Welcome ERRC readers!

Wo says the midsummer edition of ERRC Magazine is going out the door tonight, including my article that points to this blog. So: Hi, readers!

For the whole story of the restoration, start with this post. Then keep clicking the "Newer Post" link at the bottom of each item. Or just poke around in the Archive section on the right.

You'll find lots more pictures here than were in the article. Most of the pictures that you see inline, link to larger versions. So click any pic for more detail.

By all means, leave comments! If there are questions, put them in comments. I'll answer any I can in further posts.

Using RSS

I don't post every day, and there will be a long hiatus through August and September. It's a pain to keep checking a blog for new posts and not finding any. If you're internet-savvy you probably know about RSS or Atom feeds, but if you don't, look up "RSS" in the help page for your browser. Basically you put this special link in a bookmark, and your browser will check for updates automatically. When I get around to posting something, you'll know right away.

An Electro-Etiquette Question

Today I did "the loop" again, the Arastradero - Portola - Sand Hill roads triangle. (I know this means nothing to riders not from around here; sorry! Oh, wait, I can do pictures.) So, as you leave Portola Valley and head toward Menlo Park, you're climbing a bit of a hill.

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Going up I caught up with three women riding together. One of them broke away from the other two and I followed her up this rise. She was strong; I was using assist #2 and could barely keep up. However, I knew there was this nice downgrade waiting.

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So as we crested, I pulled out and passed, and spun out my top gear, which is not as high as it ought be, so only about 35mph. Pulled in my elbows and knees, hunkered down with my nose on the handlebar behind the fairing, zoomed down the hill. Since the other rider was on an upright, this ought to have demonstrated how effective the aerodynamics of a faired recumbent are, by leaving her far behind.

Not! As I started up the longer hill at the other side of the valley, sitting up, gearing down, there she was, right beside me. Standing up and sprinting away from me up the rise.

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Well, I thought, you go, girl! I settled back and punched up assist level 3, which I would normally have used, allowing me to spin up this grade, breathing hard and sweating, but going 12 or 13mph. And found I was catching up to Ms. Rider, who was still standing up and driving hard on her upright.

OK, here was a big question of manners. Is it ethically, or socially, valid to show up another rider by use of electric assist? This woman was clearly working at her limit to pass me and stay ahead on the hill. I thought it would be rather crass to out-do her efforts with mechanical aid.

So I dropped to assist 2 and went down a couple of gears. She gradually pulled farther away as we ground up the hill. If I'd had no assist, she'd have been a speck dwindling in the distance. I don't have any problem with that; for a start, her lungs had about a 30-year advantage over mine.

Questions of rider etiquette aside, this was a very successful ride. My legs felt stronger than on previous circuits of the same route. So despite the assist, I am getting conditioned. That's always satisfying to experience.

Recumbents rule in Los Altos

Today I took a ride south through Rancho San Antonio county park. (Woo-hoo, two rides in two days!) It's a familiar 20-mile route without any serious hills (although my altimeter did show more than 350 feet higher at the turnaround than at home). It takes me past a place where model airplane enthusiasts are usually to be found flying their creations.

Sometime in the past five years at most, I think only a couple of years, the wasp-like snarl of the model airplane motor has completely disappeared. All flying models are now electric, powered by batteries. Which makes the hobby much more ear-friendly. But it's fascinatin' how quickly the new tech swept out the old.

Anyway, coming home, waiting for the light at Foothill Expressway and Magdelana/Springer, I saw another Easy Racers recumbent crossing in front of me. I wish I'd had the camera ready because it was a sight, with full body stocking in red and bright yellow. I could see below the fairing, the mechanism of what I think was the Ecospeed mid-drive electric motor. The batteries were in little pannier cases mounted under the seat.

Less than a mile later I found myself slowly overtaking yet another long-wheelbase recumbent. From the back it looked like another Easy Racer. From the back is all I saw because when the rider became aware of me growing in his mirror, he applied a little more steam and kept the distance between us open. However, when I turned off at Arastradero road, I got an angle from which I could see the frame: not an Easy Racers model but a Rans Stratus.

Anyway, three LWB recumbents, two with electric drive, in a mile radius of Los Altos. Who'd'a thunk it?

More rattle management

Rattles from the rear continued to irk me on the monday ride to the gym, so today I had another look around the back.

With the battery out, I shook and banged everything. Some sound was coming from the luggage rack. The BionX rear rack includes a "rat-trap" spring-loaded clip, of the sort found on rather lame balloon-tired errand bikes. It was definitely producing some noise, so I removed it. Should I ever need to attach something to the rack, I'll use the bungee that I routinely carry in the bottom of a pannier.

Then I once again checked every threaded fastener in the rear rack, and found one screw that wasn't fully tight, allowing a little motion in a brace rod. In the process I adjusted the rack to make the battery exactly horizontal. It had been pitched a little forward.

With the battery out, I rode around the block and everything sounded quiet. I put the battery back and did another circuit. Oops, some clcks on bumps.

I shook and pounded things and determined that the only possible play was a little up-and-down motion at the tail of the battery. This is held in place by a clip, and in order to get at the clip I had to split the battery case. Which turned out to be easy to do: loosen two bolts.

