Road Cycling

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Vonhelmet said:
Could clicking noises come from a headset? I'm getting some odd clicky noises on my bike and I think they're coming from the front end, but I'm not sure.
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so was I the other day.

I get the exact same noise if I put one hand on the back of the saddle, one hand one the front of the saddle and try to rock it up and down simulating my arse going over slight bumps pretty much

give it a try, in my case it appears to be slight movement in the saddle rails although on my last bike when the same thing started happening a few rides later one of the bolts holding the saddle sheared in half and my saddle started flopping all over.

secured it enough with zip ties to gently sit on it for the rest of the ride lol
 
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going to attempt my first ride in over a week after feeling ill and then being on a stag do at the weekend, think I'm about 5kg overweight! This will be fun!
 
Well I'm back after 3 days of stage racing. Feels like I've been away from the world. Pretty gruelling schedule. 6:30am alarm, ride bike to mates, drive to stage, race, drive home, sleep, repeat.

Full write up to follow.
 
It looked pretty brutal TP.

My legs are still surprisingly sore after the Saturday 140. I meant to get out on Monday to do a short recovery ride but spent most of the day nursing a hangover instead.
 
Hi guys,

I did a fairly intense 100k on my six week old Scott Speedster road bike on Sunday and about two thirds of the way through I noticed a distinctive 'double-click' sound every revolution, pretty much in every gear... any idea? It's nothing obvious that I can see :(

This is my first road bike (from a MTB background) so I'm not sure if I've worn it in already and I need to get it in for a service. I'm used to these sort of noises after about a 6 months on a mountain bike.

Thanks.
 
Jonny ///M said:
I'd just get http://www.ebay.co.uk/itm/Shimano-S...-DOUBLE-9-Speed-Road-Bike-Lever-/290941357580 so it feels the same(roughly) as the right hand shifter.

Front shifters/mech are all much of a muchness but I'd stick with a double for a double. Old 5600 105 was triple/double compatible and tended to destroy itself(fixed with 5601 I believe).
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Seems pricey but I guess it's a new shifter, you could have course take a punt on a s/h bike locally for similar money - you might even find one with a matching model to your broken one! Then sell the rest of it for spares...

FrenchTart said:
139 miles to Cheltenham done. I'd forgotten what it's like to ride with a backpack - my lower back was quite painful by the end. Not feeling too bad today and the average speed wasn't too bad given the length of the route. I could probably have gone a tiny bit faster without feeling like death too I reckon.
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Well done fella! Looks a hellova route, any parts you'd advise people to avoid? How are the legs now? :)

Phil99 said:
Failed a bit today on my attempt at the Cambridge 100 sportive.
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Some days it's just 'not meant to be'! Hope you get the Garmin sorted, it's probably water ingres so heating it up over a radiator/airing cupboard may sort it.

MM-Seat said:
http://app.strava.com/activities/297386217

This cycling lark is hard work
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Keep at it! Good average! :)

Vonhelmet said:
No chance of a bank holiday ride for me tomorrow, so I've just been out and done 50 miles. There's some hills I've only done once before about 20 miles away, so I went and did those and then had to limp back. Absolutely mullered now. Low average speed, but decent elevation. Swings and roundabouts.
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Not slow and a great ride mate, although you rode more elevation to get there than the 'new hills' ? ;)
 
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Basically, avoid the A34 running from Alderley to Congleton. I'm not sure what I was thinking when I planned to go along that as I know the A34 sucks :p
 
BennyC said:
Maxeh & I did the Isle Of Wight Randonnee yesterday :) My first 'event'. Great day, we were a little unsure about the weather as it was raining until we started at 10AM and other than a little spray/mist, plenty of fog and lots of wind it held out and the sun even came out at the end :cool:

My first 100km too.

https://www.strava.com/activities/297552821
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Great ride, well done on your first 100km! Although the activity you linked doesn't seem to exist any longer...?

syke said:
Gave the SJ4000 a quick test around my area - happy with the quality, this was converted into MP4 from MOV to try out the Garmin Virb Edit software and then re-exported to another MP4 from iMovie with title added. So a decent amount of compression - still happy enough for the price!
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Looks good, quite like the idea you have about showing brake levers now... (with my VIRB mounted out front lol) Although your Garmin doesn't half bounce/flex around! :p

Poppy said:
Got a 50miler in today, first 50 miler in a couple of years, not a great average speed of 16.4mph but i'll take it when the blustery headwind i had for most of the way home.
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Great average over that distance if you've not done it much recently! :eek:

Asprilla said:
Flippin' first car boot sale of the year and the queue is backed up 500m by the time I roll along at 6.45.

