One little victory

Gosh, it has been a while since I poked this blog, hasn't it! Before skimming the last post here I had almost no recollection of what I'd written, so perhaps a synopsis of events over the last two years (two years?) is in order.

I built my P-38 in the late spring of 2007, started to ride it at the end of August, and put maybe 200 miles on it until about November. Then I found myself unable to ride for another couple of months thanks to another spell in hospital. Sometime around the following February or March I was getting back into the swing of things, but still not sitting comfortably. The seat of the P-38 is a lovely design, with a single piece of nylon mesh stretched from one end to the other, a foam pad sewn to the horizontal bit, and the whole thing cantilevered out for passive suspension. It wasn't quite agreeing with me even then, but that didn't stop me from enjoying the potential of the bike. So much potential in fact, that, with a tip of the hat to Jonathan Biebesheimer, I wrote a review of it for Velovision magazine, issue 28 (Dec 2007).

Around the same time, I replaced the bike's rear derailleur, acknowledging that eBay bargains are sometimes not all that they seem. A new Shimano Deore XT (RD-M771 SGS) unit was fitted, and to be honest, it really is one of the best I've ever used.

The 2008 York Cycle Show was held at the tail end of June, and for the first time I didn't use a car to get there. With a (very) tentative pedal up and down my road on my little Dahon folding bike, for I was missing being able to sit on a conventional saddle, I decided to take it to York on the train, with me weighed down under my Timbuk2 messenger bag and my Landranger map and camera nestling inside my handlebar bag. The cycle show was rubbish. It rained; I got cold and wet and miserable and lonely, and left early to ride the six miles to my B&B to the west, and relatively cheerily ignoring the Velovision pub ride which had been my primary reason for attending. The next day was brighter and I followed the pub ride in reverse, through Askham Richard, to Copmanthorpe, following the old railway path to Acaster Malbis and the pub; I stopped to visit the Naburn swing bridge and a little skate park that had been built underneath the A19; visited part of the scale model of the Solar System; and then rode northwards through Bishopthorpe and back to the racecourse at Knavesmire. I had no intention of wasting more time at the show, and instead spent my lunchtime and a pleasant afternoon wandering around the National Railway Museum before heading home.

Flushed with success of my new upright endeavours, I bought a new saddle for Annie the Blue Bike. Buying the right bicycle saddle is an almost impossible task, but at least I knew what width I needed, thanks to Specialized's 'posterior measuring device'; this was actually nothing more than a thin piece of memory foam that one sits on, and the corresponding depressions from one's sit bones indicate the width of the saddle and the positioning of the padding. Blimey. Recumbent seats look like child's play in comparison. Unfortunately all this upright riding wasn't doing me much good, and it hurt my shoulders and wrists and aggravated an outstanding problem for which I'd been riding recumbent bikes in the first place. :-(

Late July and early August was spent having the most wonderful summer holiday ever. The weather was beautiful, the scenery was inspiring, the locals were unreservedly friendly (almost) and Tabitha the P-38 and I arrived home with 200 more miles on the clock.

Then I changed the bike's 35-622 Panaracer Pasela TG and 38-406 Primo Comet tyres for Schwalbe Marathon Racers, the latter in a slightly fatter 40-406 section. These, as you may recall, were in my original blueprint for the bike but had proved fiendishly difficult to obtain, so my friend who was visiting from the US brought a pair with him. The roadholding of the Racers is outstanding, especially on tarmac in damp and wet weather; the Pasela tyres while equally fast are a little skittish in those conditions.

In September I rode Pedal for Scotland again, completing the ride in slightly over four hours and riding about 65 miles altogether. I was doing the ride purely for myself this time: no team, no friends, no time restrictions; just two litres of water, half a litre of Irn Bru, three bananas and a packet of flapjacks. I did see David and Jane from my work on the ride though, and afterwards I bumped into Anth, editor of .citycycling magazine, media tycoon and all-round good guy, and his girlfriend and her Dad, who'd all done the ride. Eric the Trike also did the ride, but I'd taken the train through to Glasgow and gone for a later start than last time, so I hadn't seen him. Irn Bru was a bit of a discovery during my summer holiday; a fizzy drink chock full of energy, and it doesn't clog my throat the way Coca Cola does.

