Lots of rain the last two days: ~830-930pm heavy rain on Friday night, slowing to a sprinkle just as I started home from work, but leaving all of the roads for ~1/2 my ride home covered in inches of water except a lane's worth in the center where the crown is, but thankfully little enough traffic that I didn't have to ride thru that for any but a few feet here and there.
Saturday evening it started heavy again for a half hour or so, and had stopped completely for a couple of hours (most streets were completely dry again by the time we closed the store) but restarted sprinkling just before I left for home.
On Friday, splashing thru some of the water, some of the bike wiring must've gotten wet despite previous preparations, and the front controller's throttle signal was partly stuck on, so everytime I had to stop I had to hold the ebrake (normally I don't) till I started up again. Durign charging at home I had to put a loop around the ebrake handle to keep the motor off, until the cabling dried out.
Saturday on the way to work, things were normal again. But on the way home, the front stopped responding to ebrake signal, and I didn't get anywhere near the regen braking I normally would (the rear controller doesnt' really do a lot of regen, probably because of voltage programming or something; I investigated that a long time back but I can't remember what came of it or what I was going to do about it). Thankfully I iddn't have the throttle problem again, but even this morning, the front still doesn't respond to ebraking, so I will have to check out it's wiring and see if the connector or something along the way has partially oxidized or something due to the water.
Good news is that the imitation-kool-stop-salmon brake pads I installed a little bit back work GREAT in the wet, though they squeal like crazy after everything dried out. I gotta clean all the stuff from the puddles off the wheel and pads, and see if that makes a difference (should). Ammonia (window cleaner/etc) usually works pretty well for this--just spray it on, let it soak a minute, and hose it down, usually. Sometimes gotta scrub with a brush or a sponge.
Last night while doing a perfunctory check on the ebrake wiring, I found the rear light assembly on the back of the seat was very loose again, so before it falls off during a ride despite tightening down, I figured I better go ahead and replace the machine screws holding it in with actual bolts and nuts all the way thru that rear crossbar, which are much less likely to come loose from the bumps and whatnot than the original mounting method.
Only hard part was trying to drill thru the round-cross-section tubing from underneath without any pilot mark or hole, cuz I can't do it from the top where the original hole is, since the seat's top tube is almost directly over that crossbar and way too close to get the drill in there. Eventually had to file a little mark to catch the drill bit in, and use stages of drill bit sizes, cuz any other method tried just kept slipping off one side or the other of the tube.
I chose to use some beveled-head philips screws and wingnuts to do the mounting with, becuase I can tighten them easily without any tools if I have to out on the road. The beveled heads (for countersinking) should hold better against hte tubing's bottom hole than a flat base screw would, and the wingnuts are secured with a splitwasher and flatwasher against the top of the actual lighting bar's mounting plate.
I still have to remount the rear downlighting bar on the bottom of that tube, but before I do I want to resolder some of the LEDs and/or SMT resistors that are causing intermittent lighting.
Oh, and the front tire has very very poor traction on any even slightly wet surface, at any angle.
I almost lost it a couple of times on turns both Friday and Saturday nights, but I already knew it had the problem and was ready for it to happen, so I just let off the power on the front, lightly squeezed the front mechanical brake for an instant, and used rear power and a little countersteering to push me back into traction for steering thru the turns.
I also have noted that many times when I am starting up from a stop on a completely dry surface that if it is dusty or sandy (very common here) or has loose surface asphalt (also very common, perhaps even more than the dust or sand) then the front tire always spins just a little bit before it catches, if I throttle both wheels up together. If I do it by itself it isn't as bad and sometimes I might not notice it if I didn't alreayd know it happens, but with the rear wheel power that has no such traction problems, it must be very slightly lifting the front and increasing the front traction issue.
Am definitely gonna have to replace that front tire (infinity armadillo something or other) with something much stickier (softer) ASAP, but nothign I have already will work. I should make a trip down to the BuildABike store where I got the General tire I had before and see if they have more of them--it was a good tire for traction, even if it did wear thru fairly quickly.