Mission aborted. Back to bed.
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Hahaha sounds similar to my ride yesterday!

Vonhelmet said:
Could clicking noises come from a headset? I'm getting some odd clicky noises on my bike and I think they're coming from the front end, but I'm not sure.
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Yes! See Jonny's comments below. See mine further down!

Jonny69 said:
Could do if it's got a bit of movement. Slacken the stem bolts off and do it all up again. It might just be the handlebars in the stem.

Could also be the seat post if a bit of grit has managed to work its way in there.
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slipd said:
I noticed a distinctive 'double-click' sound every revolution, pretty much in every gear... any idea? It's nothing obvious that I can see :(
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I've been eliminating clicks on my bike the last month or so, so follow what I've been through for some ideas:

Headset is the first place to check, don't be daunted (like I was) as the way they work (& fit together) is fairly self explanatory. (1) Undo top-cap (2) undo stem bolts (3) remove top-cap, stem, spacers etc from fork (4) clear grime/dirt from joins (5) give each set of bearings a wiggle and wipe any grime off (apply grease if you have, if not don't wipe it off them!) (6) press bearings back in (7) refit spacers and bearings while applying pressure to stem (I find this easiest sat on the top bar with front wheel on the floor) (8) refit stem and top-cap (9) tighten top-cap first (while still applying pressure) (10) straighten bars against lower fork by eye & tighten bolts

Next would be chainring bolts, I had aluminium bolts and I found a couple of them had worked loose. I've been paranoid about them since and have now changed them for steel ones, easier to get tight & so far they've stayed tight.

I had a 'click' from low on the bike somewhere, I was convinced it was the BB (but after getting the LBS to look) it was a couple of loose spokes on the rear wheel. If you have one that's worked particularly loose you'll usually find the wheel buckled and the neighboring spokes will also be loose. Balancing wheels is an art, it took me 15 mins this weekend to make my rear wheel totally unrideable after it was slightly buckled. It then took me nearly 2 hours to get it back balanced, I learnt the hard way - only tighten spokes slightly! Quarter of a turn at most! Check re-check and check again! :(

Jonny's pointer to saddle is a good one (and one I'll be checking soon) along with a couple of easy others - guy from my work recommended checking the valve nuts, he previously stripped a wheel only to figure out it was the valve nut rattling against the rim!

Pedals are another thing worth checking!
 
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Getting quite annoyed with my 810 now - ride uploading has been failing since Saturday. Have tried a reinstall of the app on my phone, updated the Garmin firmware and even deleting the 140 mile ride in case somehow that was to blame. I've also tried syncing using Garmin Express. Nothing is working. Sigh.
 
TdY Sportive Medium Route - Mini-Review...

Strava track here.

Didn't start off in the best of weather - heavy rain all night and driving up. The playing fields used for car parking were a tad soggy as well. Thankfully minimal waiting around at the start and I was off. I'd popped into a LBS in York on Saturday between the women's race and TdY arriving to grab a pair of knee warmers. Best £20 I've spent for a long time.

Thankfully the rain stopped inside the first hour (I started ~09:30). Still lots of surface water but it stopped the day turning into a total slog for me. Probably not so good for the folks who had very early starts for the 140km route - some were off from 06:30.

This descent was carnage. Spectators at the top had been warning riders to slow down and about half way down a couple of guys were walking back up the hill to report crashes. Round the next bend there was a police women stood in the road asking everyone to dismount... The next thing you see are four ambulances and a police car parked up. Couple of guys at the side of the road with plenty of blood spilt, others being put on stretchers and another stretcher just coming up the hill :( I've just looked at the Strava times and there are loads of people clocking 55km/h, even 65km/h down there on Sunday :eek: Mental but each to their own...

Some tough climbs but great support from the spectators who were out early for the main race. Goose Eye is just plain ugly (especially when it was half covered in sand from an oil leak from a support motorbike!) at 20% (or worse according to Strava). Riding Haworth's cobbles with people shouting encouragement felt really special.

Lots of people were pushing up the last nasty of the day (here) but having ridden all the other climbs, you don't quit at the last! We finished with blue skies and sunshine, riding up the main race finish at Roundhay Park which was very cool :cool:

I was happy to get round with no punctures (the Mavic support bike was being kept busy!) or mechanicals (perfect shifting all day which is very pleasing). I need new brake blocks all round now though!
 
