Solar battery chargers

I’m going on a long bike trip (multiple days + camping in between) and I want to charge my GPS device and cell phone using some kind of solar device. I started looking around and found quite a few:

• Solio has a classic, hybrid, and magnesium edition.
• Soldius only seems to offer the Soldius 1, but it does not include an integrated battery.
• Megasol supposedly makes the Solar Energy Pocket Power (SEPP) but their website doesn’t support English.
• 21st Century Goods has an entire category for solar products.

More wheel building

This time it’s a new rear wheel for the fixed gear. I’m using my old Suzue “1 B” hub (I think it’s an SIL-SP), which accepts 36 spokes (not 32, as I previously thought). The rim is an Alexrims DA22, which I got by disassembling the rear wheel of a wheelset I bought for Kathleen’s mom’s old bike, that Kathleen used to ride. The corresponding front wheel is currently spaced for a mountain bike fork. I’ll probably have more to say on here when I figure out what has to happen to adjust its width (i.e., can I just remove a spacer or two or is the hub just plain too wide?). I have 18 286mm spokes and 18 287mm spokes left over from disassembling the old rear wheel, but Dan Halem’s spoke length calculator tells me I need 282.7mm spokes for 3-cross lacing and 293.1mm for 4-cross lacing. This convinces me that the spokes I already have won’t work, although I’m tempted to try anyways to see what goes wrong.

There’s a good bit of Wheel Lacing Information at this site, including Spoke Length Tolerances and Fixes for Some Problems. Take-away messages seem to be that spokes are only too short if you can’t get them started. It seems that once they’re started there’s enough stretch and the threads are good enough that the wheel will be strong, even if some threads are showing. It’s harder to derive a rule of thumb for when spokes are too long, but the old rear wheel on my fixed gear had 2~3mm of spoke sticking beyond the end of the nipple (double walled rim + rim strip = no problem) and it never had a failure related to pulling through the nipple. Thus, I think visible threads sticking out the other side are also tolerable.

Bikes > Computers

Three out of my last four posts (four out of five if you count this one) have been about bikes, instead of computers! I have just spent the last 4 or 5 hours reading about various bike stuff online, culminating in the purchase of my TomiCog. I have been riding bikes for a long time, and I even occasionally race them badly. Although I took a four year hiatus to row, the bike is back! I attained higher cycling fitness in 2007 than I have had since high school, or perhaps ever. I rode the L-train to victory in the 2007 Grass Roots Racing Sprint Series, solely as a result of our mountain biking skills. I have already crashed more times in 2008 than I did in all of 2007. I now own a pink single-speed, and I can blame Bianchi warranty if too many big dudes start making fun of it. I built a wheel, though I haven’t ridden on it yet. I almost killed Mullen and myself on the way to Quebec Run due to resonating childish exuberance overpowering my ability to see red lights, and I got pulled over on the way home and escaped with only a warning!

This evening’s literary selections have included BikeSnobNYC and Mark Weaver’s Road Rant, as well as the discovery of 63xc, even if it has been disbanded and I didn’t learn much except a lot more people ride fixed gears off-road than I thought.

Aspirations for the year include acquisition of enough weight training and protective equipment to allow my 27-year-old nerd’s physique to survive the beating it’s going to receive, as I intend to introduce more frequent skinnies, stair gaps and try my hand at a downhill race or two. This may finally be the year of the open-ended wheelie and manual, as well as the open-ended backwards fixed-gear riding. Open-ended with respect to my own balance, though I remain woefully subject to the whims of yinzer motorists.

TomiCogs

I’m supposed to be a clever fellow, given the nearly completed PhD and all. However, I’ve been fussing internally about how to get a fixed rear mountain bike wheel without spending a bunch of money. Even if I want to build it with junk I have lying around, I’ll have to shell out for spokes. Enter TomiCOG. I already have disc brakes, and this cog bolts on right where the disc does. Just flip the wheel. Why I didn’t come up with that on my own is cause for rumination and mental anguish. I’ll have to make sure I have the bike nearby when those thoughts creep up. I have a feeling that descending fixed in Frick Park is an effective way to sharpen one’s focus.

For maximal cheapness, I could take the conversion approach and drill a sufficiently metal cog from a low-end cassette or coaster brake. I read something somewhere about a good source of cogs for this. However, embarrassed by my own lack of creativity, I opt to reward TomiCOG for his innovation.

