For quite a few years, I researched new commuting bikes (they made nice review pages on cyclinguphill.com). But, when it came to it I never got round to buying a new bike. Fear of being stolen was a strong factor in sticking with an old second-hand bike. It is not just the fear of being stolen but also peace of mind. If you have an old banger, you don’t worry so much about leaving it around town.

Anyway, I got back home, from a brief trip to Yorkshire to find the bike locked up outside my house had had its wheels stolen. The bike was still there – secured by a strong lock. But, it was surprisingly expensive to buy a new set of wheels. I could almost have bought a new complete bike. When wheels get stolen, you have to buy.

• Wheelset
• Tyres
• Cassette
• Inner tubes.
• Wheel skewers
• Rim Tape
• (+lock for wheels)

It set me back £160+ and that was from finding the cheapest components at Wiggle.

Schoolboy error – don’t forget the rim tape

My tale of woe didn’t quite end there. If you don’t do bike maintenance frequently, you can forget certain things (or at least I do). I spent ages putting the new tyres on.

(Top tip. if you have 28″ tyres get the inner tubes 18″-25″ the 28-35″ inner tubes are too fat and squeeze out of the tyre)

The next morning the front tyre had already gone down, so I took a front wheel off a good bike to get into town.

On the way back, I bought some shopping from Tesco but the weight caused a puncture and I was stranded 1 mile from home. Fortuitously, I was right next to a bike shop, so I went in to buy a new inner tube. But, at £7 for a new inner tube, I didn’t want to pay and fix by the side of the road, so I cycled home on a flat tyre with heavy shopping on the back.

Another advantage of the Schwalbe Marathon Plus tyre is that it works pretty well to cycle on a flat tyre. I cycled slowly trying to put weight on the front wheel, which is difficult when you have a bag of groceries on the back.

Removing the back wheel, my schoolboy error dawned on me. I had forgotten the rim tape, so punctures were caused by inner tube next to sharp wheel edges.

I put an old racing wheel and cycled to Beeline bicycles on the 12 sprocket (10speed cassette works on 9-speed chain, as long as you don’t want to change gears.) I had a nice chat with the workers and bought some very cheap rim tape. It reminded me how much nicer it is to have interaction with real people in a real bicycle shop, yet I had just spent £160 online because it was cheaper. Here I was spending only £3 to get some rim tape. I will make a conscious effort to support local bike shops; they are much better than online experience. But,  when you can save 50%, and you’ve just had your wheels stolen it’s hard not to think of saving money. It’s a real modern dilemma, which is perhaps worthy of another post, I’m not sure of the solution.

I think the solution is maybe for local bike shops to charge more for express bike fitting service. Then I could have got new wheels fitted properly and avoided a double puncture experience.

So there you go – another riveting cycle experience. It’s almost as exciting as the bike pump which deflated my tyres!

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Quark Power meter reading calibration error

At the weekend, my Quark Elsa started giving exaggerated power meter readings. I’ve had for two years, and although it has died twice (and Quark sent replacement). It has been pretty consistent in power meter reading, which is main thing for a power meter. So higher power and calibration errors was disconcerting.

I realised it may have been affected by switch from double chainring to single chainring set up. I looked up Quark Power meter calibration and found advice that after change of chain rings, you may need to recalibrate 4-5 times.

This proved correct, after 4 attempts at calibration, it finally calibrated correctly. It was tempting to give up after two or three attempts, but reading manual encouraged me to try and again. Simple solution.

Speed Concept Aerobars failure

After the second breakage of a bolt in the Speed Concept Aerobars at the weekend, I’ve tried investigating different solutions.

Thanks to reader Steve Davie, who suggested buying stronger bolts. I found some Titanium bolts on ebay, which hopefully will be stronger. It may sound obvious to buy stronger bolts, but it never occurred to me. Also, I had suggestions from Colin Lynch who was in velodrome just before me on Friday for Aerocoaching.

“Tightening the bottom bolt (closest to you when sitting) first. This should angle the bars all the way up. THEN tighten the other both (what looks like the broken one).

