Recent content by Cycologist

Interesting. I've been wondering what tire I should use once I replace the stock Pathfinders on my Vado SL. The vast majority of my riding is done on crushed limestone trails and while the Pathfinders seem to work OK, they lack grip when cornering and have given me a few scares. On my old...

Some retirees golf. Others ride bikes. I'm the latter. I could never get that little white ball to go where I wanted.

I think I could live with the crankarm replacement if it only happens once every 12,000km. Still, it should never happen. I have an older bike made by GT which I've had for 25 years and God knows how many miles and it's still fine. For this new Vado, the wheel hub came loose at 400 mi and the...

I hope you're right and that this bike will give me no further serious issues. Unfortunately, my "local" bike shop that services Specialized stuff is about a 45 minute drive one-way. The next closest Specialized shop is in another state and many hours away, so I'm kind of stuck with these guys...

I recently had some service done on my bike, which may have included a firmware update. Unfortunately, my LBS is not the best and didn't make a note of whether they did or didn't update the firmware. The reason I suspect a firmware update might have been done is I have noticed a couple different...

I've also had a mixed experience with the Vado. It's a fun bike to ride, when it's working, but it gets annoying when it has constant issues. I recently brought my Vado SL 4.0 in for service since it had some major issues after one riding season. The rear hub was loose and had a lot of play...

Chalk up another bad crank arm. Mine is bad on the chainring side. I started hearing a noise and feeling a click on the right side when pedaling. Sometimes it would do it, sometimes it wouldn't, but it slowly got worse until it's now doing it all the time. At first, I didn't notice the crank...

Which end falls out? Mine came with a large rubber band to secure it to the bottle cage.

It might have been just water on the pads that caused this. It's strange that they didn't come back after two rides though if that were the case. I had to clean and sand the pads and rotor before they started to work again. I didn't have any brake cleaner handy, so I used polymer safe gun...

Yes. I used to race cars years ago, so I used the same method I used to bed-in new car brake pads and burnish rotors. It seemed to work. I'm contemplating replacing the rotor when I finally replace the pads though.

I cleaned and sanded the rotors and pads again. I went out for a ride and still had not much friction until about a mile when it started to come back. After two miles it was much better and after my 30-mile ride, it seemed like it was almost at 100%. I got the new pads, but now I'll probably...

The only problem with covering the rotor and caliper is that to clean the chain, you must turn the crank in the direction which spins the wheel, so they must be free of obstructions. I heard it's a bad idea to force the crank to go in reverse on these bikes.

The other day, I washed the bike since it gets very dusty. I primarily ride on crushed limestone trails which get dry and dusty this time of year. I also cleaned and lubed the chain. On my next ride, I had almost no friction in the rear brake and it was almost useless, even while squeezing...

I'll have to try that. The docs for the bike say that it will lose power below a certain level though. Isn't that kind of distracting during a ride?

Did a 30 mile ride with the new range extender while I had it in RE Discharge First mode. Got about 20 miles out of it and I used Turbo mode a bit more, which I almost never do. It was fun! That bike can go fast! Shortly after when the RE battery got down to 1 bar, I switched back to dual...