gove’s parliamentary private secretary, Angela Richardson, was sacked on Wednesday night after rebelling against the three-line whip by abstaining – only to be reinstated on Thursday morning.

The Tory whips weren't pulling any punches.

I believe Third Crank listed the Tory MP's who voted against but looking at a transcript of the session in the Commons, Peter Bottomley spoke out against the motion and then abstained.

My local MP voted with the Fore, but I am not surprised by that. I doubt there was any arm twisting in his case as he spoke out "fore" during the debate.

There was a humdinger of an interview on the radio 4 today programme of Kwasi Kwarteng by Nick Robinson. Worth a listen on BBC sounds I think.

I have tried to find a link to it on BBC sounds, but it hasn't appeared yet because the broadcast has only just finished.

Thread resurrection...

My parents live close to Hughenden Manor which is owned by the National Trust and is located on the outskirts of High Wycombe in Buckinghamshire. My father has a daily walk in the park land that surrounding the house. There are a number of beehives close to the manor house. A swarm of bees has escaped from one of the hives and settled high up (6 meters?) on the branch on a tree a few meters from the hives. I don't know when this happened but the bee colony seems to be exposed to the elements and it is only going to get colder and possibly wetter from now onwards.

It looks like a beekeeper has maybe been trying to get the bees down. They have attached a box to the end of a long pole and left the pole and box under the bee colony. It looks a bit risky to me.

Some pictures...

reohn2 wrote: ↑19 Oct 2021, 7:46pm Food waste.
One word.
Pigs.

I believe there is a Chinese saying that the only thing that is goes to waste with a pig is the squeal (implying of course that everything gets used). Doesn't seem to apply in Britain though.

Not quite sure where to put this so resurrecting this thread.

I recently read an article on the Linux Weekly News site about a set of tools written by the Netherlands Forensic Institute to extract data from the computers on a Tesla Electric Vehicle and reconstruct what happened prior to the crash, all without having to rely on Tesla acting as a gatekeeper to tell the investigators what went wrong.

(Can you trust a company to be completely honest and not withhold information when the investigation outcome might have repercussions on the company and people working for or directing it?)

There is an aircraft industry investigation model where they recover the black box recorders and then all the interested parties are present while the recorders are examined.

The second link shows a video clip of a single vehicle car crash, presumably while the car was running on autopilot. Not very reassuring

I strongly suspect this is a generational thing.
My parents don't consider a meal as being complete without it containing some (or mostly) meat.
Of me and my three siblings, only one eats meat and the meat eater sibling has a spouse and son who are also vegetarians, so that sibling doesn't get to eat any meat at home

I have this impression that there are a lot of stroppy teenagers who are telling their parents that they will not eat meat.

My siblings and I were stroppy teenagers once (a long time ago)

My eating habits haven't contributed to any change over 10 years because I wasn't eating meat then either.

Psamathe wrote: ↑21 Sep 2021, 4:52pm Question: If you have a fairly "tired" battery (e.g. in a rechargeable LED light) e.g. running at 60% of new capacity, does it only take 60% of the power to recharge it or does it still take the full (as new) power to recharge (but just generates more heat)?

I don't know for sure but yes some of the loss of capacity will be because some of the power is being wasted as heat during discharge. Old batteries ( or cells) have a higher internal resistance than pristine cells. When the internal resistance gets too high as the cell ages, when you attempt to draw power from the cell, the high internal resistance of the cell means that power is wasted at heat in the cell instead of being delivering as power into the load.

However I am not sure that this is major mechanism for the lost of cell capacity, it might only be a secondary effect.

With lead acid cells (batteries) one of the ways that a cell can loose capacity is by bits of the plates in the cell falling off and forming a sludge at the bottom on the cell. All that material in the sludge is no longer available to "take part in the chemistry" of the cell. So the capacity of the cell goes down. Moving back to a lithium ion cell, there might be some mechanism that changes the material in the anode and/or cathode of the cell that locks the material up so that it can't take part in the chemistry of the cell, so the capacity goes down just like the lead acid cell.

Going back to the cell internal resistance. A few year back there was a big hoo-ha when Apple (electronics firm) got caught limiting the performance of older mobile phones as their batteries deteriorated. They changed the software of the older phones so that the processors ran more slowly. This was cause for lots of complaints from Apple customers. But I think it was actually a smart move by Apple. The power losses in the cell depend on the current drawn from the cell and the internal resistance , I*I*R (I squared R). R is the internal resistance of the cell. I is the current. If apple ran the processor in the phone at half the speed (MHz), the current I is halved, but the power loss in the battery is reduced by a factor of 4. This means you can keep the phone working even though it is running off a past it's best battery.

andrew_s wrote: ↑5 Sep 2021, 11:06pm

6.5_lives_left wrote: ↑5 Sep 2021, 2:22pmOne tooth is missing along with part of the inner ring. There is a crack 180 degrees opposite where the sprocket has opened up.

