Recent content by Lectric Bill

Little bird squeak solved! But now I have egg on my face. When I changed the rear brake pads, I missed threading the cotter pin through the hole in the pad-spreader spring. Somehow the spring stayed in the caliper over the last 50 miles, but intermittently allowed the pads to drag on the...

I'm beginning to lean toward the unlikely source: a sealed bearing. I'll put it up on a work stand tomorrow and see if I can be a good detective. I've got a human stethoscope from my RN days. Thanks for the reply.

"It also occurs when I raise the tire off the pavement and spin the rear wheel by hand, no pedal or chain movement." This would preclude a loosening crank arm as the cause, but thanks.

Not the OP, but I've got a strange sound coming from my rear wheel area. It's a faint, high pitched, intermittent sound, almost like a small bird cheeping. At first, it happened seldom and I actually thought I was hearing birds in nearby bushes. Now it's more frequent and can happen in my...

Dale, I hear ya, but how can I express my inner nerd with your approach? ;) BTW, I just read that charging a cell phone when it hits 50% and quitting around 80% yields four times the battery life, compared to routinely charging to 100% and running it down to 20% or below. Here's a chart I...

Yes, I've been waxing chains now for several months and will never go back to liquid lubricants, whether "wet" or "dry". Advantages: Produces CLEAN chains that don't pick up dirt and form a grinding paste (and get black gunk everywhere). Chains that last many times longer, as well as the...

I don't think it would necessarily extend the life of each chain, but of course their collective life will be longer. I use this method because the cleaning regime to get wax lubes to really penetrate and stick requires a number of steps and I'd just rather put that energy into several chains...

In thinking about how to consistently charge to 80% , I came up with a spreadsheet which I keep in my phone: Charge Time Calculator I start with the percentage SOC at the end of a ride. Using trial and error, I came up with a factor to determine the time I need to charge to get from the...

After a couple of thousand miles, all the potholes finally fatigued the plastic of my Como 5.0 rear fender. The bottom end of the fender broke away from the bottom bracket mounting bolt. I fixed it by sandwiching the remaining fender end between two strips of aluminum and affixing them with...

Not sure how many wires are in your control panel cable, but if you look at the enlarged version of my setup in post #1, you'll see a rough spot on the wire closest to the steer tube. That is where I spliced in about 9 inches of 2-conductor wire to allow me to fit my headlight above the bars...

I'd have to try that setup on a leaning 2-wheeler, but the principle seems sound to me. Having the radius and ulna bones aligned vertically is anatomically neutral, sort of like those radically vertical ergonomic keyboards: That said, I wonder how the hands would react to having to grip the...

A fork crown failure 20 years ago broke all 4 metacarpals in both hands (among other things). At age 76, the resulting arthritis calls for some modifications to my Specialized Turbo Como 5.0 bike. I’ve taken three actions: Swap out the standard stem with a Kinekt suspension stem. (100 mm, 30...

I agree: I've never complained about too much braking power. (I clearly remember the puckering horrors from applying old, hard rubber pads on rim brakes in the rain!) I'm certainly not averse to resin pads in general; it's just that in my use case, I was going through them a little too...

Everything went smoothly with the exception that the original caliper mounting bolts were too long when used on the SM-MA-F203 P/P adapter. I cut then down. I can't say that I notice a huge increase in braking power in going form 180 mm to 203 mm... maybe a little. The big gain for me was that...

Update on using the Silca lube in between either cleaning/soaking or cleaning/hot waxing: For interim application of Super Secret Chain Lube (SSCL), I've just never been satisfied with the "massage with fingertips" method they show on the website because: Applying a drop per link, most of...