By about Christmas time though I was riding my motorbike to work more than I was cycling, and my fitness was flagging. But it didn't matter because shortly after New Year a broken left hand and a broken right shoulder put an end to my fun. It also put an end to my beautiful motorbike which is still sitting in my garage, bent and scarred. Two impatient months later I was making tentative rides on my P-38 and Speedmachine, which culminated in riding to work. And from then on, while nursing a recalcitrant group of fingers and a hugely unfit pair of legs, it was onwards and upwards. In fact, quite soon after, I broke my record for riding to work. Not since before my second spell in hospital had I managed to ride to work on Monday, Tuesday, Wednesday, Thursday and Friday in one week, and I did it almost at the first attempt. I did it the following week, and the next, and the next. Hurrah! I've been adding the miles to my legs as much as I can manage, and the lovely weather in March and April certainly helped. It's now July, and, according to my Mum, "absolutely stoatin' doon" (of course, she is just as apt to declare, in the Queen's English, or indeed the dulcet tones of Maggie Smith, that there is a remarkable degree of weather today).

I've rejuvenated my visits to The Bicycleworks, out of which Laid Back Bikes operates, and once again have been helping out David with some of his customers. Although primarily a Nazca and Challenge dealer, he now also sells ICE trikes. But the star of the show really does seem to be the Nazca Fuego, a bike of similar proportions to the Challenge Fujin and the earlier HP Velotechnik Speedmachine, with the now-common 20" (ISO406) front and 26" (ISO559) rear wheels. It has adjustable rear suspension geometry to pop up the rear end for a modestly upright riding position or to slam it down for speed demons; it has very nicely made tiller steering; and the frame is bombproof. LBB is also selling the new front wheel drive Raptobike lowracer; I've yet to take it round the block, but David reckons "it fairly belts along!"

But to bring myself right up to date:

• Tabitha the P-38 is now sitting with 1,925 miles under its wheels, and a pair of stealthy black wheel discs on the back for (probably incremental) aerodynamic gains. With the new(er) rear derailleur, everything on the bike is working absolutely beautifully.
• The Speedmachine is sitting at 1,844 miles, although I think there might be a missing 700 or so because I reset the computer by mistake once. I didn't make a note of it, unfortunately.
• Annie, being somewhat older, albeit somewhat underused these days, is still topping the chart with 2,770 miles since 2004, which when you think about it isn't very much really.
• Speedy lies dormant in the shadow of my motorbike. It's still hugely entertaining to ride, but I also still have plans to sell it.

And, it would seem, you can't keep a good cyclist down. I have another project. It's a bit different this time, but so far has involved the following yummy parts:

• Mavic XC717 rim, laced 3-cross to a Hope XC front disc hub with DT Revolution spokes;
• Mavic XC717 rim, laced 3-cross to a Hope XC rear disc hub with DT Revolution spokes.

The frame is, of course, top secret. But it's aluminium this time.

Open secrets

It's here! My new frame arrived just a few days after I last wrote, a courier company man turning up at the door with a surprisingly long cardboard box. All the way from California in fact, festooned with customs documentation and mailing labels and an interestingly spelt address, but they got the postcode right fortunately. The exchange rate was rather nice to me, but don't ask how much the shipping was...