With the clip out I could see how it is supposed to work. It should grab the back of its track in a friction fit.

This was where there was a millimeter of play, so I carefully crushed that clip in my bench vice juuuusssst a little bit so it gripped well.

Reassemble the battery box, reinstall, take another test ride. There are still a few clunks to be heard on the very sharpest bumps, but all told the ride is much quieter now.

Mo' Maintenance

I also installed the Terracycle chain idler which arrived last saturday. Using puh-lenty of blue thread-lock, I might add.

Still pending: find a replacement for the cadence magnet. I had a couple of spare magnets but none that will attach nicely with a zip-tie. Need to actually buy a Cat-Eye cadence kit, I suppose.

One rattle down, one to go

It's amazing what a small thing can cause a rattle, and how hard it can be to find. After I shimmed the rack piece as described in the prior post, the rattles were reduced. However there was still a bright little chnk! from the back on every pavement irregularity. And we have plenty of irregular pavement.

After wednesday's ride to the gym I spent some time pounding the rear rack with my fist again. There is a tiny bit of movement in the battery on its track, but that didn't seem to be the source of the higher-frequency noise. Eventually I found my way to the lock.

The battery has this lock whose only purpose is to secure the battery in its rack. You can't pull it out without unlocking it. (It isn't an "ignition" lock to enable the system; the system is enabled anytime the battery is mounted.)

So it turned out that the cylinder in the center of the lock has a fraction of a millimeter of play and it makes a noise when it vibrates. I proved that by shimming it with a bit of post-it note:

That shut up the high-pitched rattle, making today's ride quite a bit less noisy. There is still a lower-pitched clunk on the heavier bumps, which I need to investigate further. I suspect it may be coming from where the rack is braced to the Cobra seat braces. (I am coming to realize that the BionX rack-mount battery, although a tidy and esthetically pleasing design, has one problem: it places the heavy battery directly over the rear axle, where it gets the hardest ride and most vibration.)

Anyway the remaining noise is not as annoying. I don't know quite what to do to permanently stifle the lock, either. That purple post-it can't be a permanent fix.

Oh, another mechanical issue. Wednesday while I was drinking coffee at a coffee shop on the way home from the gym, and out of sight of the bike, somebody or something caused it to fall over. I found it on its side when I came out.

No obvious damage was done, but when I righted it and sat down, I found that the chain had hopped off the chain ring and jammed itself inside the small ring. (Might not have happened if I wasn't riding without a chain idler. The new idler came today.)

I yanked the chain out and got it back on the middle ring and rode home, thinking nothing of it. But today I noticed there was no cadence read-out on the computer. And a quick check revealed that the cadence magnet that I had so cleverly installed on the inside of the small chain ring was absent. It probably got forced off when the chain was jammed. So now I have to replace that.

Squeak and Rattles

Wednesday I rode the bike the usual 15-mile route to the gym, which took the battery down to its last, or last-but-one, segment. (The last segment of the eight is a little wedge, not a full bar. It and the next segment were on.) During the afternoon and evening, every 2 or 3 hours, the bike would emit a funny noise: a quiet little electronic squeak or chirp. It took a while to find the source of the noise, since it happened so seldom, but it was pretty certainly the bike. There was nothing else in that room that could have chirped, or squeaked.

There's nothing in the BionX manual about an audible alarm when the battery is low, but I charged it up and the noise did not recur.

The distance for that charge was 62.4 miles.

Friday I took the bike around the Arastradero loop, like before but this time I took the somewhat more demanding route past Arastradero Preserve which has a steep hill. I was panting and working hard even with assist level 3. Coming down the back side it was steep enough that I could set generate (negative assist) level 1 and the bike held its speed.

During this ride, as in the prior two, I was annoyed by a sharp rattle from the back, around the battery. On rough pavement it is quite loud. Also new to this ride was a higher-frequency, chattery rattle from somewhere up front. So today (Saturday) I put the bike up on the stand and went after these two rattles. The new rattle took a while to find. Banged on the frame with my fist and listened for several minutes before I noticed—Doh!—that the TerraCycle chain idler had disappeared! The rattle was from the remaining bracket which was slightly loose. The noise was hard to find because the fairing acts like a sound mirror and makes any noise from the center forward seem to come from the front.

Now, I first learned about vibration on bicycles when I was like, 12 years old, and I always assemble threaded parts with blue threadlock. Just the same, the bearing bolt for the idler had apparently unthreaded itself and fallen off. And the bracket bolt, which is fixed with a self-locking nut, had backed off a couple of turns. This latter makes me suspect that I might not have finished installing it in the first place. A self-locking nut just doesn't loosen itself.

I've ordered another idler ($60, ouch). In the meantime as long as I don't go down to the smallest chainring the chain should be alright.

As for the other rattle, the one in the back, I already knew what it was. The BionX battery case has a couple of metal brackets that mate with a track in the rack.

The rearmost of these had gotten loose; it has barely a millimeter of play vertically and horizontally but that is enough to let the tail of the battery box rattle. I'd already verified that if I stuffed some paper under it, it would shut up. So now I made a more permanent shim for it.