There is also the extra smaller grub screw that you tighten LAST – this helps stop the bars moving once position is set.”

I contacted Trek, and they also said something similar:

“What I believe could have happened is where you have adjusted the tilt of the bar, you have bottomed out the set screw on the top cradle, if this occurs, the force is put onto one bolt rather than spread between the two. please also make sure the bolts are not being over tightened, all torque settings can be found in your speed concept user manual.

I’m not sure what they mean by set screw, perhaps the small little thing.

Torq Wrench

The other thing is it is important to use a torque wrench to get the exact torque setting. I do have one I bought a few months ago, so will use.

Related

• Bike maintenance tips

The post If all else fails – read the manual appeared first on Cycling uphill.

• I’m not very good at bike maintenance and tend to prefer to take it into bike shops. I was reluctant to purchase when with many jobs it’s easier to take into a shop.
• I don’t have much space in my conservatory. I have so many bikes, there isn’t really room for a work stand.

On the other hand, I thought buying a workstand may have the following benefits:

• It may make me better at bike maintenance – it’s hard enough adjusting gears without using one hand to hold bike up and the other hand to adjust gears.
• It’s inconvenient having to take bike to a bikeshop all the time.
• It might make it easier to clean the bike.

After looking online at different options, I choose the Lifeline Professional Workstand from Wiggle.  It had the following advantages

• At £72 it seemed quite cheap. I didn’t want to get a higher end workstand, when I wasn’t sure how much I would use it.
• It could be folded up quite small and conveniently put away in a corner.
• It had reasonably good reviews.

How to set up

To set up, it was fairly quick and intuitive, there are a couple of quick release levers which can quite quickly move the stand from compact to set up.

Quite easy to set up.

The drawback was that it was harder to get the vertical upright at 90 degrees. It seems to have a tendency to lean forward.

Clamping a bike in position is quite easy and quick. A big quick release lever to hold bike in place. It can also be rotated to clamp by the seat post too.

The tendency to learn forward.

How useful was it?

The first job I bought the workstand for was removing a stubborn crank so that I could swap my power meter from road bike to TT bike. I hoped a workstand would give the additional stability to be able to get the crank off. I had already bought some new expensive allen keys because I was unable to unlock. However, this job was a disappointment. When you’re putting maximum force on removing crank, the stand is not stable, but moves. In the end I had to take bikes to Beeline and they swapped the power meters.

The second job was adjusting gears. With my new 11 speed TT bike, this has become more frequent. The hub of the training wheel is in different place to hub of disc-wheel. When I swap wheels, I have to adjust the gears – which is a bit of a pain. Fortunately the Di2 groupset is quite a nice piece of equipment to adjust. Put it in adjust mode and make fine adjustments until the gears work smoothly. I’ve always struggled to satisfactorily adjust gears on mechanical gears, but it’s one job you really want to be able to do. The Workstand does make it a lot easier. In fact once you’ve used a workstand to adjust gears, you think how on earth did I mange before? – No wonder I was no good at bike maintenance; it’s a real handicap not having a workstand.

Another thing worth bearing in mind, is that it makes bike maintenance more enjoyable. Rather than leaning over and getting a bad back, the bike is where it should be, making it easier and more satisfying to work with.

I’ve never used it for cleaning a bike. I find I can give bike a good clean without using stand, so it’s no point getting it out.

View of Bike Mechanic

In past few weeks, I’ve had my mobile bike mechanic ‘Andy Sherwood’ come round and do maintenance on different bikes. He’s used my workstand far more than me. Also as a bike mechanic he’s used some good quality workstands over the years. He was generally impressed with the stand, saying it was good value; he was able to do quite a lot of jobs using it. His opinion is  worth more than mine. For me, I am really reviewing workstands in general. I have nothing to compare it against.

Overall Lifeline Workstand

• Good value, one of the cheaper workstands
• Easy to use, quick to set up.
• Folds up small, which is a boon for people short of space.
• It does have a feeling of bendiness. It is not rock solid for really hard adjustments.
• I’m glad I bought it. In fact, I wish I had bought a workstand earlier. Bear in mind, this is my first workstand so for me – it is a question of reviewing workstands in general. Yes, they are worth buying for even amateur bike mechanics like me.

