OT: Stupid Internet Censorship

No news is good news

For those of you who eagerly follow this blog (and I know there are one of you) I thought I'd post an update. Daylight savings is here, my light has been taken off the bike and aside from losing a bolt from my battery rack and having to do some on-the-road repairs, my only issues have been mechanical. Well, that and being swooped by magpies.

The mechanical problems consist of a knocking in the drive-train that we have so far been unable to cure. It is intermittent and every time Paul from Smith Cycles takes it all apart and puts it all back together again (3 different bottom brackets later) it goes away for 1-2 commutes only to return. Since it doesn't appear to have any effect on my ride we have decided to let it go until it becomes mittent (you know, the opposite of intermittent).

Winter went well, I managed to average 2 rides per across the whole winter and last week I rode 3.5 times, the half being me dropping the car in for a service then riding the rest of the way to work.

That is all for now,
Ciao.

OT: XXXX it!

At the supermarket where I do my grocery shopping they have a line of what I call "impulse merchandise". You know the stuff, it hangs between shelves or on the ends of aisles and doesn't match the rest of the items. Part of this range of impulse merchandise includes an array of products that are all called, "XXXX it!" Replace XXXX with whatever verb goes with the item for sale. For example they had a basting brush in a packet and the label on the packet said "Baste it!". Another packet had a bag of clothes pegs, called "Peg it!" You get my drift. I am waiting for them to bring out a line of condoms, I wonder what they would label them with....

Light photos

As promised, here are the photos.

1: The bike

The black box under the crossbar is the power supply.

2: Beam shot number 1

The bins in the picture are 15 metres away.

3: Beam shot number 3

In this picture the bins are 22 metres away and a little downhill and out of focus.

In my next post I will put up details of the power supply kit and what the modifications that were made to make it run off 40V.

Project light is complete

The light is now complete and installed on the bike with one test ride behind it. I was impressed with the performance, but it wasn't all smooth sailing. I had some serious switch problems, but appear to have overcome them for now.

First I tried one of these that was labelled as a sealed mini toggle switch. As you can see they appear to be rated at 250VAC 2A. I figured that 40VDC at 150 mA would be fine. It worked for a while, then right after I finished mounting everything on the bike for a test run the switch failed to on all the time, no matter what the position of the toggle. Then the action on the switch failed, it went all rubbery. I took it back to Jaycar, but by then the action had come good but the switch still always measured closed over one pair of terminals regardless of the position of the toggle.

I got another one and after only a couple of throws under load it developed the same problem. It was then that I noticed that what was printed on the side of the switch was “0.4 VA MAX” not "2A 250VAC” as pictured on the Jaycar site. I tried the convince the loser at Jaycar that the switch wasn’t what it purported to be, but no dice. He didn’t give me my money back. At that point I stopped giving a shit and just wanted a switch that would work.

So I grabbed 2 of these (or so I thought) I put the first one in and was going to try 10 cycles, but it failed in the same way after 5 cycles. I broke open the switch to see if it was fused closed, but it wasn’t. I also discovered how pathetically simple these switches are inside.

In looking at the second switch I had bought I found that it was SPDT, centre off, so I must have picked up one of these by mistake. I decided that maybe it was the frequency of cycling the switch that was causing the failures, so decided to put this one in and try 1 minute between cycles (i.e. 1 minute on, 1 minute off). I tried this 5 times with no failures and then left the light on for 10 minutes and off for 1 minute the back on again with no failures. So all is good for now.

We'll see what happens next week as a intend to ride as many days as weather permits. I will take some photos of the setup on the bike with some beam shots in my next post.

Project light is nearing completion

I have only one step left to complete my light. It has been a long slow process. Since most of the materials are expensive or annoying to source, I have really been taking my time. Ironically riding to work has slowed my progress since it has made trips out at lunch not possible, but some rainy weather has meant I have driven in a few times and so had the chance to go buy some switches and screws etc.

My main concern has been attaching the heatsink to the cup. After much umming and ahhing I decided to go with simple self tapping screws. I bought some stainless steel ones (designed for sheet metal) because I figured they would be the strongest. I drilled two holes in the bottom of the cup on either side of the large hole which admits the LED, then I marked, punched and drilled the 2.5 mm holes recommended by the packaging for the self tappers. 4 screw head twisted off later, I enlarged the holes by half a mm to 3 mm and they tapped nicely. This made sense in the end since the recommended pilot hole size was for sheet metal, not solid aluminium.