It doesn't look like there's a tooth missing to me.
It's cracked through, then it's bent open so it's a C rather than an O, aided by the crack opposite.
Check the hub splines haven't been damaged by the sprocket starting to slip.

Oh I think you might be right. That would make the broken sprocket have 17 teeth. I was comparing it against an 18 tooth sprocket from my parts bin. I put the 18 tooth sprocket on the bike, that explains why the chain was tight when I refitted it. The chain has stretched by 1/2 a link in ~112 links. The bigger 18 tooth replacement sprocket took up all the slack. I don't know how I missed that.

When I tried to close up the 'C' just now, the crack on the 180 degree opposite site spread a bit further.

Jim lewis wrote:I'd put my money on that being caused by a manufacturing defect.
Probably no coincidence that the failure occurred just where it did
i.e where the sprocket has been crimped.

I am sure you are right. The other radial cracks do seem to be where it has been crimped. And the cracks are now clearly through the whole depth of metal, not just in the surface plating

The hub gear seems to be fine. I feared the worst when the pedals started slipping so I was relieved to find that it was only the sprocket that was damaged. I have temporarily put a used worn sprocket from my parts bin on the bike and the hub is working fine. The splines on the hub were not damaged.

I had intended to replace the sprocket with a 1/8 one when the original wore out. I just didn't expect to do it so soon. Thanks for the links to sjscycles. I think I will try my local bike shop first though.

I have had a sprocket fail on my nexus 7 equipped bike. It seems to have failed in a novel (to me) way. I have some pictures
Apologies for the quality of the pictures. One tooth is missing along with part of the inner ring. There is a crack 180 degrees opposite where the sprocket has opened up. This caused it to slip around on the splines on the hub so that the transmission "didn't". The pedals just spun around without the back wheel turning.

There appear to be a number of radial cracks on the sprocket in a number of places. I can't tell if the cracks are just on the surface plating or if they go deep into the metal. The surface plating has been worn away on many of the teeth where the chain has rubbed. Some of the teeth are worn on the right side, others are worn on the left side. I think the sprocket isn't flat.

I think the chain tension might have been a little on the high side. Could that have caused this damage? The chain, which is 1/8 inch, has very little wear (less that 0.75%) and has done about 4000 miles. The sprocket has done 6000 miles. This is on a electric (pedelec) bike.

Has anyone seen this kind of wear before?

Could the problem with the clock be temperature related? Or humidity?

Hi all,
I have a work colleague, Saf, who is also a local councillor. He asked me about local cycling groups and if I belonged to a local club. I told him that I let my old CTC membership lapse, but that there is a local Wycombe CC. I also told him that he could try contacting CyclingUK and that CyclingUK might have a local representative for the Wycombe area or there about.

Saf told me that the council may be planning some type of path or route between Wycombe and Marlow and they would like input.

He is not a forum member at the moment but I am going to forward link to this post to him.

Can anyone help or alert the local contacts?

I saw this in the schedule also but Mike Sales beat me to it. I have set my programme recorder going.

Who is Steph McGovern? I have never seen any of her shows but she sounds like a smart cookie.

I have in my fleet of bikes a 'Trek District 1+'. It is a hub geared commuter bike with a Bosch mid drive motor. The hub gear is a Nexus 7 (7 gears). It has hydraulic disk brakes. The battery is mounted on the rear pannier rack. It also comes with a full chain case which does a good job of keeping the chain clean. It has mudguards of course. The lights are powered from the battery for the motor.

The pedals were poor, I have replaced them with something better. I also added flaps to the front and rear mudguards to keep spray from the wheels down. There are no bosses for fitting water bottles.

It looks a bit agricultural and it is quite heavy (more so when I load it up with a pannier of tools, spare tubes, pump etc). It was also absurdly expensive.

It is very low maintenance which I attribute to the chain case, The exception is rear wheel punctures which are a real bind - chain case + nexus cassette joint - which require tools + head torch if you are commuting after dark in a rural area.

Trek do other bikes in the District series, but not all of them have hub gears and a chain case, which is what I would go for despite the pain of rear wheel punctures.

Is it worth the expense? I used it for a 36 mile round trip commute which I struggled to do with a unassisted bike. I have 5000+ mile clocked up on it which I would otherwise have done by ICE car. In money terms I suspect I would have to do many more miles on the bike before I made a saving versus the motor car fuel costs to cover the bike purchase (I have already forked out for the car). The purchase cost of the car was about 4 times the cost of the bicycle. I am still pleased I bought the bike.

To answer the OP
Would it be good for a flat commute? Yes, but I used it on a hilly commute which is where electric bikes really excel.
Would it be good for weekend rough stuff on good paths? It could do it and I have done so (eg ridgeway) but only in summer and I can't be bothered with the cleaning required afterwards if you are unwise about your choice of path.