So I already had a ton of parts all ready to go, a pair of wheels I'd built at least a month earlier, and...no headset tools. Being the happy DIYer I am, I thought I'd probably just get hold of some steel tube in the right size and bang the parts in myself, rather than paying the bike shop to do it for me. A headset isn't quite like a cartridge bottom bracket where you screw it in and everything lines up because it's all one piece. The two headset bearing cups have to be exactly lined up with each other, and the bearing piece that fits onto the fork crown also has to be exactly right. I started out not being able to find any metal tubes that were the just right match for the crown race bearing, until I had a brainwave and pulled out the main seatpost from the little Helios. It was almost the right size! But it wasn't exactly the right size and my bearing started to go squint as I hammered it on, and then it stuck. Now that was a slight problem, because although it was steel, any squintness might permanently put it out of round. So I hunted and hunted all over again, and eventually I got silly and tried the steerer tube from the forks of the Rockhopper, which were still sitting in the garage having been turned into a makeshift wheel truing stand at some point. Well wouldn't you know, the "Avenger" sized steerer was an exact fit over the "Standard" steerer of the new fork! So I sawed it off and filed it all nice and square and...it wouldn't slide all the way on. The tube was butted inside! Ok, so I'll file out the insides a bit, I thought. Well good quality Tange cro-moly tubing is tough stuff! I resorted to using an internal grindstone on the electric drill, which seemed promising until the grindstone broke. No biggie, there's a spare one, so I had another go and was making progress. Then that grindstone broke off too. I had one more spare so I carried on and tried a different movement with the drill. By the end of the afternoon I finally had a drift tool that would work. Of course, the tool was three inches too short but I was able to use the Helios' seatpost as a secondary drift. A bit of preparation with a hammer and screwdriver straightened the bearing out a bit, and then it was all systems go. It was the tightest interference fit crown race bearing I've ever seen. But it went on eventually, to my relief.

After that I wasn't going to take any chances with pressing the bearing cups into the frame though, and my new headset press made light work of the task. It cost at least as much as a shop would charge to fit a headset, and since Annie needs a new headset at some time as well, it made sense to buy the tool. "Quality is remembered long after the price is forgotten", said the uncompromising Henry Royce.

The rest of the assembly went very easily, for the most part. I did have to file off some of the paint from the frame's dropouts so that the axles would actually fit. I had some gear cable housing spare, plenty for the build, but when I came to trim it to the right lengths, it was like trying to cut through armour plating. My wire cutters couldn't do it, my pliers couldn't do it, my electrical wire cutters couldn't do it, and I blunted a chisel trying as well. Come on! So I spoke to the guys in Edinburgh Bicycle's workshop and asked what cutters they were using, and decided in the end to buy the same. Wow, talk about power! They'll last me a lifetime too.

So, I present my new Lightning P-38 recumbent:

The bike owes its design to the Lightning X-2 streamliner originally, back in the early 1980s, and is a more rider-friendly evolution that hasn't really changed in 15 years. It was one of the fastest bikes on the track at one time, especially in its F-40 guise, until lowracers came onto the scene and wiped the floor. But like the Windcheetah or the Brompton or the Moulton spaceframe, the P-38 was fundamentally right from the start, and good designs only evolve over time. It's not as aerodynamic as a lowracer or even some of the highracers like the Challenge Seiran, it's not full of carbon fibre or jawdroppingly light, but it's acceptably light, made of proper 4130 grade steel and it's very stiff. The riding postion is also more closed than most. For that reason, it's still regarded as one of the best recumbents for hillclimbing, and I have to say, I spend a lot more of my time going up than down. My Speedmachine is no slouch on the whole, but hauling 13lbs less metal up a hill should be nice.

There's no suspension on the bike, but in line with recent trends away from super narrow tyres, I've put bigger tyres on it than I'd usually use; it has a mesh seat rather than solid fibreglass, and the padded seat base is actually a cantilever and flexes when you sit on it. There are no disc brakes, because the bike was never designed for them (discs put huge torsional forces around dropout areas) but the v-brakes I've selected are well recommended by the people throwing themselves down mountains. The mesh seat should let my back breathe much better when I'm riding, since a) I practically create my own weather when I ride, and b) "sweaty back syndrome" is well recognised for recumbent riders. I kept an eye on the weight of all the components, but I've not gone too light where it matters: I know from experience that I need strong wheels, and that means touring rims, good tyres and more than a handful of spokes. With my basic LED lights fitted, I weighed the bike at 27lbs, compared with Speedy at 36lbs and the Speedmachine at 40lbs.

