Maiden Voyage

The maiden voyage has occurred. Minus 1 hand grip, gear changer not working, front brakes inoperative and rear brakes weak and lots of cable ties uncut.

I lost 2 of the cable ties securing the battery, some work needs to go in there...

Sorry that I have missed some bits of the story, I will go back and fill the gaps and add some photos later tonight.

Morning

Got up early this morning to work on the bike. I got the battery and controller mounted on top of and underneath the luggage rack respectively. Here are a couple of photos that illustrate the problem:


The battery mount plate was a bit tricky, I had to put on a few extra cable ties to prevent side-to-side movement. I have also installed the brake levers and the throttle hand-grip. The right-hand grip has an integrated throttle and the electronics are in a thick plastic collar on the inside. This is where I have hit my second snag. The thickness of the collar prevents the gear shift lever from moving and I can't relocate it anywhere that makes it work. Perhaps I will need a new changer after all. I'll give Greg from the bike shop a call today and see what he thinks.

Step 1 complete

Took the bike into Smith Cycles in Fyshwick to have the wheel trued and the dish adjusted. I also asked Greg to adjust the derailleur and brakes while it was in there. Got a call at around 2pm to say that the bike was ready and that while he hadn't been able to get the wheel completely centred that it was tracking straight and he had adjusted the brakes and derailleur successfully.

The problem with the derailleur was that I has gone from a 9-gear to a 5-gear rear gear cassette. This meant that either there was a difference in the distance between gears on the two cassettes or that the new cassette was similar to the old but with the top 4 cogs missing.

The first case would have meant a new gear changer and a new, fatter chain. This would have been a problem since no one makes a 5-gear changer anymore. As it turns out is must have been the second case.

Here are the before and after pics of the wheel:

---------Before-----------------------------------------------After-------------

Step 1, snag 1

So I didn't manage to get anything done last night, but instead woke up early this morning and swapped the tyre, installed the puncture guard and put it on the bike. Something looked odd and the wheel was rubbing on one brake pad even with the brakes disengaged.

Looking at the tyre nearest the frame it showed that it was much closer to one side than the other:



Thinking about this my first thought was that I needed to put some spacers in on one side, or adjust the axle inside the hub. Adjusting the axle didn't look too easy and adding spacers would increase the width required between the drop-outs so that was undesirable too. Speaking to some cycling enthusiasts at work I found that there is a "dish" adjustment where they loosen the spokes on one side and tighten them on the other essentially moving the whole rim left or right across the centre line of the axle. This sounds like the fix required so I will drop the bike into a bike shop tomorrow and have them adjust it.

Stay tuned.

Damage!

Got the kit today just before lunch. All was in order, no visible damage on the outside of the box and a superficial look doesn't reveal any damage.

As I was unpacking everything I inspected the rim in detail, no dings in the rim, but time will tell me if it is true (round). Some of the spokes don't look quite right, so I think I will get a bike shop to look it over prior to any heavy riding.

As I was about to hook the battery up to the charger I noticed that the metal casing of the charger was bent. When I plugged the charger in, one of the lights flashes red and according to the instructions on the front of the charger this indicates "abnormal" behaviour. I don't want to plug the $550 battery into it until I check it out so I rang Rod from EV-Power and he said that the damage must have happened in transit and that the light will flash until you hook up the battery, which I dutifully do and the lights indicate proper charging. I guess I have to live with the damage.

The charger is quite heavy (circa 2kg) and I think I will have to rethink my plan of commuting with it every day to charge it at work. We'll have to see what sort of range I end up getting before I fork out for another one. Rod has indicated a cost around $80.

Tonight my plan is to swap the tyre from my old wheel to the new wheel and install the puncture guards in front and rear wheels. After I do this I will install the new rear wheel and test the system prior to cabling everything up. The tyre that ships with the kit is laughable, but as Rod pointed out its primary role is to protect the rim during shipping.

Here are some pics of the damaged charger:

It's Here! It's Here!

Well at least it is in the same city as me now.

I had the worst night's sleep last night. I wasn't overly excited when I went to bed, in fact I kept falling asleep reading my book. During the night I just kept waking up and tossing and turning. Then at 2 am I woke right up after having a dream that the courier arrived and only had 1 of the boxes. The one with the battery. So I guess it was anxiety that was keeping me awake. Apologies to my lovely wife for the probable effect it had on her sleep.

Anyway, I checked the tracking site and found that my parcel was scanned into the Canberra depot overnight. What time do you think?

2:10 am. Spooky.

Sighting

Parcel spotted in Syndey this morning at 09:00. All things going well should see it tomorrow some time. Drum roll please maestro...