Next I drilled a 5.5 mm hole in the side wall of the cup to admit the wires. On my next shopping trip I bought some switches, which the wire hole was the perfect size for. So I drilled another hole for it and then another 2 5.5 mm holes for the mounting bracket. One word of advice on working with stainless steel: Start with a small pilot hole, keep the drill speed low and the enlarge the hole with successively bigger bits.

The bracket I am using is a standard reflector bracket which Paul at Smith Cycles gave me for nothing, it is perfect.

Here is a photo of the cup all put together:



Here is another showing the heatsink, it looks a little like some weapon from a dodgy sci-fi movie.

OT - Terrorism

I'm reading William Gibson's latest offering, "Spook Country" at the moment. I think he is my favourite author. Anyway, one of the characters has something to say about terrorism that I think sums up the situation the world finds itself in since the World Trade Centre terrorist attack.

"A nation consists of its laws. A nation does not consist of its situation at a given time. If an individuals morals are situational, that individual is without morals. If a nations laws are situational, that nation has no laws, and soon isn't a nation."

"Are you so scared of terrorism that you'll dismantle the structures that made America what it is?"

"If you are, you let the terrorist win. Because that is exactly, specifically, his goal, his only goal: to frighten you into surrendering the rule of law. That's why they call him 'terrorist'. He uses terrifying threats to induce you to degrade your own society."

"It's based on the same glitch in human psychology that allows people to believe they can win the lottery. Statistically, almost nobody ever wins the lottery. Statistically, terrorist attacks almost never happen."

I couldn't have put it better myself.

Light testing

I Finally got a hole made in the bottom of my stainless steel cup that will make the body of my light. So I have gerry rigged it for some beam testing. The lens wedges in at about 30mm down the cup, so I wanted to test the beam I got from the lens wedged in and the lens mounted right at the mouth of the cup. A narrower bright spot would mean better range. Here are the results:

• No lens: Bright spot only 30 cm wide with extreme light diffusions and bleed out to about a 1.5 m circle


• Lens wedged in 30 mm from mouth of cup: Bright spot about 90 cm in diameter with a less bright ring about 1.5 m


• Lens at mouth of cup: Bright spot about 68 cm.

So it appears that mounting it at the mouth of the cup will be best. I have decided not to attempt to manufacture an end cap for the light. Instead I will drill some small holes and screw 3 or 4 short, self-tapping screws through these holes for the lens to rest on. Then I will seal the lens to the cup with a bead of silicone. This way I can cut this away to replace a damaged lens or install a better one without too much trouble.

Here is a photo of the temporary setup:

Project Headlight

Well as promised, here is my first post on my new project; Project Headlight.

With the speeds that I go at, I feel the need for a better headlight. Especially during the last couple of km before I get home at night. It is virtually pitch black, downhill (AKA quick) and there are people walking on the bike path, including those with dogs off lead. My current headlight gives me about 10 metres of very feeble light. Some quick calculations tell me that at 35 kph I am going about 9.72 metres/second, so my current headlight gives me about 1 second to react to anything on the path. I need something better.

From the beginning of this project I wanted to make myself a decent headlight. To buy these cost ~$300 for something decent. Surely I could make something almost as good for a fraction of the cost. My research led (no pun intended) to believe that Luxeon Star LEDs were the way to go (I have since learned that these are being dropped in favour of CREE LEDs). These deliver about 100 lumens of light (a 100 watt incandescent light is about 1,700 lumens). I looked around for people who had documented their projects and this is what I found:

1. This one is pretty good, but a bit bodgy.
2. This one is good but complicated looking
3. This one is also a little complicated, but seriously impressive

I decided to go for design number 3 due to the addition of the lens on the front amplifying the number of lumens to 500. It was also featured in Silicon Chip magazine along with the driver kit it employs. You can't just hook a LED up to a battery if you want it to last. It needs some sort of current limiting device. This is because a LED is a diode and a diode is just a component that lets current flow in one direction and not the other. If you overdrive your LED it will melt. You can simply put a resistor in line to limit the current, but the resistor I would need for this 5W LED would be a 10W resistor, which would then bleed twice the power I am using for light to heat. This driver kit supplies a constant current so will give me the 5,000+ hours of life the data sheet on the LED reckons it should get. It will also drop down the current from my battery to the voltage required by the LED serving a dual purpose.

Off to start looking for materials. I was lucky enough to find someone in Canberra selling off two 5W Luxeon Stars (Jaycar has now discontinued these. Probably due to the $69 RRP price tag) and two collimators (reflecting housings) on eBay which I won for $48. Bring in my friend Peter who has a Phd in Electronic Engineering (robotics) to build the switch mode power supply driver kit for me. He modified this to run at the ~40V supplied by my main battery instead of the normal 12V it expects.

