Thread To Tell Everyone What Fettling You've Just Done

Paul E

Refitted crud mk2's after the rain the other day and in prep for a little camping tour up north of Glasgow next month, fitted the rear stays higher up the seat stays which seems to have helped with rubbing as i am using them on 25c krylions, the front is rub free though and the back now only a tiny amount I won't hear on the road.

itboffin

arrrhhhh last few commutes my chain has been auto shifting all over the place, i did measure the chain and it is getting close to .75 wear mark but still plenty of life.

Fecking annoying

clarkey cat

fitted new bartape, installed new tyres, gave the bike a wipe down, re-fitted the mudguards.

looks lush.

needs a new stem though...
and some carbon forks...

cyclingprop

What of that is fettling? Or were you fettling with yourself??

EKE_38BPM

Mrs EKE has been given a bike from work and I had to build it. It has taken about two weeks of almost daily fettling to get her happy with the fit of the bike. Every day I was greeted with a text saying the saddle was too high/too low/too far forward/too far back/tilted forward/tilted backward/handlebars too high/low etc.

Mrs EKE's housemate also has a new bike and today was her first day riding to work. She rode to the end of the road and had a minor accident with a car. Fair play to her, she walked the bike back to the house, got me to straighten the handlebars and give the bike a once over and she was straight back on it and rode to work via the gym.
First collision within 100 metres of riding a new bike. Got to be a record.

vermin

Removed the mudguards. Sorry about the forthcoming month-long deluge everyone.

rick_chasey

Can anyone help?

My front brake went a bit spongy last night. The caliper felt like it wouldn't bounce back properly.

Looked down at the brake and the quick-release/open little leaver was gently pulling itself open whenever I braked.

Any ideas anyone?

EKE_38BPM

Rick Chasey wrote:

Can anyone help?

My front brake went a bit spongy last night. The caliper felt like it wouldn't bounce back properly.

Looked down at the brake and the quick-release/open little leaver was gently pulling itself open whenever I braked.

Any ideas anyone?

N+1. Its the only way to be sure it won't happen again.

mudcovered

itboffin wrote:

arrrhhhh last few commutes my chain has been auto shifting all over the place, i did measure the chain and it is getting close to .75 wear mark but still plenty of life.

This surprises me a bit. I regularly run my drivetrains way past the .75 wear mark (I usually leave things until the chain starts to fall apart) and I don't ever get problems like this. I will admit that I get an occasional sluggish shift but no more than I get when everything is new.

My rationalisation for letting everything wear together is that you always have equally worn cogs & chain meshing together. If your replace a chain (before it is worn) to try and avoid wear on the cogs that will work for a while but eventually the cogs will be more worn than the new chain. This means you don't know whether you need new cogs when it comes time to do the maintenance. This is just a rationalisation though it might not have any basis in fact.

Ultimately my real reason for leaving things alone is cost. Based on my usage a chain is worn past the .75 point after 2000 miles but will keep running for 3 or 4 times as long as that. Replacing the chain 4 times costs MORE than 1 cassette & one chain so my way is cheaper.

Mike

spasypaddy

fitted my DA 7900 brakes to my Look. hope i've done a good job. wont want to find out the hard way

keyser__soze

itboffin wrote:

arrrhhhh last few commutes my chain has been auto shifting all over the place, i did measure the chain and it is getting close to .75 wear mark but still plenty of life.

Have you checked your indexing, cables and rear mech alignment? Far more likely to be one of these (last one is a bugger) than a chain only worn that much.

Tonight I need to:

• Buy another tyre to replace the Ultra Race that's got a massive cut all the way through, done less than 1500 miles on it
• Get round to trying to get a warranty replacement from Ribble for the freehub on the ITM Aero 2.4 rear wheel, totally packed up after just 200 miles of riding. LBS were absolutely shocked when they serviced it, said it was greased with something with a consistency between chewing gum and superglue. If they don't then it's going to have to be a turbo-only wheel, so need to refit cassette/tube/tyre.
• Put the K-Force Light chainset back on the R1 after FSA warranty-replaced it, only after I...
• Take off the brand spanking new SL-K Light and put it up on the For Sale here (moral of the story: get a second opinion on whether something is warranty-replaceable before opening your wallet).
• Front brake cable on R3 needs tightening and possibly new pads
• Clean both bikes - may have to wait for the weekend.