I built a wheel (White Industries hub + Deep V rim)

Many years ago I built a few wheels, but I haven’t sat down with a pile of spokes and nipples in a long time. This particular wheel is composed of a White Industries hub from the late 1990s; I believe it is a “Speed Racer” (it shares the identical measurements of the Speed Racer). This is a nice lightweight hub with a nice loud freewheel and cartridge bearings. I’ve had it long enough to have worn through the braking surface of two rims and at least one set of cartridge bearings on my mountain bike. To this hub I have laced a brand new Velocity Deep V 700c rim, using DT Swiss double-butted (2.0/1. stainless steel spokes, using the traditional 3-cross pattern.

Spoke Length

The issue that concerned me most going into this was selecting the right spoke length since I was lacing a hub previously used for mountain biking to a 700c deep-V rim for my ‘cross bike. Dan Halem’s Spoke Length Calculator actually has entries in its drop down menus for both my hub and rim, which made entering the necessary measurements trivial. My Velocity Deep V has an Effective Rim Diameter (ERD) of 582.0mm, while the White Industries Speed Racer has symmetric flange diameters of 55.0mm, with a Left Center to Flange measurement of 34.5mm and a Right Center to Flange measurement of 21.5mm. Using a 3-cross pattern and with 32 spokes, the left (non-drive) side spokes should be 282.5mm and the right (drive-side) spokes should be 281.2mm. As spokes tend to be sized every 2mm, I settled on 282mm spokes for both sides.

Building the Thing

To jog my memory I read through Sheldon Brown’s Wheel Building page, which is a great source of information. Lacing the spokes to the hub and rim is straightforward, if painstaking, and I didn’t have any issues. I then started gradually tightening up the spokes. I tried to leave the same amount of thread showing all the way around, tightening spokes in order around the rim until the threads just started to disappear into the nipples. This gave me a fairly tight wheel with terrible dish, which is to be expected since it’s a rear wheel and I tightened everything evenly. I then started tightening only the drive-side spokes until the dish got close. I had actually over done things a bit, and I ended up backing out some of the non-drive side spokes by 1 to 1.5 turns. In the end, some of the threads are visible on the non-drive side spokes. I’m not sure that an extra 0.5mm of spoke would have made much of a difference here.

Final Truing

When building a wheel, one must monitor vertical true, horizontal true, spoke tension, and dish. With my truing stand, I can take care of everything except for spoke tension. I did my best to pluck the spokes and try to get them all, at least on the drive side, to make similar-sounding musical notes. I don’t know anything about music, so my ability to tension-by-ear may well be awful. I haven’t decided yet whether to get a second opinion on whether she’s road-ready or to just give’r and pick up the pieces if I’m wrong.

Riding the Thing

I haven’t put the wheel on my bike yet. The hub is older, and is pre-9-speed, which is the type of cassette currently on my ‘cross bike. My plan is to select and unlucky cog from the cassette and just get rid of it. I’ll readjust the deraillier to cope and just have an unused “gear” at the low end of my index shifter. Nothing I can’t handle, hopefully.

Pink your bike

I have a pink single speed, and it seemed only fitting to install some pink cables. Jagwire offers such cables, and a portion of the proceeds go towards breast cancer. Better yet, they have gallery of submitted bikes, and mine is posted as “Jon from Pittsburgh.”

Cold Weather Cycling Clothes

Riding on the road (or even in the woods) in the winter can be cold! This Christmas I got a pair of Pearl Izumi Slice ThermaFleece Cycling Bib Tights (size L), and they strike a powerful blow against the sinister forces of cold. I posted this here to remind myself in case I want to order another pair.

Spokes come in a lot of sizes

I have trouble keeping track and measurements are often subject to error.

The Shimano hub on my singlespeed uses 260mm spokes on the rear wheel drive side.

The rear hub on the green specialized also uses 260mm spokes on the rear wheel drive side.

Cannondale cyclocross cantilever brake shudder

I have a 2004 Cannondale ‘cross bike. Since the day I bought it, its front brake (it’s a cantilever brake system) has had the shudder of death. The sensation is rather like that of antilock brakes in a car, except that the front wheel is actually hopping off of the ground, which is obviously bad in an emergency stop situation on a bike. The problem goes away in the muck or when the rims have a lot of crud on them, but if you’re trying to descend at speed on a normal road, the front brake will throw you on the ground. I finally decided to do something about this.

