I love it when it works but it makes me feel so fucking useless and ineffectual when it doesn’t. I am of course talking about my bike.
At the start of the week the bike was recently returned from Dr Velo where certain shifting issues had been fixed, the bike was arguably working about as well as it ever had done (since it came into my ownership). I’d even managed to talk Tredz into paying to upgrade the chainring/spider so I could fit a narrow/wide chainring which would hopefully keep the chain on the chainring more securely.
And on top of all that I was beginning to try to cycle more with a lower assistance setting, going from my normal Standard mode down to the Eco+ mode, which was giving me range, and I expect eventually fitness advantages. I was planning to do some longer rides in the nicer summer weather (when it’s not trying to melt all the roads and broil the skin from my bones).
I was on a test ride to see how hard it would be to get from home to Deepdale (wasn’t actually going to do the descent into Deepdale but go to the top of the hill before coming home). Wanted to see what my battery usage running mostly on Eco+ would be, as well as how much energy I would have at that point. Riding up the hill out of the back of Clapham my rear derailleur decided it would climb into my spokes. I don’t know what caused the issue, but after I had climbed off the bike, I found that the rear wheel was functionally immobilised, and the chain so twisted it had partially snapped a link.
The bit that attached it to the bike was twisted and bent and part of the functional workings of the actual derailleur part had snapped off and one of the pivots was completely detached. The cage that held the jockey wheels was also twisted out of shape. Basically short of replacing pretty much every part the derailleur was toast.
Luckily at this point in my trip I was only about 6 miles from home, much of it downhill, and in honesty apart from the bits where I had to push the bike uphill the roll home wasn’t too bad – enjoyable even.
After a good deal of soul searching and demanding answers from the ether I decided that rather than try and find someone to blame I’d just bite the bullet and just fork out for a new derailleur and chain. So £60 lighter in the pocket I got those ordered.
So on Friday I should have a new chain ring, spider (it’s the bit that the chain ring attaches to that in turn attaches to the axle that comes out of the motor/hub/BB), rear derailleur and chain. Seems to be a good thing that I not only have the correct tools now to deal with all of this but I have removed/reinstalled all of these parts at some point in the past, so don’t feel the slightest of discomfort in doing so now, which will save me some cash as I don’t have to pay someone to do it for me.
So tonight, I decided to give my bike a good scrub, so that when I’m working on it tomorrow it’s nice to work on, while I’m at it I’ll remove the old chainring so that not only am I ready to go tomorrow, but I can clean behind it.
A short time later, the crank extractor that is supposed to pull the crank off the axle, instead pulled the threads out of the crank as it self-extracted. I’d done this job before, at least twice on this bike many times on other bikes. I did nothing differently to how I’d done it in the past and the last time I’d done the job I had been very careful to torque the bolt down to the correct torque setting. So, it should have just come off with no fuss. Instead, it seems to have welded itself on there.
As the extraction thread is literally there to remove the crank and for no other reason, I’m hopeful that if the two arm puller I have now ordered does the job instead, I can continue to use the existing cranks as new cranks will be ~£60, which I can ill afford at the moment. I won’t know if the puller will work until Saturday though, so until then I think I will probably fit the new derailleur and chain and hope nothing else goes wrong. Oh and I ordered the wrong derailleur; the bike currently has (had I suppose) a M5120 which is a 10/11 speed rear mech from Shimano. The bike is currently a 10-speed bike. I have ordered a M5100 rear mech, by everything I have read online it should work fine on a 10-speed cassette, and other people run them on 10 speed cassettes, but technically it’s the wrong one. It does have newer more capable geometry and allegedly shifts better under load than the M5120. But we’ll see.
Feeling very low at the moment, almost certainly going to have to borrow money from mum just to get through the month, when I paid for the bike on finance I was expecting to continue working at the cheese shop but apart from three hours (~£30) last month I haven’t been needed since Christmas, so while I can afford to pay off the loan for the bike, it’s a lot tighter than I was expecting.