This does mean that Speedy is going to be leaving me. I've been its custodian for four of its 13 years and it's brought me into contact with a lot of cool, likeminded people. Like my friend Liz, they're people who are genuinely a bit offbeat at a basic level, rather than people who like to run against the grain as an occasional diversion from normality.

My remaining task is to be able to ride a bike again. I'm still not sitting all that comfortably but, fingers crossed, I'm making some progress.

Stationary traveller

I'm still not sitting comfortably, and it's getting just a little bit frustrating. As long as I can stretch out I can sit for a while and be ok, but all I can think of is the good weather and the places I might have gone to, while still being stuck at home or in the office.

I haven't written a whole lot recently, so I haven't mentioned my new wheel truing stand that I picked up for a song on eBay. It's made by Ultimate and resplendent in anodised red aluminium and black cast iron. Ok, it's no Hozan, but it's solid and being one-sided it makes the wheel that bit more accessible. The trueness indicators have spring loaded tool steel tips, so you can spin the wheel and see where it graunches, without worrying about cutting into the sidewall. Having built all my previous wheels using the bike frame as the guide, it's light years more convenient having a proper stand. I also splashed out and bought a proper ergonomic spoke key; my three-way one is versatile but really uncomfortable to use. Like my Park PRS-15 workstand, having the right tools for the job really does make a difference. My Look CX6 carbon pedals had been sitting in a box and doing nothing since January, and after all those knee problems I have no intention of using Looks again. BentMikey bought them from me for his Hurricane upgrade project and he likes them a lot. I've actually been very happy with my el cheapo Shimano SPD pedals, which are on both the Speedmachine and Annie the Blue Bike, but they're a wee bit heavy and seem remarkably rust-prone, so I'll be looking for stainless hardware in future.

Meanwhile...

The big project begins and I'm excited! So far I have in front of me the following yummy parts:

• FSA Carbon Pro Team Issue chainset (in hard-to-get 175mm)
• RPM ISIS bottom bracket
• Shimano XTR front derailleur [1]
• Shimano Deore XT rear derailleur
• Shimano Deore XT 9spd cassette
• Sram PC-951 chain
• Shimano Dura Ace bar end gear levers
• Shimano Deore LX SPD pedals
• Mavic A719 rim, laced to a Hope Mono hub with DT Swiss Revolution spokes
• Sun CR-18 rim, laced to a Hope Mono lightweight hub with plain gauge stainless spokes
• Kore lightweight stainless QRs
• Avid Single Digit 7 v-brake
• Avid Ultimate v-brake
• Shimano Ultegra cartridge headset

Half of the above is actually second-hand, but a carefully chosen second-hand. I'm quite happy to pay £6 for a bottom bracket that's only done a few miles, but I'd only buy a brand new headset. I don't have the tyres yet, but they're on order. They're a new model from Schwalbe and apparently quite difficult to get hold of. I've also got some more 3T cork bar tape, the same as I used on the bar ends on both Annie and the little Helios. It's super comfortable and is nice to hold even in the rain. I also have some very solid padlocks, just in case you're having other ideas.

The frame...well the frame's still top secret because it hasn't arrived yet. None of that aluminium nonsense though. Steel is real, man.

[1] From the days when XTR was burnished blue and aluminium, and looked like jewellery for bikes. I think it's one of the loveliest components they ever made.

Speedmachine front suspension disassembly

I've written this page to be as much of a parallel reference as a standalone. Alex Rice detailed the disassembly of his Speedmachine's suspension fork and I used his notes to aid the disassembly of mine. The moving parts of the fork are inside a rubber boot and inside the frame, so nothing is visible for the uninitiated.

