What Have You Fettled Today?

[cyberknight]

Just swapped my wheels over, rim tape, rotors and inner tube and tyres to my new superstar components wheelset. I’ve saved myself the grand sum of 220g. Not much of a weight saving but got a nice clicky freehub and nice silver spokes.

I am wanting to swap stuff over on mine today but as its pishing it down cant be bothered to go out and get soaked getting to the shed atm .I did manage to get the rim tape sorted on mine by glueing the join together to stop it unpeeling from the rim so thats a bonus

 

[Andy in Germany]

When collecting more wrecks used bikes for he shop, I found one broken one the same size as the one I was building for Tinybug, so now she has lights and good mudguards.

As an added advantage, both lights have a standlight function, which I didn't expect from fairly inexpensive lights like these.

There's still far more pink that should ever be in one place, but TinyBug will be happy...

 

[bikingdad90]

Just spent an hour cleaning my bike and reindexing the front mech after it managed to move out of place during my monsoon commute home.

Loads of flooded roads and the bike paths were disgusting! Serves me right for riding the bike with no guards.

 

[Ming the Merciless]

Lubed the chain. Todays ride revealed it time to replace the disc pads. I have spares, and will sort tomorrow

 

[DCLane]

Not a bike but the oven. The rubber strip around the outside had fallen off at the top. A new one was ordered last week, arriving today instead of the expected Tuesday delivery. Given it was OEM it was a simple 'unclip the old one, reclip the new one' job and hey presto, all done.

Not that I'll tell SWMBO it was that easy

 

[Andy in Germany]

Today was "Swearing at hub gears" day.

Bike one was the Pink explosion that I'll be taking to Beautiful Daughter this weekend. I found it had a flat tyre, and of course it had to be the back tyre which has a hub system; it took half an hour but I finally got it working.

Bike two was the current restoration project, which has suffered greatly at the hands of a previous owner who clearly thought bikes didn't need maintaining. The shifter was broken which meant I had to change the cable to the hub. One Dutch YouTube* video and a certain mount of gefumbling with the system later and I'd not only got it to work but also learned a lot about hub systems...

*One advantage of speaking English and German is that I can generally keep up with Dutch if I'm familiar with the subject.

 

[Reynard]

*One advantage of speaking English and German is that I can generally keep up with Dutch if I'm familiar with the subject.

I used to exasperate my German teacher something chronic when doing GCSE German, because I often found myself switching to Flemish quite inadvertently.

Funnily enough, I can't actually speak it terribly well - enough to do the basics - but I can read and understand it reasonably comfortably.

 

[ColinJ]

Not a bike but the oven. The rubber strip around the outside had fallen off at the top. A new one was ordered last week, arriving today instead of the expected Tuesday delivery. Given it was OEM it was a simple 'unclip the old one, reclip the new one' job and hey presto, all done.

Not that I'll tell SWMBO it was that easy

My microwave oven popped last week - it stopped working and there was a characteristic smell of burned out electronic components. I was toying with the idea of trying to fix it, but after a quick look inside I decided that I wouldn't bother. I can live without the joy of that kind of thing these days...!

I've had about 15 years use out of the oven so I don't feel too bad about recycling it now and treating myself to a new one.

One thing I did notice when I looked inside though... there was a sensor of some sort on the end of a long cable. It was just dangling there doing nothing. I found a little mounting point into which it should have been inserted. My diagnosis is that many years of temperature cycling eventually caused the sensor to pop out, which meant that it was no longer doing its job properly. I reckon that led to overheating and failure. There had been a couple of unexpected shutdowns in the past few months, which I had attributed to dust blocking ventilation slots. Maybe they were precursors of this terminal failure.



PS Any suggestions for a replacement microwave oven? The main requirement is to be able to do good baked potatoes. My old combi-microwave could get them to about 95% of the quality of a slow conventional oven bake in sub-20 minutes. Probably 900-1,000 W microwave, with about a 1,000 W grill. Turntable big enough for a large dinner plate. Ideally, an inverter type microwave. Preferably no more than £150. My last one was much too complicated for my needs. Simpler is better.

 

[Reynard]

PS Any suggestions for a replacement microwave oven? The main requirement is to be able to do good baked potatoes. My old combi-microwave could get them to about 95% of the quality of a slow conventional oven bake in sub-20 minutes. Probably 900-1,000 W microwave, with about a 1,000 W grill. Turntable big enough for a large dinner plate. Ideally, an inverter type microwave. Preferably no more than £150. My last one was much too complicated for my needs. Simpler is better.

Have a look in Tesco - they've got a good (but not mind-boggling) range of kitchen electricals including their own brand. I have one of their very basic 700w microwaves, and it does exactly what it says on the tin. I think I paid about £30 eight years ago. I'm sure they'll have something mid-range that would suit.