I now have all the major components and need to build mount and test the light. Here are some photos:

All hooked up to my battery, ready to go


The LED mounted on a former Pentium III heatsink


The LED with the collimator on top


A close up photo of the driver board

Idiots in cars who hate people on bikes

From the ABC News web site:

A man has been charged over a crash involving a group of elite cyclists, including Olympian Ben Kersten, in Sydney's south last week.

About 50 cyclists were riding along Southern Cross Drive at Botany last Thursday morning when they crashed into a car.

Among the group was Kate Nichols, who was injured in the 2005 accident that killed fellow rider Amy Gillett.

Kersten claimed the driver overtook them and then stopped suddenly, causing the lead riders to hit the car, before driving off.

No-one was seriously hurt but some cyclists had to be treated for cuts and bruises.

The 34-year-old Claymore man has been charged with failing to stop at a crash and give particulars.

He will face Waverley Local Court next month.

Police say they are still investigating the crash.

OT - Dumb things

This is my first off-topic post. So if you are after some story about my latest trials, then you can close your browser now.

I was reading an article about the comparative longevity of more and less intelligent fruit flies in this week's New Scientist and a phrase in the article struck me: "Brainier flies live shorter lives than dumb ones."

Now there is a phrase in plain English that I admire. Honest and to the point. There are brainier flies and there are dumb flies. When was the last time you heard someone, especially someone in the public eye, refer a human's intelligence level in this way? Why are terms like dumb so imbued with negativity that we have to use new descriptions like "less intelligent". When does that label take on the tarnish of "dumb"? Will we have to start saying "differently intelligent"?

You may argue that the social stigma and taboo on such terms comes from their common use in an insulting manner so that they have been robbed of their original context to such a degree that they can no longer be used as a simple, honest (if subjective) description.

I think it is time we started judging the intent, not just the content of what people say, don't you?

Project 2-speed is complete

A few weeks ago I blogged about getting a single speed free wheel on the back wheel of my bike and how I needed a bigger crankset on the front to maintain a decent speed without sprinting. Well this work is now complete and I have three rides under my belt on this setup. I also had comfy soft-touch bar ends installed to compliment my new grips as well as an interim headlight to prevent further crashes (more on this in future posts, lets call it "Project Headlight"). The final part of this purchase was the new seat I needed after crashing.

The speed I am now maintaining is only 1-2 kph faster than before, but I can keep it up for much longer. Before I used to have to pedal quite fast to get to 38 kph on a flat and then I would have to rest, then go again. Now it is achievable with a much mor comfortable cadence.



Here is a picture of the bike:


Here is picture of the new drive train:




Here is a photo of the handlebar setup. It is pretty crowded now. Note the rubber band around the thumb throttle. This is my "cruise control".



Here is a better photo of the "cruise control". You might think that it will interfere with the gear changer, but this is defunct now since I only have one gear on the back.

Interlude - cue music

Just a quick post to muse of some of the abnormal characters you see when riding to work that you might miss (or in this case hit) when driving in a car.

For those of you not from Canberra, there is one major road that accounts for about one third of my commute. It is essentially a freeway, since all of the cross streets go either under or over the road with various on ramps and off ramps. I am talking about Adelaide avenue. It is about 5 km long and has an on-road cycle lane built into the widened shoulder.

The cycle lane is very smooth and although you could cover the same ground on bike paths, they tend to meander around a bit and have lots of tree roots growing right under them, making them quite bumpy. Making Adelaide avenue less attractive is the fact that it is the main road connecting South Canberra with the parliamentary triangle so the traffic is quite heavy. In its favour is the fact that on any morning while driving I would pass 10 - 15 cyclists so most motorists on the road would be used to them, making them more cyclist aware, in theory.

