I think I finally got the handlebars to stop moving!
It was pretty hair raising on the way home last night. I tightened the bolt up before I left work, but it continued to tilt forward every time I braked hard. When I got to the traffic lights outside Mcvities in Levenshulme, I couldn't reach the brakes anymore, so figured it was probably time to get off and re-adjust. :P I tightened it as hard as I could, and it seeeeems to have done the trick!
A couple more things that I've found, now that I've cycled it to and fro a bit more:
The pedals weren't designed with flatfooted people in mind.
My feet seem to be wider than average, meaning that I either have to wear wide fitting shoes, or wear one size larger than needed. I trip over myself when I'm wearing large shoes, so my footwear of choice are nice wide skate shoes! That was fine on the MTB, but the pedals on the road bike are much narrower, and curve upwards on the outside. I'm actually finding it more comfortable to pedal with the pedals upside-down. :s Time to investigate an alternative..
Something weird is going on with the back wheel.
I noticed something when I was unlocking my bike after work; the rear tyre looks closer to the left seat stay. I can only think of two possible causes for this: badly aligned stays, or a badly dished wheel
Before I'd decided to go the singlespeed route, I'd re-spaced the stays from 126mm to 130mm, in order to allow it to take a more modern hub and freewheel. I'd used the Sheldon Brown cold setting method of a plank of wood and a chair, and it had gone well - one adjustment to each side, with no mucking about. I used his string method for checking alignment, and it looked perfect!
But the wheel looks to be something like 5mm closer to the left seat stay, so maybe it wasn't as perfect as I thought. It doesn't make sense, though.. I pulled each stay out by 2mm, and measured it each time to make sure I hadn't gone too far. To make it like it currently is, I'd have had to have pulled only one side out by 4mm. I suppose it could have been badly aligned before I got to it.
The other possible cause is the wheel itself. It was cheap, so it may have been built badly. Maybe they got the dishing wrong, and the rim isn't centered. I'm not sure how to test that.. maybe put the wheel into the front fork.
Other than that, it's been good! The cycle home last night went well, and I even managed a personal record on a Strava segment, although that may have had more to do with lucky traffic lights. I still think I could possibly switch to a 16 tooth freewheel, as I hardly stood up on the way home, and I felt that I could do with more of a gain on the way into work this morning. However, when I did stand up, my steering went to pot, so I think I need to get used to the new bike before I switch.
I also nearly got squished by a red light jumping HGV this morning. I was on the A6, coming up to the traffic lights on the exit from Longsight, at the junction with the A6010. The lights went to green just as I got to the start of the ASL box, so I kept going. I glanced right to check the state of the cars who were still hustling for a lane position from the previous direction, and was extremely surprised to see an HGV jump the lights at that exact moment. This wasn't an amber jump, or a milisecond jump.. this idiot jumped the light at least 5 seconds after they'd changed to full red! If I hadn't looked right, I'd be dead right now, or at least lying comatose in a hospital bed. I braked in time, despite my crappy brakes, and managed to call the driver all sorts of names as he passed, and even managed one of the more universally recognised hand signals (seriously - who remembers the signals that're in the highway code?). What an anus.
That's the first really bad moment I've had while cycling. I can usually second-guess someone who's intending to turn across me or do something stupid, but it's the nutjobs that I don't see coming that scare me. The risks that people take to get somewhere a few minutes earlier never cease to amaze me, although I suppose cycling is that in a nutshell. I get to work much quicker on a bicycle, but the journey is riskier.
No comments:
Post a Comment