 

[ColinJ]

Have a look in Tesco - they've got a good (but not mind-boggling) range of kitchen electricals including their own brand. I have one of their very basic 700w microwaves, and it does exactly what it says on the tin. I think I paid about £30 eight years ago. I'm sure they'll have something mid-range that would suit.

Apparently NOT! I took a quick look at their website and couldn't see any.

TBH, I would probably buy from Amazon. I can see a few ovens that look okay but then there are always a few people saying how awful their purchase turned out to be. The truth is though that 100 satisfied customers probably tend to keep quiet for every disappointed one who rants!

I need more than just a basic microwave but I think a microwave/grill would do this time. I didn't really need the fan oven capability that the old one had, and I definitely don't need 67 complex programmes. Ideally, I'd like a JACKET POTATO button and a start button and not even have to specify power or time!

 

[Rusty Nails]

In work yesterday I renovated a 1990 Apollo Alcatraz mtb in still pristine blue and pink. Normally I wince when I am allocated an Apollo but this was a pleasure.
It had been kept in a dry garage, unused for more than 20 years. Good quality frame, probably as good as most 501 frames of the time, decent Suntour gears, crankset and brakes. I swapped the old steel rim wheels for lighter alloy ones and was surprisingly pleased with the test ride.
Where did Halfords/Apollo go wrong compared to the stuff they used to make and sell?

 

[Reynard]

Apparently NOT! I took a quick look at their website and couldn't see any.

TBH, I would probably buy from Amazon. I can see a few ovens that look okay but then there are always a few people saying how awful their purchase turned out to be. The truth is though that 100 satisfied customers probably tend to keep quiet for every disappointed one who rants!

I need more than just a basic microwave but I think a microwave/grill would do this time. I didn't really need the fan oven capability that the old one had, and I definitely don't need 67 complex programmes. Ideally, I'd like a JACKET POTATO button and a start button and not even have to specify power or time!

How odd... There's a whole aisle of kitchen electricals in my local Tesco.

I get that with reviews though. I always do a web search for reviews on a product I'm interested in and figure it out from there. There's always someone who didn't RTFM and then complains that what they bought doesn't do what they wanted it to do, even when the specs specifically say that it doesn't do it LOL.

 

[tom73]

Apparently NOT! I took a quick look at their website and couldn't see any.

TBH, I would probably buy from Amazon. I can see a few ovens that look okay but then there are always a few people saying how awful their purchase turned out to be. The truth is though that 100 satisfied customers probably tend to keep quiet for every disappointed one who rants!

I need more than just a basic microwave but I think a microwave/grill would do this time. I didn't really need the fan oven capability that the old one had, and I definitely don't need 67 complex programmes. Ideally, I'd like a JACKET POTATO button and a start button and not even have to specify power or time!

Try currys they have a few simple ones some are on offfer at moment. They do a basis own brand range can't remember what they call it now.

 

[ColinJ]

I get that with reviews though. I always do a web search for reviews on a product I'm interested in and figure it out from there. There's always someone who didn't RTFM and then complains that what they bought doesn't do what they wanted it to do, even when the specs specifically say that it doesn't do it LOL.

I spotted the excellent Logitech wireless mouse that I use on the Tesco website. There were 3 reviews. 2 agreed with me - superb! The 3rd person sounded like they had been sold a used mouse...

Possibly the worst product I've ever bought in my life. When opened there was no transmitter, rendering it useless. I then noticed that it was already switched on and that the battery was completely flat. Not worth the plastic packaging it came in and certainly not worth the 1 star I was obliged to give it.

That is not a product review, it is what should be a complaint to customer service!

Try currys they have a few simple ones some are on offfer at moment. They do a basis own brand range can't remember what they call it now.

Thanks. I had looked at Currys.

I'm not short of stores to look at - I just wanted a few people to say that they had been using models X, Y, Z to cook perfect baked potatoes and that the ovens had been very reliable. Even better if the same model were suggested multiple times, and only cost about £100-125!

 

[DCLane]

This evening I had a look at the DBS Winner I picked up last week. No photos yet but progress made:

- Frame and crankset cleaned
- Bike stand adjusted so it didn't catch the crankset, which must have been both noisy and annoying
- Front and rear derailleurs off after soaking in penetrating fluid to get them moving again. They'll go into the ultrasonic parts washer tomorrow.
- Front and rear wheels had the axles plus bearings cleaned and re-greased with 50 year-old grease replaced
- New Continental Gatorskin tyres front & rear (thanks @biggs682 for the link)
- Cables removed, with new ones to be put together
- Old cloth bar tape removed. Bars still to be cleaned.
- Old brake hoods removed, new replacements ordered.

There's quite a bit of work to be done; cleaning, new inner/outer cables, new brake pads, headset to be dismantled and re-greased, etc. But it's getting there.