Alex noted that the HP Velotechnik boys are very good at designing bikes and not nearly so good at writing instructions, and I agree. I have the instruction manual for the bike and for the fork it provides no diagrams and no real clue as to what might need to be adjusted, and why. It goes so far as to say:

The adjustment of the fork play requires special tools and skills. Please have your bicycle mechanic perform this maintenance work. The following section refers to the expert.

Many years ago, I was a paid bicycle mechanic. I also have an engineering masters, and I still found the instructions difficult. I have therefore created some illustrations [1], so that one might have a better idea of what lies within before doing any unbolting of things.

There are three main issues you might have with the fork: it can squeak for unknown reasons (as did Alex's, and Dave Larrington's), the movement can become stiff and reluctant, and it can start to wobble as might happen with a loose headset. Mine was wobbling a little, enough to be disconcerting when powering uphill with the front of the bike moving around.

How does the fork work? How does it adjust?

The fork is essentially very simple, but made slightly more complicated by having externally adjustable damping. The fork itself has a long steerer and it slides up and down within a larger tube. Sandwiched between the two tubes are a plastic sliding bearing at the bottom and a teflon [2] sliding bearing at the top. The larger tube rotates inside the two headset bearings, and protrudes at the top where the handlebar stem is attached. So that you can actually steer, the steerer tube has a set of splines which engage with the inside of the plastic bearing, and the plastic bearing is splined to fit inside the end of the larger tube. This way everything turns together.

Friction damping is provided by two flat doughnut-shaped pieces of foam. The larger one is sandwiched between the two tubes, and the smaller is pressed against the inside of the steerer tube. The damping is made adjustable by the black control cap at the very top of the larger tube; as you tighten the cap down, it compresses the larger piece of foam.

The coil spring in the fork sits inside the steerer tube. At the bottom end it sits on a tube and is retained by a washer and a large circlip, and at the top by the base of a small tube which is connected directly to the black cap. As the fork compresses over a bump, the steerer tube slides upwards through the larger tube, and the spring is compressed because the black cap stops it moving upwards and the circlip stops it moving downwards out of the fork. The small tube ends in a flat section where the spring butts up against, and when the fork is at maximum extension, the flat section butts up against a circlip at the top of the inner steerer. Got all that?

If you need to adjust the fork, you can (in theory) do it without removing it from the frame. I couldn't tell what I was really adjusting when I was trying to adjust-out the slight wobble, so I removed the fork from the frame and took it completely apart to find out. Once you've removed the stem and the front brake, the fork can be tapped out of the frame by using a soft mallet on the top of the steerer. Mine was quite tight the first time.

Once you've hammered the fork out of the frame, have a think through the X-ray view here and the following pictures. You won't be able to take the fork apart further unless you remove the spring first so that you can slide the inner steerer into the outer to access the small tube. And you won't be able to hammer the fork back into the frame properly unless you remove the spring first, because the suspension will do its job of absorbing shocks, and do it rather well. So for disassembly, the first thing you should do is remove the spring, and this can be done whether the fork is still mounted in the frame or not. There is a slight preload on the spring: a couple of millimeters, according to the book, so be careful when you remove the circlip from the fork crown. This isn't the time for bodgery, you'll want proper internal circlip pliers.

What's inside, and taking things apart

With the fork removed from the frame, it'll look like this:

Peel the rubber boot down from the top and you should see the splines, the locknut, and the adjusting nut which bears directly on the bottom edge of the plastic sliding bearing:



For reference, here are the components which are sandwiched between the inner and outer steerer tubes:



You can see that if the outer steerer is held tightly in its big bearings, the inner steerer can wobble if either or both of the plastic splines bearing or the teflon upper sliding bearing are worn. The lower bearing is slightly tapered externally, and by turning the adjusting nut to force the bearing upwards into the outer steerer tube, it contracts fractionally onto the splines of the inner steerer, thus taking up any wear. The locknut is then snugged down onto the adjusting nut. I found it impossible to make this adjustment with the fork still in the frame, and very difficult to make the adjustment even when I could see everything. One might use a very time-consuming trial-and-error approach by adjusting the bearing pressure, reassembling the fork in the frame and checking for movement. I set the nut pressure just short of when the inner steerer became stiff to slide up and down inside the plastic bearing. Personally, I think Cannondale's Headshok needle bearing approach might take out some of this guesswork. I used Park Tool's HCW-5 lockring spanner.

