mdd0127 wrote:It's good to see you putting some of that stuff I gave you to good use! You're probably going to end up with a brand new, never installed suntour v3 xct fork soon too. No one seems interested in it....even at $35! I'm definitely getting you a nice pile of useful goodies together and will bring it on my next trip down.....unless you feel like hooking up the trailer and heading north!
I dun think I could make it up there with the bike and trailer.
I'd need a few recharges along the way--I might make it in a 2-day trip if I carried all of my batteries, cuz I'd have to go pretty slow to use part of them (the TS 10s 60Ah cells), and I'd have no way to recharge the TS cells after getting there, unless you happen to have something that could charge them back up.
So I'll have to wait for your next trip down.
I definitely appreciate whatever you're getting rid of, and like I said before, if it isn't very much I can also offer whatever you'd've gotten scrapping/recycling it.
There is a chance I might get a friend to take me up there, like last time (but a different friend). Depends on what days you'd be avaialbe if I could come up there;
The front to rear hub motor magic is awesome btw!
It was kind of a desperation move, which I wouldn't even have tried if I didn't have two sets of covers and two (different but interchangeable) stators and two magnet rings, in case I really screwed it up. Hopefully it will inspire others to try something similar, only better.
But it was the only way I could use disc brakes in the front without the custom disc I made from scrap metal for the hubmotor's cover bolt ring, and welding a caliper mount to that hill-assault fork (that doesn't fit any of the steel headtubes I have except the one already on the new bike frame
). I still want to do that giant brake disc, but I have to get the right cover bolts for it first. I think I want to try it on the rear, since welding a caliper mount there ought to be easy enough, compared to on the fork. Should be plenty of clearance.
Speaking of clearance, apparently the frame flexes enough in the rear triangle to cause some tire rub during regen braking. It *only* happens then, not during accel or if I only brake with the front disc. I can't tell but I think that the dropouts themselves might be flexing, along with the thin stays.
The flexing itself isn't an issue, but the tire rub is--this is the thin sticky compound Cheng Shin I like on the front, one of which had a thread failure on the tread section, and then split the casing along the tread. The one now on the rear is showing two bulges on teh sidewall, probably from damage from friction heating as it rubs on the frame. The bulges stick out more and rub earlier and for more time, and harder, which exacerbates the problem.
So, I need to change the tire before I have a failure. I don't know which one I want to put on there, because I would like one that is going to be tough enough to last a while, and is also going to help with traction, etc., but not have a high rolling resistance or bumpy ride.
I've got four "tough" candidates, but all are knobbies.
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Two are in this category only because they are thicker walled and treaded, the Kenda \
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and the Tiandi.
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The Maxxis
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and the Specialized
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seem to be made well enough as well as being thick. None of them have all that much wear, I think. But the Specialized whcih is the best of the bunch (rated for 85PSI vs 65 on all the others) is also very much wider than the others, not only wide in the tire itself, but extra knobbies on teh edges add like 5mm on each side.
I know that it will not clear the frame, unless I cut off all those side knobbies, or somehow spread the frame at the tire area; I dunno what that would do to the frame strength. So I'd rather not do it.
In other news, I fixed some of the shudder during braking with the disc brakes in front. I could not tell before for some reason, but when I stopped to bang at the headset again today, I found that the cone nuts on the axle/hub in front were not fully seated, so the whole wheel had some left/right play/wobble. Not very much, but enough to feel it rocking the tire left/right. While still on the sidewalk, I stuck the FF MC helmet under the bike near the cranks to hold the front end up, then took the wheel off and adjusted the cone nuts, whcih when put back on fixed the worst of the brake shudddering--there is still some because of the headset looseness, but it is not as bad.
Befoe, it would rattle around during all braking. Now it is only during light to moderate braking, while modulating the brakes to slow rather than stop. Worst druing right turns. Heavy sudden braking fully locks up the headset into it's rear-dragged position, so it doesn't have a shudder problem.
One other thing I would like to change is the steering ratio. It is too sensitive. I thought I had calculated and measured things to keep it the same as it was before, but apparently not.
As far as your commute goes, is there any reason why you can't just take an entire lane on the road, blatantly, and just let the cars go around? You have awesome lighting and clearly can use a large portion of the lane without causing too much confusion. You might need one of those reflective triangles on the rear like tractors and amish buggies use but it might be totally legal and much easier that way.
It's theoretically legal anyway, depending on road conditions. Whether I get harassed by police about it would depend on whether any pissed off drivers call me in or something, or if the police see lots of cars doing stupid things passing me, and then do what they usually do--remove the slow vehicle from the road rather than catch the idiot drivers and teach them how they *should* pass slow vehicles.
I think if I were to take a whole lane on either Greenway, Bell, or Cave Creek, I'd need to to have one of those super-bright sequential flashing arrows like construction and cleaning vehicles often have. I've considered one before, but if I had to do this commute for another couple of weeks, I'd build one for sure. It's not really needed for most of my riding, as I can usually either stay on slower main streets or on side streets.