Apologies for the bunch of replies and yet another huge post from me! Didn't get online much over the long weekend...

Mine started on the Saturday, with the other half off work I 'wasn't allowed' out on the shop/club run. With the weather forecast a very mixed bag I intended to service my bike on saturday as sunday was meant to be wet all day (have to service outside). I had noticed some rear pad wear and noises coming from somewhere and as last time it was spokes I assumed the same again. Gave things a basic clean and tightened the spokes a half turn which felt loosest, wheel was 3-4mm out and after my tightening it was more 5-6mm out and rubbing a huge amount! :eek: Great :rolleyes:

I'll go through how I did things and someone with more experience please tell me where I went wrong! :o ;)

I loosened a couple of spokes and wasn't convinced my mudguard fittings were not contributing so stripped the back wheel completely (removed tyre, tube & inner rubber/nipple protection strip). Think one of the 'spring' things either side of the QR squewer was jammed next to the axle which can't have been helping! Undid spokes enough (cleaning gunk from behind them as I went) so I could see the thread on each. A couple of them were really tight/grimey and several of them have slightly rounded edges now... How easy is it to get replacements? :o

I strapped a metal ruler near the BB to measure how central my rim was as I went. I tightened each spoke slightly so the same amount of spoke was visible at the end of each nipple, using this as my 'baseline' I slowly worked around the rim tightening each spoke a turn. 65% around the rim I realised this was too much as they were getting very tight and buckling the wheel. I backed them all off again and started again with half a turn. This seemed to work better, once I had completed the rim I then went and balanced it buckle by buckle (using my ruler as guide). For most of the buckles I used a method of half a turn on the primary 1-2 spokes and then quarter of a turn on their neighbors. I had the rim balanced as close as I think I can (1-2mm play at max) with the tools & knowledge I have.

I went out for a quick ride (half a local hill) to put some power and pressure through the rim. Things seemed to stay true although I was still seeing a little spoke noise (pings) at the end. I really hammered out some of my anger on this ride and got a couple of PR's. Totally cooked in the Aldi softshell I was wearing/testing out though! grudas should be proud of my speeds on this ride! ;)

Sunday was a complete write off, strong winds and rain. The afternoon cleared up but I had committed myself to a long dog walk and doing some house/garden stuff with the mrs.

Monday came around and rapidly running out of time (10:30am) I made a STUPID mistake! As I'd heard some spoke noises and my wheel was still true I stupidly thought *quarter of a turn on each spoke will be fine* just before going for a ride. WRONG! Buckled wheel again! Went through the same process as saturday and only took me around an hour and a half to get it back balanced! :rolleyes: 'ran out of time' (ok the mrs wanted to go shopping) so I put the bike away until the afternoon and packed all my kit away. Gutted.

After wasting (don't tell her I said that) 5 hours shopping indoors (and only buying some kitchen scales and some plants for the garden) in some glorious weather I got back home and headed out for a ride.

I wanted to explore a local section of resurfaced railway track called 'The Lines'. Supposedly a dodgy place to go at night, but I didn't find it too bad - it's one of small number of bridges to cross the river in Hereford and the only one on the west side of the city, being foot/cycle only (I may use it for commuting). I got totally lost finding it (span my legs up and down a fast road while trying to figure it out) and when I eventually did I went the wrong way!... Still good to find where it is, although not 100% sure where I join it from my 'home side'. I didn't bother following the 35 mile route I had planned and just explored some local roads, after a few spots of rain (and I was near my work) I did a slightly elongated/different route home to my commute to try it out.

Planned miles for the B/H: 40-50
Actual miles for the B/H: 26 :(

Plus point - Feel I could now build a wheel from scratch! :cool:
 
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FrenchTart said:
Getting quite annoyed with my 810 now - ride uploading has been failing since Saturday. Have tried a reinstall of the app on my phone, updated the Garmin firmware and even deleting the 140 mile ride in case somehow that was to blame. I've also tried syncing using Garmin Express. Nothing is working. Sigh.
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I've found my 810 less reliable with lots of routes loaded onto it. I try and keep the number below 5 and it's much better! Could be coincidence ;)
 
Going to change the brake cables and pads on my Giant tonight. Got all the bits and pieces and new bar tape ready.

The brakes are next to useless at the moment. The rear one offers no braking power whatsoever so I'm doing a complete cable changes, presuming that's what was wrong with it. Rims are clean. as are the pads, but it feels like neither offer any braking power at all. It was dangerous to ride. Never changed the cables before so should be a.....laugh.
 
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