That all said, the inner and outer steerers won't come apart until you unscrew the damping control cap from the outer steerer and you then unscrew the top bolt from the small tube that will be visible having unscrewed the cap. You'll need pliers on the small tube to hold it. The cap will then be free and you can slide the outer steerer up and off the inner:

Ok, not much to see there, but that's the inner steerer exposed. It will be a bit greasy and any grit that gets into the splines won't do them any good. Without the spring in place, the small tube can drop out of the bottom of the inner steerer and you'll find attached to it a chamfered teflon piece [2,3] and the second foam doughnut. Here is what's inside the inner steerer before anything is taken apart:

Reassembly

In true Haynes manual fashion, installation is the reverse of removal. More or less. With the spring out of the fork, reassemble the inner and outer steerers with their components, and with the outer steerer in place, check the plastic sliding bearing for the correct tightness. If it's ok, hold the small tube with the pliers and reattach the damping control cap and screw it a few turns into the outer steerer. Remember that it is one of several components that takes the full load of the suspension, so screw it back in until all the thread is hidden. There will still be a few turns of adjustment available and you may not need it screwed all the way in. Slide the fork assembly back into the frame and it'll wobble around until the lower bearing begins to seat itself. You will then need a drift such as a 1/2 inch diameter pipe, 18 inches long or so. I used a piece of lawnmower handle. Put the drift up inside the inner steer and carefully, but firmly, hammer the fork back into the frame. It'll go in anything from 1/4 inch to 1/2 inch more, and you can tell when it's fully seated as the sound of the hammer hitting the drift will raise in pitch and the blows will suddenly feel solid.

You can then put the spring, the spring cap, the tube, the washer and the circlip back into the bottom of the fork. You might want to use the drift again to preload the spring while you put the circlip in place. With the wheel in the fork and the bike on the ground again (you were using a workstand, weren't you?) you can press on the frame to make sure the fork is seated, and snug the stem as far onto the steerer as it'll go. The upper headset bearing cover should be vaguely stiff to turn. This is my main criticism of HP Velotechnik's design; the whole assembly is largely the same as any Aheadset setup, but without the starfangled nut by which you apply the correct preload before clamping the stem. No starfangled nut, no preload - other than pushing on the frame. With the fork in place, bounce the bike a few times and re-check the movement. If it still wobbles, for example, I recommend jumping up and down and swearing, before taking it all apart again. You might get away with knocking the fork halfway out of the frame, until the bearing locknut is visible, but on my bike the bearings were already out of their seats at that point, and the fork wobbled in the frame.

Where did that bit go again?

For comparison purposes (and just because I was on a roll with Adobe Illustrator that day) here are two cutaway views of the fork:

[1] I made some sketches as I disassembled things. I only made one measurement, so the illustrations aren't completely to scale. They're near enough, though.

[2] Well, I'd like to think it's teflon. It might actually be Nylon 66 or something.

[3] I didn't sketch everything, however. Some of the internal components such as the pressure cone I drew from memory and so might not be quite right. I didn't take everything apart again, just to check.

Pause for thought, pt 3

Am I sitting comfortably now? No, not yet. I think it's going to be a while before I can pedal a recumbent, and much longer before I can sit and pedal an upright bike again. It's very uncomfortable to even try, it's frustrating and I wish I was recovering quicker.