I try not to go places where the only option is to go thru roads like CCR, Bell, or GW, which are all 45MPH for most of the length I have to go on, but are the only roads around the mountain, with sidestreets nonexistent for parts of the journey and discontinuous most everywhere else. That makes it impractical to take side streets. Sidewalks are possible but only practical for a small part of teh journey, unless I don't mind taking a significantly longer time to reach my destinations up there. But sidewalks are dangerous unless they have nothing crossing them, and are nice and wide, and in very good condition. None of those is true for most of the sidewalks in the valley, and even when one is true usually the others aren't.
You'd just have to fend off the negative energy of all of the idiots in a hurry to go nowhere that get stuck behind you. My old military truck was that way.
But it is also quite a lot bigger than my bike, and unlikely to have someone run over it if they either don't notice the speed difference thru obliviousness, or if they are just mad and can't be bothered to follow the rules of the road or even just do the safe thing and pass in the next lane.
I don't have a problem with the attitudes themselves, as I'm used to that, just the possibility of someone not bothering to change lanes enough and running right over me. I suppose in theory taking the lane fully gives me more options for getting out of their way if I had to, but I don't know if it is true or not.
Anyway, it's a thought.
Most of the streets I saw down there were 35-45mph zones and I'm pretty sure you have the same rights as a car.
I do, *but* am required to ride "as far to the right as is practicable", whatever "practicable" is supposed to mean. I'm also supposed to ride at most in the center of the rightmost lane, or to the right. Given road conditions, sometimes even the center of the lane isn't far enough left to clear the untravellable portions of the road. Mostly even just a little between center and right is far enough, but hardly ever is it really possible to stay all the way to the right for more than a few dozen or a few hundred feet.
It would be ballsy for sure but would start setting the stage for people getting used to smaller lighter, slower, but waaaaay more efficient vehicles being on the road. Lead the way and others will follow! (but be safe
)
There are a lot of cyclists on the road now, but so many of them are the same idiots that drive cars without knowing or caring about the rules of the road (such as not drinking and driving, which is probably why they are riding bikes now), that I think they are causing a significant amount of the aggravation many drivers have with cyclists. There are also aggressive cyclists (even lycras) that get in the way of faster traffic when they have no right or even need to; I've seen one of them twice now (same one I think) on my morning ride home, that cycles on the righthand side of eastbound Greenway, sometimes almost in teh gutter but sometimes suddenly just swinging out left way into the lane even though cars were coming right up behind him--and he NEVER looked and had no mirror on helmet or bars.
He also had no road-condition reason to swerve; I have ridden that same path several times now, and while the road has separation cracks several dozen feet apart all down that stretch of road, they're not that bad even on my heavy bike; on a light road bike they'd probably be trivial even at the 15-20MPH he was going.
But in all cases of swerving out, there were cars coming, and all of those had to brake (screeching in some cases) and swerve left around him. Since I was riding the other direction (but on the same side of the road, as I was on the sidewalk at that time) I only had him in view for a short time each time, so I assume he's doing that kind of thing all along his ride path, however long that is. I imagine it would piss off drivers a lot. It would more than irritate me, and I might ride up next to him and wave him over to try to tell him what he is doing is going to get him hurt or killed, or cause an accident between cars. I doubt it would help, though.
What do recumbent trike riders do, one wheel on the curb and the other in the gutter? The ones I've seen just take the whole lane.
Trikes haven't any choice--the whole lane is the only option. Almost no bike lane is wide enough, because here they often include the gutter as part of the bike lane's width, which of course is stupid and pointless, especially with storm drains in it that would break your wheel and throw you off the bike into traffic if you actually tried to ride thru them.
Even most sidewalks aren't wide enough for a trike at any real speed, because they are just wide enough for a wheelchair in many cases, sometimes maybe 1.5x that. In rare cases there are paths like the one for a few miles on greenway that are 5-6 feet wide, and those are actually usable...but often the concrete sections are sinking at angles or different rates, as the sand under them gets washed out by rains and sinkholes, so there can be "cliffs" between sections of up to 3-4 inches, and commonly at least an inch to 1.5 inches, and less often 2 to 2.5 inches. . Or construction workers have lifted the sections out to do work under them, then dropped them back in in a "roof peak" fashion, making a huge peaked double "ramp" with it's center 4-6 inches higher than it's ends, over about 2-3 feet length depending on how big the sidewalk sections are.
Anyway, no point complaining; they're not gonna do anything about it, even if they had any budget for it.
I'd love to come down and ride/play some music soon but probably won't be able to until after May 2nd.
That's ok. Maybe I can even get time off by then.
We're still building stuff like crazy, trying to get everything ready for the Mexican 1000. I'm donating my time and skills to the effort so I'm barely making enough to eat, much less travel! After the race, I have some good paying work lined up a lot closer to you so that should be cool!
That should be interesting to participate in. I kinda wish I could help out, but I haven't any time off for a while, nor anyone I'd trust the dogs with.
It'll be nice to see ya again when you get back this way afterward, too.