So, riding along the shoulder is nice, until you get to an on or off ramp. Here is how it works:

• On the off ramps, the cars have to give way to the cyclist. There is a green painted lane on the road that the cyclist ride in if they are going straight on, passing the off ramp. Cars have to wait until the bike clears this before exiting. Once I had a car pacing behind me a 30 kph waiting for me to clear it to exit. Once it did, the car behind it decided to have a swerve at me on the way past since I had delayed his trip to work by 15 seconds
• On the on ramps, the cyclists have to give way to the cars entering the road. This usually means looking over your left shoulder for cars coming down or up the ramp and timing it through gaps in the traffic. Worst case is that you have to stop, but they have put little poles there for you to hold on to while you wait

Anyway, all that background to tell you about this idiot. Somehow he had over taken me on a downhill section and as I was approaching the next on ramp he was a few metres ahead of me. There was one car on the ramp approaching and I could tell if I slowed a bit I could time it perfectly to cross right behind it and so could the tool in front of me. Well he must have had a kevlar suit on since instead of waiting, he just stuck his left arm out to signal and just pulled across the lane in front of the car which had to jam on it brakes. As it passed him it have him a good swerve just for good measure (who knows what these swerving drivers would do if they miscalculated and hit someone while performing this manoeuvre? Would they tell the cops that they were only trying to scare the person on the bike?).

Anyway I couldn't believe my eyes. I yelled out "You idiot! You are supposed to give way to them!". The next little bit after the on ramp was an uphill so I caught up to him and noticed he had headphones on so wouldn't have heard my rant. He said something to me, but I had headphones on and didn't hear. I just looked at him and said "Idiot!" and rode past.

Crash

Hmmmm, time for some headlights I think. I went via the shops on the way home last night to get some vitamin C since I had a cold starting. When I got out of the shops it was quite dark, but I only had a couple of km to go till home and no roads to ride on so I figured I would be fine.

There was this one little path to get between some houses that is a bit overgrown with bushes so when I spotted a well-travelled dirt track next to the concrete footpath I decided to go down it instead to avoid the bushes. Little did I know that it was well-travelled because the local brats use it to approach the 18 inch high dirt jump they have constructed at the end. Since it was dark I only spotted it when I was right on top of it.

I went over the handlebars and landed on my side and badly bruised my right thigh. The seat is bent a bit out of shape and the wooden bracket that the battery is (was) screwed to snapped off and the battery came loose (since reconstructed). Ouch.

Still no photos of the modifications yet, but I drop the bike in tomorrow to have a new 52/39 tooth front crank set fitted, which should have me cruising over 40kph once my leg recovers. Oh yeah, and I'll be looking at lighting while I am there...

Back on the road

Hey all I am back on the road with the modifications as discussed in my last post. No photos as yet since I am blogging at work (shhh, don't tell). In summary what I now have is:

• A single speed, 16 tooth rear free wheel cassette
• Brand new soft and comfy hand grips
• Front and rear flashing lights
• A more centred back wheel
• A thumb throttle
• A second charger at work

At this stage I really have to stop and give props to Paul Smith from Smith Cycles, he really has looked after me. He only charged me $63 for parts and labour for this work, eseentially giving me the labour for free.

There are more mods to come though. Today's ride in was interesting. My average speed was pretty good at 33 kph and it seemed that I was getting more power. The only reason I can think of for this is that the new thumb throttle has a higher full power setting. Perhaps the broken twist throttle was never quite getting to full power. The new free wheel clearly has more teeth than the smallest gear on the 5-speed since when approaching 38 kph I really had to sprint. Now I know that I need a bigger front crank set. The only new problem that has been introduced is that the anlge of the chain when on the large front chain ring causes slippage under power. The new crank set I ordered will be a 52/39 tooth two gear set and will allow for a straighter chain angle to prevent this.

I have rigged up a rudimentary "cruise control system" in the form of a large rubber band that I slip over the thumb throttle. This has enough pull that it will hold the throttle on, but not enough that it pulls the throttle on when I thumb it back to zero. I'll run with this for a while until I come up with a better system.

I'll post some more photos soon.

Upgrades

So, the bike goes into the shop this week. I am getting the aforementioned freewheel modification done as well as getting a 48T chain ring installed at the front. I also have to get riding lights for it and now that I have a thumb throttle on the way I will need nice new soft hand grips too.

Rod from EV-Power has comp'ed me a thumb throttle when I ordered a second charger for charging at work. I am really looking forward to not lugging that 3.5 kg charger to and from everyday.

Putting the single speed freewheel on will also allow me to have the rear wheel properly centred. The only catch is that in order to space out the dropout they will have to put washers on the side where the wires come out of the axle. So I will have to disconnect the cables and remove the white plastic moulded plug from the wires so they can fit the washers over it, slide them down the wire and hence onto the axle. It will be nice to have rear brakes that work properly without rubbing on the wheel. I'll take some pics when I am doing this and post them tomorrow.

Breakage!

My twist throttle broke today. It must be psychic.