What I'm more likely to do:

Twostage

Replaced the £7.99 un24 bottom bracket with a £15.99 un55. What a difference, like taking the brakes off.
Tried to put the triple ring on with the new DR only to discover the 4503 DR can't cope with the 52/42/30 combination. It needs a 50/39/30 so I need a new chain set or a new middle and big ring or a new new front dr or hope I can cope with the hills around derby later in the year with 39 X 28 when fully racked up with 4 days worth of expedition gear.

Libraio

After a winter of rain and snow I finaly gave my District a well deserved service... So I washed it outside on the sidewalk with some water and car shampoo. Let it dry when I took of the pretty shiny Ritchey parts from my VanDessel. Proceeded with fitting the shiny parts to the District. Took the bike in, removed the wheels, took the wheels to the balkony. Polished them with Autoglym, waxed them with McGuires Gold Class, fitted them to the frame, took whole bike on balkony, polished and waxed frame, fitted new battery to speedo sensor.
No grease, lube or dirty hands were needed. Gotta love belt driven SS bikes

UndercoverElephant

Twostage wrote:

Replaced the £7.99 un24 bottom bracket with a £15.99 un55. What a difference, like taking the brakes off.
Tried to put the triple ring on with the new DR only to discover the 4503 DR can't cope with the 52/42/30 combination. It needs a 50/39/30 so I need a new chain set or a new middle and big ring or a new new front dr or hope I can cope with the hills around derby later in the year with 39 X 28 when fully racked up with 4 days worth of expedition gear.

I don't understand, surely you just need to move the front mech up a bit to make it work with a standard triple?

FoldingJoe

Removed my BB to try and get rid of the annoying, constant, squeak that is happening when pedalling.

The NDS bearing sounded and felt pretty rough, whereas the DS seemed fine, so tried to whack some grease in there to see if it would just do as a makeshift to try and get me home without making a noise all the way... well, that didn't work, so new BB ordered.

Paul E

I think the freewheel on my aksiums is either out of grease or on it's way out as the chain was going slack now and again between the chainring and the cassette, will pick up a proper cassette tool at lunchtime to have a look at it after work

Twostage

UndercoverElephant wrote:

Twostage wrote:

Replaced the £7.99 un24 bottom bracket with a £15.99 un55. What a difference, like taking the brakes off.
Tried to put the triple ring on with the new DR only to discover the 4503 DR can't cope with the 52/42/30 combination. It needs a 50/39/30 so I need a new chain set or a new middle and big ring or a new new front dr or hope I can cope with the hills around derby later in the year with 39 X 28 when fully racked up with 4 days worth of expedition gear.

I don't understand, surely you just need to move the front mech up a bit to make it work with a standard triple?

I started off by setting the height so that there was a few mill clearance on the outer ring, saw that the inner part of the cage was hitting the middle ring so disconnected the cable and moved it up a bit. Repeated this process until the gap was huge and still catching the middle ring so decided something must be wrong and put my double back on. TBH I don't know if the DR was near the top of the slot or actually at it. It was definitely high. That's when I checked the tech docs and it said it needed a minimum tooth difference of 11 between the outer and middle. I probably will re-visit this weekend though.

