Who checks their bike before a ride?

[Biospace]

Sadly I remain ignorant of the environmental impacts and costs of many things, including carbon fibre & resin constructions. The stuff seems very stable, though, which it needs to be for bike frames and other engineered components coming under huge stresses and strains, so presumably it could be stored easily when done with, without leaching bad stuff into the environment .... ? (That's a guess). But could it be processed for reuse?

Hopefully there'll be an engineer somewhere who can inform us all.

Cugel

Well, BMW is into carbon fibres and use it to reinforce plastics. I don't really like modern BMW cars (they did make some peachy ones in the 60s) but they do understand how to extract more money and more brand loyalty than any other manufacturer. It turns out, their engineers are still first rate at pure engineering as the little i3 shows.

The i3 is perhaps the only car for several decades on which I'd be prepared to waste significant amounts of money, that's to say, buy it whilst there are still £thousands to lose in 'depreciation'. It's an exquisitive piece of engineering, Sandy Munro who takes apart new motor cars and reveals their inner secrets to other manufacturers for a living, was so intrigued that he paid for one himself and took it apart. This video is an interesting watch even if you're not an engineer, or are interested in engineering.

Apparently BMW has largely sorted the recycling aspect of the carbon fibre based shell, here's a link with respect to its production footprint.

And here's a link to its recycling, https://www.autoevolution.com/news/recy ... 95296.html

[pwa]

Sadly I remain ignorant of the environmental impacts and costs of many things, including carbon fibre & resin constructions. The stuff seems very stable, though, which it needs to be for bike frames and other engineered components coming under huge stresses and strains, so presumably it could be stored easily when done with, without leaching bad stuff into the environment .... ? (That's a guess). But could it be processed for reuse?

Hopefully there'll be an engineer somewhere who can inform us all.

Cugel

Well, BMW is into carbon fibres and use it to reinforce plastics. I don't really like modern BMW cars (they did make some peachy ones in the 60s) but they do understand how to extract more money and more brand loyalty than any other manufacturer. It turns out, their engineers are still first rate at pure engineering as the little i3 shows.

The i3 is perhaps the only car for several decades on which I'd be prepared to waste significant amounts of money, that's to say, buy it whilst there are still £thousands to lose in 'depreciation'. It's an exquisitive piece of engineering, Sandy Munro who takes apart new motor cars and reveals their inner secrets to other manufacturers for a living, was so intrigued that he paid for one himself and took it apart. This video is an interesting watch even if you're not an engineer, or are interested in engineering.

Apparently BMW has largely sorted the recycling aspect of the carbon fibre based shell, here's a link with respect to its production footprint.

And here's a link to its recycling, https://www.autoevolution.com/news/recy ... 95296.html

I had a glance at those links and couldn't spot anything that explained exactly how they expect to recycle carbon fibre re-inforced plastic, which would surely be a complex composite material to try to break down to its individual elements. In the past I've heard of carbon fibre being ground down and the resultant dust being integrated into what I refer to as tarmac, for roads. But that is putting fine particles of polymer into the world, where it will not be curated carefully for centuries, but will to some degree escape. That material will be in the road laying mix simply to get rid of it, not to make the road better than it would be without it. If grinding stuff down to dust and chucking it in tarmac is truly "recycling", all our worries about recycling are over, because that means almost any material is recyclable.

(About 15 years ago I was involved in a project that required a road surface and it was decided to try to make that out of something that had better green credentials than plain old tarmac. So tarmac with small particles of glass was used. The glass was of a sort not easily recycled in the normal way. But there was a small problem that nobody had considered. The resultant surface has small fragments of glass at the top surface, harmless and glinting in the sunshine. So when local youths turned up in the evenings, and bottle glass got broken, you couldn't tell which glass was just embedded harmlessly in the road and which was loose and needed sweeping up. Even when the road was perfectly clean I was reluctant to cycle over it because it still looked to have glass on it. The people I worked with who specced materials for shared use paths decided not to use it on those for that reason.)