Alternately, if I can find a sticky moped tire that would work on a 26" x 1.25" type bike rim, I could order that along with one of those Pirelli or Shinko moped tires for the 20" x 2" (or 2.5") rear, and not have to worry about wearing it out.
Saturday evening it started heavy again for a half hour or so, and had stopped completely for a couple of hours (most streets were completely dry again by the time we closed the store) but restarted sprinkling just before I left for home.
On Friday, splashing thru some of the water, some of the bike wiring must've gotten wet despite previous preparations, and the front controller's throttle signal was partly stuck on, so everytime I had to stop I had to hold the ebrake (normally I don't) till I started up again. Durign charging at home I had to put a loop around the ebrake handle to keep the motor off, until the cabling dried out.
Saturday on the way to work, things were normal again. But on the way home, the front stopped responding to ebrake signal, and I didn't get anywhere near the regen braking I normally would (the rear controller doesnt' really do a lot of regen, probably because of voltage programming or something; I investigated that a long time back but I can't remember what came of it or what I was going to do about it). Thankfully I iddn't have the throttle problem again, but even this morning, the front still doesn't respond to ebraking, so I will have to check out it's wiring and see if the connector or something along the way has partially oxidized or something due to the water.
Good news is that the imitation-kool-stop-salmon brake pads I installed a little bit back work GREAT in the wet, though they squeal like crazy after everything dried out. I gotta clean all the stuff from the puddles off the wheel and pads, and see if that makes a difference (should). Ammonia (window cleaner/etc) usually works pretty well for this--just spray it on, let it soak a minute, and hose it down, usually. Sometimes gotta scrub with a brush or a sponge.
Last night while doing a perfunctory check on the ebrake wiring, I found the rear light assembly on the back of the seat was very loose again, so before it falls off during a ride despite tightening down, I figured I better go ahead and replace the machine screws holding it in with actual bolts and nuts all the way thru that rear crossbar, which are much less likely to come loose from the bumps and whatnot than the original mounting method.
Only hard part was trying to drill thru the round-cross-section tubing from underneath without any pilot mark or hole, cuz I can't do it from the top where the original hole is, since the seat's top tube is almost directly over that crossbar and way too close to get the drill in there. Eventually had to file a little mark to catch the drill bit in, and use stages of drill bit sizes, cuz any other method tried just kept slipping off one side or the other of the tube.
I chose to use some beveled-head philips screws and wingnuts to do the mounting with, becuase I can tighten them easily without any tools if I have to out on the road. The beveled heads (for countersinking) should hold better against hte tubing's bottom hole than a flat base screw would, and the wingnuts are secured with a splitwasher and flatwasher against the top of the actual lighting bar's mounting plate.
I still have to remount the rear downlighting bar on the bottom of that tube, but before I do I want to resolder some of the LEDs and/or SMT resistors that are causing intermittent lighting.
Oh, and the front tire has very very poor traction on any even slightly wet surface, at any angle.
I almost lost it a couple of times on turns both Friday and Saturday nights, but I already knew it had the problem and was ready for it to happen, so I just let off the power on the front, lightly squeezed the front mechanical brake for an instant, and used rear power and a little countersteering to push me back into traction for steering thru the turns. I also have noted that many times when I am starting up from a stop on a completely dry surface that if it is dusty or sandy (very common here) or has loose surface asphalt (also very common, perhaps even more than the dust or sand) then the front tire always spins just a little bit before it catches, if I throttle both wheels up together. If I do it by itself it isn't as bad and sometimes I might not notice it if I didn't alreayd know it happens, but with the rear wheel power that has no such traction problems, it must be very slightly lifting the front and increasing the front traction issue.
Am definitely gonna have to replace that front tire (infinity armadillo something or other) with something much stickier (softer) ASAP, but nothign I have already will work. I should make a trip down to the BuildABike store where I got the General tire I had before and see if they have more of them--it was a good tire for traction, even if it did wear thru fairly quickly.
Alternately, if I can find a sticky moped tire that would work on a 26" x 1.25" type bike rim, I could order that along with one of those Pirelli or Shinko moped tires for the 20" x 2" (or 2.5") rear, and not have to worry about wearing it out.