I was actually thinking at the time how dissatisfied I am with the twist throttle at the very moment that it gave up. A piece of plastic inside the collar broke and the handle detached from the electronic mechanism and the spring came out. Here is a picture of the breakage:



See the silver strip at the back of the curve? That is the magnet. It seems that the absence of the magnet causes the power to be always on. I'm not sure what the opposite side of the magnet entails, it must be more than a simple magnetic switch since it is not and on/off situation.

Actually on/off is what I want. I want to be able to just switch the power on and have a momentary, normally on switch to cut the power without applying the brakes so I can coast down hills without consuming power. Removing the crappy grips will allow me to put in something softer and make less strain on my wrists. I've asked Rod from EV Power to replace the twist throttle with a thumb throttle. I think this will allow me to dodgy something up that holds the power on without me having to use my hand and then put on some better hand grips.

On a different note, I had previously thought I was getting less power, but it turns out that the wheel was still not quite true and I had tightened the rear brake a little too much and it was rubbing on the rim for 1 third of each revolution. I have loosened this and the problem went away. This allowed me to reach a new record average speed on the way to work of 33.1 kph.

Now that the bike is off the road for a little while I will be taking it into the bike shop for a few more serious modifications, which I will detail in my next post.

Riding in the rain

This post is inspired by a comment on a previous post wondering if I was going to ride in then rain. Well the answer is yes, but not deliberately.

It was a Monday morning and I was a bit disorganised and so did not pay much attention to the weather, nor did I check the weather RADAR before leaving home. About 5 minutes from home it started to rain. That is about the time I started thinking about checking the RADAR, better late than never. I thought for a minute about turning back, but then decided it would probably stop in a few minutes. It didn't. By the time I got to work I was completely soaked. Even my shoes were soaked right through as if I have been walking in the ocean.

A few thoughts about the experience are:

1. In the end I am glad that it didn't stop. I wasn't cold due to the fact that I kept up a fair amount of pedalling to keep warm. If it had stopped I would have got very cold.
2. The worst thing about riding in the rain is the visibility. Water keeps getting in your eyes and as a result you have the tendency to keep looking down. I nearly had one crash because of this.
   

Something odd

I saw something odd on the way home yesterday. It didn't really blow my mind like the first time I saw this, but having observed this odd behaviour for the second time, I felt compelled to comment.

So what is this totally odd behaviour? Are you ready? I saw someone reading a book while riding their bike. This one was a school girl on her way home on a bike path, but the first one I saw was someone riding on an on-road cycle lane during peak hour traffic. In both cases they were weaving all over the place, much, much worse than someone talking on the phone while driving.

For those of you wondering what the latest developments are since my last post, here they are:

I have done a total of 340 km so far across the last 4 weeks. Between public holidays and driving in once a week, I have only ridden in 2 or 3 times a week. This week coming up will be my first full week since I got the bike on the road. The only problem is that I don't think that the rear free wheel will handle it.

It has been making clicking and clunking noises that have been getting worse and worse. I finally got to talk to the guy at the bike shop about it and he basically said that all free wheels do it and the cheaper ones do it the most. The problem is that because it has to ride stationary while the wheel turns that it isn't always perfectly square with the wheel depending on its relative position when it starts turning. I guess the one that ships with the motor is super-cheap and therefore crap.

The next problem is that in mountain bikes the screw-on free wheels, of which mine is the type, are the cheap ones. The better, more expensive ones slide on, so I don't even have an option of going to a more expensive free wheel. I'm sure I could find one better than this one, but the hassle will be finding one the same width as the 5 speed one I have now. I do have an alternative though....

Have I mentioned how little I change gears? In fact in my last 3 or 4 trips I haven't changed gears once. It just isn't necessary. Even on the biggest hill I don't feel compelled to change. The main time I would need the gears would be during some sort of malfunction or flat battery. But we don't include pedals on our cars in case we run out of petrol, so I think I should opt for optimal conditions during commuting and risk hard work in the case of malfunctions. This means I can go for a single gear on the back. Doing this means I can get a high-end rear free wheel which screws on. Why? Because they are made for high end BMX bikes and have the same fitting. Even a cheap one of these is only $10, so if I spend $40 I still think this is cheap.

This has an added side benefit of reducing the amount of space taken up on that side of the drop-out, which will mean I will have to put some spacers on the other side and this means that the rear wheel will be more centred again.

I'll let you know how it goes.

Driving in

I was forced to drive in today by force beyond my control. It really made me appreciate riding in. The aggravation and frustration of being in queues of traffic really pissed me off today. The drive in was particularly bad. There must have been an accident somewhere and the arterial routes were clogged as were the off-shoots with people trying to bypass the jam. Tomorrow's ride will be blissful.