[Biospace]

I had a glance at those links and couldn't spot anything that explained exactly how they expect to recycle carbon fibre re-inforced plastic, which would surely be a complex composite material to try to break down to its individual elements. In the past I've heard of carbon fibre being ground down and the resultant dust being integrated into what I refer to as tarmac, for roads. But that is putting fine particles of polymer into the world, where it will not be curated carefully for centuries, but will to some degree escape. That material will be in the road laying mix simply to get rid of it, not to make the road better than it would be without it. If grinding stuff down to dust and chucking it in tarmac is truly "recycling", all our worries about recycling are over, because that means almost any material is recyclable.

(About 15 years ago I was involved in a project that required a road surface and it was decided to try to make that out of something that had better green credentials than plain old tarmac. So tarmac with small particles of glass was used. The glass was of a sort not easily recycled in the normal way. But there was a small problem that nobody had considered. The resultant surface has small fragments of glass at the top surface, harmless and glinting in the sunshine. So when local youths turned up in the evenings, and bottle glass got broken, you couldn't tell which glass was just embedded harmlessly in the road and which was loose and needed sweeping up. Even when the road was perfectly clean I was reluctant to cycle over it because it still looked to have glass on it. The people I worked with who specced materials for shared use paths decided not to use it on those for that reason.)

There's a CFRP recycling plant in Wackerdorf, Germany which I think BMW uses. Although the i3 will be dropped from the range as it's cheaper to build a more conventional contruction (steel unibody) in large numbers, they will continue to use CFRP, including for making propshafts.

https://www.compositesworld.com/article ... cycle-loop

Fly ash is a favourite for road surfaces as well as building materials, theoretically it should be safe.

https://www.thisiseco.co.uk/news/what-h ... ation-ash/
https://www.drax.com/press_release/powe ... g-project/

[briansnail]

Never. I always change my bikes every 4/5 years. As its fun and the cost of a new bike is not much more when you save on service costs.
*******************************************************************************
I ride Brompton and a 100% British Vintage

[Dingdong]

Just setting off on a 70 miler into bright sunshine, sharp weather and no clouds. I think I have everything I need. Yesterday I watched my neighbour trying to take a tyre off with a screwdriver. I felt obligated to step in! Bike given a thorough service yesterday, swapped out the gear cables for new, and adjusted the brakes to perfection. Tyres up to good pressure, frame wiped down and clean. It's just one of those days when it feels great to be alive, and a privilege to be fit and able enough to ride a bicycle!

[Cugel]

Just setting off on a 70 miler into bright sunshine, sharp weather and no clouds. I think I have everything I need. Yesterday I watched my neighbour trying to take a tyre off with a screwdriver. I felt obligated to step in! Bike given a thorough service yesterday, swapped out the gear cables for new, and adjusted the brakes to perfection. Tyres up to good pressure, frame wiped down and clean. It's just one of those days when it feels great to be alive, and a privilege to be fit and able enough to ride a bicycle!

Yesterday I rode a mere 49K but with 800M of climbing and inclusive of some roads I've not previously gone along. (There are so many to choose from in mid West Wales). Cold and damp air but I were well-wrapped in wool and other fine stuff. No cars for kilometres at a time; and those that did appear driven by the well-mannered and considerate. That's lovely, now, bach.

The day before, I'd double-wrapped the top section of the handlebars with squishy tape, to avoid palm-tingle & numb. This worked very nicely but I noticed that rear shifts dropping the chain from a larger cog to a smaller cog were somewhat reluctant (but not the other way). I feel this is due to a too-tight wrap of the bar tape somewhere over the gear cable outer that runs along the bar tops; or the inducement of too tight a bend in the cable where it emerges from the bar tape. Gear changes were perfek prior to the new bar-wrap, see?

An example of one of those small signals offered by one's bicycles to indicate an issue, often with the solution encapsulated.

Perhaps the very occasional rattle of the front metal mudguard is also such a signal, suggesting that some frequencies of vibration for which the mudguard will reverberate need dampening with something like a rubber washer at one end of the mudguard stay or another?

Cugel, always feeling for pea problems under the bicycle mattress.