Related

• Lifeline Professional Workstand from Wiggle

Related pages

• Bike maintenance tips

The post Lifeline Professional Workstand – Review appeared first on Cycling uphill.

There has been a lot of salty water on the roads this winter. It’s not been the coldest winter, but it has been dipping below freezing enough for the roads to be salted and then wet. The result is bikes ridden through the winter will have taken a battering. Everywhere in Oxford I see rusty chains – a sure sign of riding through winter salted roads. I keep using TF2 chain lube, but even regular squirts can’t stop minor rusting.

Ideally, I would leave a bike service for another month (when hopefully the salting of the roads would finish), but the commuting bike has been driven into the ground so it was time to get another service from Sherwood Mobile Bike Mechanics.

I bought a new chain and cassette for Andy to put on. I thought the brake cable had gone, but actually it was the rear brake frozen up, due to rust. Andy cleaned the brake and regreased and changed the most worn components.

I’m not too fussy about the commuting bike, but Andy felt the headset needed attention. I haven’t pain any attention to headset maintenance and have never really understood headsets – so I got Andy to write his tips for headset wear towards the end of the post. In the end it was quite a lengthy service, but that is inevitable when you cycle on it so much during the winter.

I keep a tight chain because I have a single ring and no front mech to stop chain dropping off.

Headset maintenance

Some tips on checking Headset – courtesy of Sherwood Cycles

These are comments Andy has added about headset maintenance

What to look for with headsets

• Squeeking whilst turning handlebars.
• A clunk when applying front brake.
• Orange/brown staining around junction of forks to bike frame.

Solution to my headset (the low cost version)

• On a seasoned bike, its rare for a headset to have loosened its self. (check that the locking nut is secure against the upper cone nut).
• Unless the upper cone nut has loosened against the locking nut, then some play has appeared from somewhere. This play will have arisen as a result in corrosion in the headset bearings due generally to rust. This rust will have come from the ball bearings and the cage, rusting as they have ran out of grease that lubricates them and protects them from moisture/air. As they have rusted, they have got smaller in diameter.
• Ideally, these bearings should be replaced. Scoring/corrosion could also have eaten into the bearing races (the cup that hugs the balls) if this has happened, you will need to replace the cups (which means a new headset).
• To discover what state they are in (in a primitive kind of way), you can undo the locking nut fully and unscrew the upper cone fully.
• With the front wheel removed, the fork can be lowered so that the lower bearings are also exposed. If these lower bearings have been installed without a cage, of the cage has rusted away completely, be prepared to cry and the bearings fall out around your feet.
• Grease the ball bearings in the lower race and push the forks back up. grease the upper bearings, and screw down the upper cone nut. once this is screwed down enough to stop the forks rocking about, screw down the locking nut so that it meets the upper cone nut.
• Put the bike in a stand and check that the forks can be turned and that it is smooth with ideally no play.
• If the bearings have been salvaged, but are not in perfect condition, or if they have been replaced with new ones, but the hugging cups are not in the best condition, then it may prove impossible to get rid of any play, without binding resulting in the turning of the forks.
• If this is the case, allow a very small amount of play, just enough that the forks turn without feeling the are ‘indexed’ or notchy.Refit the front wheel, and place the bike on the ground. hold the front brake firmly and rock the bike forwards and backwards to give you an indication of how much play you have allowed.
• A proper solution (new headset) will mean that adjustment allowing smooth turning of the forks with no play in the bearing assembly can be achieved.

• Long term it would be better to replace at least the bearings, or more ideally the headset its self.

Other maintenance jobs we did:

• Fitting 56 outer chain-ring to TT bike – Di2 manages the shift from 39 to 56 OK!
• Ordering a new rear derailleur for winter training bike, because it had rusted. (105 rear derailleur only £25 from Wiggle)  – selecting medium cage so I can put a bigger sprocket on that 23 and avoid walking up hills

• Sherwood Cycles
• Bike maintenance for beginners

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