In the meantime though, if I can't be working out on bikes, at least I can be working on them. After a good while scouring tool shops and bike shops and eBay, I finally managed to buy a lockring spanner (the old sort, shaped like a hooked 'C') which meant I could adjust the fork on my Speedmachine. It was with some trepidation and much reading of one reference webpage that I took it apart. It's sufficiently involved to the newcomer that I'm going to write an entire piece about it.

I have another project in gestation too, but it's top secret.

Pause for thought, pt 2

Am I sitting comfortably? Right now? No, not particularly. :-(

Tales from a bike, trike and HPV enthusiast is once more on hiatus

Perpetual change

I'm sitting here with a slightly painful right knee. The health of my knees is very important to me: if I damage them, at best I can't cycle with any intensity, and at worst I can't cycle at all. And if I damage them now, it might make it easier to damage them more in the future. That's why having gone to the trouble of buying a pair of Look pedals with adjustable Q-factor in the hope of getting maximum pedal efficiency from my feet, I've gone back - for the second time - to my SPD pedals. Look CX6 pedals are very very nice it has to be said, and I am amazed at the sort of stability and power you can get from a large pedal-shoe contact area. What I gained in correct foot positioning with the new Looks, compared with my knee-hurtingly narrow original Looks, I lost in release tension. These are race pedals remember, and designed for pulling your ankle apart before the shoe pulls out of the pedal, and the torsional force I needed to put through my knees to unclip was unacceptable. The human knee joint is designed to bend in one axis only while remaining very stiff for all other directions. It is not designed to resist twisting indefintely; skiers who run tight bindings and then fall down have been known to really knacker their knees in the process. A Look pedal binding works in almost exactly the same way, after all ski bindings are what the company originally invented. On an upright bike, you have your body weight helping you to twist your foot and disengage from the pedal, but on a recumbent you have only the twist from your thigh and ankle. So a couple of weeks' commuting with these pedals was enough to tell me that they just weren't right for me. I didn't spend a fortune on them, but I spent twice what a pair of my unremarkable cheap SPD pedals cost. You can't however put a price on your health.

When I said of my Speedmachine, "I think I'm almost done.", I was being generous. Last week I was less than satisfied with the performance of the rear gears, and resolved to improve things. With the bike on my workstand, I quickly discovered that not only was the derailleur getting gunged up with a combination of old lubricant and hair (wonder where that came from?), the adjuster barrel had seized. So it's a simple job to whip off the derailleur, take it apart and scrub it clean, except that the adjuster barrel was of course seized. Pliers and my M4 tap soon sorted that, then I discovered the gear cable strands were snapping. Well one thing led to another, and I ended up replacing both gear cables, rerouting both cable housings, repainting areas of the swing arm, and rerouting the wiring for my lights and my bike computer. Then rather than buy a ready-made "chain holder" (to hold the ends of the chain together when you separate it) I made one from an old spoke and saved £4, and with some music wire from the local model shop I made a new chain tube holder for the bike, since the original one had broken well before I bought the bike and the interim solution was a rather unattractive bodge. While I was at it I cleaned the chain pulley and painted where the tubes had taken the paint off...and then my workstand's clamp wouldn't undo! So after two hours of reading Park service instructions and an hour lying in bed visualising how it worked, I took my workstand apart, got my bike free, and reassembled the stand with a slight modification. And then I replaced the bike's rear shock unit with a super smooth DT Swiss unit that's pressure adjustable. DT Swiss is more known for their quality spokes, so I don't anticipate many problems. And so my Speedmachine is back together, a pound lighter and running sweetly again.

It was sale time at Edinburgh Bicycle Co-operative recently too, and I picked up a pair of mountain biking shoes for hardly anything. If my knees won't tolerate me riding with Look pedals, then I don't strictly need Look-compatible roadie shoes, and certainly less so now that I have the shoes I wanted - chunky rubber treads but underneath it's the same stiff sole that my road shoes have. Plus they have girlie flowing stitching around them, which makes a change from unassuming grey and black all the time!