[Cowsham]

Just setting off on a 70 miler into bright sunshine, sharp weather and no clouds.

It's just one of those days when it feels great to be alive, and a privilege to be fit and able enough to ride a bicycle!

Great attitude -- the way I feel when we get a day it's not raining and I'm off work.

Torrential rain every day for what seems like an age. Probably just every day I've been off. Although I think it's God saying " Get on with the house renovation and forget about cycling for a while"

[windysmithy]

We got off the Holyhead to Dublin ferry the other day, and collected our bikes from the luggage reclaim area (we had had to go with the foot passengers for some reason, and load our (loaded) bikes into the back of a luton van with the foot passengers suitcases etc.).

We just set off, as you do, and my wife found that the front wheel skewer had been undone; whoever had done it had left it like that, presumably as they found that they couldn't take the wheel off without releasing the brakes.

Luckily, ferry terminals tend not to be at the top of steep hills!

[Cowsham]

We got off the Holyhead to Dublin ferry the other day, and collected our bikes from the luggage reclaim area (we had had to go with the foot passengers for some reason, and load our (loaded) bikes into the back of a luton van with the foot passengers suitcases etc.).

We just set off, as you do, and my wife found that the front wheel skewer had been undone; whoever had done it had left it like that, presumably as they found that they couldn't take the wheel off without releasing the brakes.

Luckily, ferry terminals tend not to be at the top of steep hills!

Why would they want to take the wheel off?

[windysmithy]

We got off the Holyhead to Dublin ferry the other day, and collected our bikes from the luggage reclaim area (we had had to go with the foot passengers for some reason, and load our (loaded) bikes into the back of a luton van with the foot passengers suitcases etc.).

We just set off, as you do, and my wife found that the front wheel skewer had been undone; whoever had done it had left it like that, presumably as they found that they couldn't take the wheel off without releasing the brakes.

Luckily, ferry terminals tend not to be at the top of steep hills!

Why would they want to take the wheel off?

Especially when they don't know how to do it... answers on a postcard.

[PaulS]

Do yourself a favour,get rid of the qr skewers and replace them with hexbolt ones,that way they can't flip open and become a safety issue and stand less of a chance of you having your wheels stolen if you leave your bike unattended.
Assuming you don't race,ask yourself when it was you needed to quick release your wheels?

Spotted this morning the front wheel on my son's Trek MTB was loose. Normally I check the kids' bikes each morning but this was loose enough to be dangerous. I replaced the quick-release skewers for Allen key bolts to prevent theft. I've never had one come loose before. Usually it is the opposite, they seize, especially in dynamo hubs that don't like grease. (This one isn't a dynamo, it is the original Trek disc hub).

[briansnail]

o I pulled over, and sure enough the front skewer was loose enough it could've popped the wheel out of the safety retainers at any time...

Thank you so much for confirming the safety superiority of vintage bikes.With just two bolts on each wheel.Its a better system then skewers,(Unless your riding in the Tour and need to change wheels fast.In which event you would just be handed a replacement bike).
**************************************
I ride Brompton,Hetchins 531

[djnotts]

Feel the tyres and pull the brakes. I have built or altered all my bikes so, perhaps foolishly and immodestly, assume that they are OK!

[Jdsk]

Feel the tyres and pull the brakes.
...

Yes. One brake at a time.

Jonathan

[twodogs]

I offered to wash my mates bike after a ride and noticed that the through axle was loose(as in the photo). It only took less than a turn to remove it and as I popped the wheel out the freehub fell off. I removed the cassette nut and cassette from the freehub but as in the bottom photo all the other components were already disassembled. There was no harm done other than minor damage to the last threads on the internal axle and I reassembled it. These new fangled bikes aren't my cup of tea and I can't believe that the components are able to unscrew during normal use. I also couldn't work out how the freehub nut had undone unless it was while under load.
I imagine the rear wheel would have locked up had the through axle completely come undone during use and possibly damaged the dropout (if it's called a dropout in this case?)
I think I'll stick with my quick releases....