Poves

Just sorted my friends Peugeot Chamonix. This was my bicycle for 25 years, then passed to a friend of my sons and now with a mutual friend.
I told him I would give it a service when he took ownership of it - but my son took it straight to his so I never got round to it. We have been out on a few rides and the old bike still rides beautifully and is still completely original (apart from bar tape, brake pads, tyres, inner tubes, and the chain, but a few rides ago, the rear mech cable snapped and we noticed a slight pinging noise coming from the rear wheel. The rear tyre was also due for replacing and he picked up a puncture a few weeks ago.
Instead of asking me to give the bike a service, he took it to a local bike shop who kept it for almost a week and then charged him £45 for a service which included putting a new Schwalbe Marathon tyre on the rear wheel.
When I saw the bike I said there's no way that has been serviced. The brake cables were dry, the brakes needed adjusting, the chain was filthy, the gears were reluctant, the rear wheel was still pinging and I could feel slight play in the spindle.
So....full service now completed and rear wheel trued as well.

Interestingly enough the pinging was coming from the rear axle (hollow quick release) which had snapped on the free wheel side. It was an absolute pig getting the freewheel cluster off...but I cannot remember having ever done so in all the time I owned the bike! Strange how a bike shop charging for a service didn't notice there was something wrong with the rear wheel, when he had to take the wheel off to put a new tyre on it!

Anyway the Peugeot is running beautifully again now - and will hopefully give a good few more years service yet.
So

itboffin

turned screw 1/8th inch on my rear mech :roll:

think a need a new project, if only i had some parts to kick off a new project..... :roll:

Paul E

Cassette and chain clean ready for my commute in tomorrow (had to train in today) and I knew I should have bought a BB tool yesterday while I had the chance

itboffin

right then were to begin, well today was a rest day soooooo .......

cleaned the chain and cassette on the geared commuter
replaced the borked freewheel on the SS commuter, then degreased and greased two knacked freewheels
replaced the cleats on my shimano BG road (speedplay), sidi 5 (spd), shimano BG mtb (egg beater)
cleaned my rear wheel on the SS
removed, cleaned and cooper slipped my SS spd pedals
swapped the wifes MTB tyres back to road slicks on her hybrid, fitted a road front mud guard and removed the MTB downtube guard also cleaned the cassette and seatpost, change the seat post collar.

poured an entire jar of dirty white spirit over the floor

then watched the Milan San Remo and drank beer

EKE_38BPM

Fitted a lock mount to my gf's housemate's bike and fettled the gears and brakes. It's quite shocking that this needed doing after only a week of use (50 miles, max).

asprilla

Pumped the tyres, fettled the brakes and indexed the gears on my neighbour's BSO full susser.

Gave the Scott / Fuji / Felt it's spring clean. First time I've moved her since October; my god it's light.

cjcp

Asprilla wrote:

Pumped the tyres, fettled the brakes and indexed the gears on my neighbour's BSO full susser.

Gave the Scott / Fuji / Felt it's spring clean. First time I've moved her since October; my god it's light.

How does it feel compared to the Burls?

asprilla

Dunno, I only got round to cleaning her at 19.30 so I've not actually been out for a ride. Won't manage this weekend, far chance next weekend. This year just isn't happening for me.

veronese68

Asprilla wrote:

Dunno, I only got round to cleaning her at 19.30 so I've not actually been out for a ride. Won't manage this weekend, far chance next weekend. This year just isn't happening for me.

It would be a lot easier to tell if the poor thing didn't suffer with multiple personality disorder.

asprilla

Veronese68 wrote:

Asprilla wrote:

Dunno, I only got round to cleaning her at 19.30 so I've not actually been out for a ride. Won't manage this weekend, far chance next weekend. This year just isn't happening for me.

It would be a lot easier to tell if the poor thing didn't suffer with multiple personality disorder.

It's not her fault, she's just too quick for people to see properly....

asprilla

Fitted a rack to the Burls. Selling an old groupset to a chap at work and a pannier is the only way to get it all in.

SimonAH

That's like putting saddlebags on an Arabian stallion, for shame.

redvee

Swapped 17t freewheels on my Tricross and despite being the same size as the old one I had to realign the brake blocks and then toe them in again after over doing it. A silent freewheel under the immense power I emit is bliss.