I found this thread at bikeforums.net and discovered that I am by no means the only person to experience this problem, and that my bike is not the only bike to experience it. This came as a surprise to me, as my first two mountain bikes were equipped with cantilever brakes and I never experienced any shudder problems. Many people proposed many different solutions, but it was their explanation of probable causes that got me thinking and allowed me to get the thing fixed.

The cable hanger for the front cantilever was originally of the “headset spacer” type, in that it was a glorified headset spacer that happened to have the ability to terminate a brake cable housing. When braking, the fork flexes towards the rear of the bike. If you think about that motion, it actually has the effect of amplifying the tension on the front brake cable, thereby applying the brakes harder. This causes the wheel to lockup and hop, which I guess is better than having it just plain lockup and throw you on the ground.

At any rate, one person in the above thread suggested the following, and I thought it sounded like a good idea: replace that headset spacer cable hanger with one that bolts to the top of the fork, where a traditional road caliper brake or reflector might mount. The carbon fork on my bike is drilled to accept a hanger / reflector there, so I decided to track one down.

Harris Cyclery has one listed as a Tektro Front Brake Housing Stop f/Cantilevers. My Cannondale’s fork is too thick for the through-bolt that comes with the Tektro part, but I was able to find another bolt that fit suitably. This seems to have cured the problem for me. It also never hurts to have a tight headset and properly toed-in pads, but this change of hanger was the magic.

My fixed gear

During my second year at UVA (fall 2000) I turned an old Nashbar Road Alpha 5000 into a fixed gear by reusing the existing 36-hole rim (I believe its an Araya; it’s a single-walled piece of crap) with a new hub and some used spokes for the rear wheel. While goofing off trying to skid on at the 24 hours of Snowshoe its cog came loose on the wheel and the threads got toasted before I could tighten things up. I rebuilt the rear wheel again with the same rim, this time using a cheap Suzue hub. Many, many, many trips to class later, a move to Pittsburgh, and two more years’ worth of trips to the lab, the rear wheel was so out of true that it was rubbing the frame. We lost three spokes along the way. The bike then went into storage for two years as I was then living within walking distance of the lab. I have moved a little further out, and I now need to resurrect it.

I belive the rear hub to be a Suzue SIL-SP, though printed on it is “Suzue Japan 1 b”. With the Araya rim, 301mm spokes seem to work well. I did my best to bring the wheel back into true, but the rim is pretty far gone. I will likely be replacing it soon, along with all of the spokes. Using used spokes when I built the wheel in the first place was a mistake.

In Charlottesville, my commute was fla, but slow and windy, and I built the fixed gear as much for fun as for commuting. As such, it has low gearing and some very upright “Englishman” handlebars.

My commute in Pittsburgh is downhill to work, and uphill home, though not too steep. The gearing I had on the bike previously (32:15) is simply not acceptable on the descent. I swapped in a 40 tooth chainring up front, which has helped some, but it’s still not a high enough gear. I’m also interested in taking this bike when I hit the rail trails with my fiance, and I need a bigger gear to comfortably maintain 16~17 mph.

Another customer at Iron City Cycles suggested that a gearing ratio of close to 3:1 is good for the Oakland / Squirrel Hill area (40:15 = 2.67:1). He also said not to use exactly 3:1 or else I’ll skid my tire a lot. Now, I have been trying like hell TO skid my tire, but I’m not sure why that exact ratio would make it easier. Once I learn the answer, I’ll try to post it here. UPDATE: The skids would always be in the same places of the tire with a 3:1 ratio.  A not-quite-exact ratio distributes them around the tire.  Clipless pedals make it much easier to skid. Practice in the snow, then the gravel, then the rain, then the dry pavement.

I also plan to chop some drop bars and make myself a set of bullhorns, as the uprights don’t make sense once I start to pickup speed. Also, the Road Alpha 5000 isn’t as big as I remember it. My 60cm Cannondale ‘Cross bike is much bigger.

In other disturbing news, I went to adjust the front brake the morning and part of it snapped off, the victim of corrosion and metal fatigue. I am currently telling myself it must have cracked in a careless racking, but who knows.