New Chain Cleaning Process

I've been very old school when it comes to cleaning chains and other cycle drive train components - it's  been white spirit all the way. 

There's no doubt it works really well - but it stinks, it's bad for the environment, it's bad for you skin, and it stays in the chain for a long time so when the chain is refitted it thins the first oil application and still leaves a black film on the chain 

I decided to try a more modern alternative and get an actual parts washer. This would mean a move away from white spirit and I could drop the parts ion the washer and leave them whilst doing something else. 

I got a basic parts washer from eBay:

and also some non-solvent degreaser:

The first fill with a ~50/50 water/degreaser mix

Here's the pump running (with the parts tray removed):

And here is a filthy chain being cleaned:

Whilst the degreaser did degrease - it's nothing like as effective as white spirit and I needed to use an old paint brush as well to brush the chain under the cleaning jet. Some models have an option to fit a hose/brush combination and I think this would be better. (I do use a an old paint brush with white spirit as well though)

I also removed the rear derailleur and cleaned that. And separately I very carefully used the paint brush, wetted with the solution, to clean the cassette in situ.

I also had previously bought an electric compressed air duster (to blow dust out of computers) and I used this to dry the chain and derailleur

Because the cleaning fluid was not hydrocarbon based it was safe to use this blower. It certainly dried both the chain and derailleur really well - very effective indeed and I'll use that again.

Here's the final result:

That drivetrain won't stay like that for long riding in the winter 

Here's what the washer looked like at the end of the cleaning process:

Summary

For

• It doesn't stink the garage out with white spirit fumes
• You can put parts in and leave them washing whilst doing other jobs
• Its quiet
• Its's OK.

Against

• The degreaser is nothing like as effective as White spirit
• I needed to use the brush to get it really clean
• It might have come clean if I'd left it for a few hours
• I still used blue nitrile gloves to look after my hands (PPE and all that)
• I am not sure what to do with the dirty water/degreaser mix when it's no longer effective (I'd better read the instructions!)

I'll see if I can get at nozzle/brush fitting like this:

I'll use this process again though in the future

Worn Shimano SPD-SL Cleats

Are these cleats worn out. It's just that I am asking for a friend....

"My friend" said that they were a bit tricky to walk in.

Apparently this is what they should look like..

Shimano R8000 Ultegra Crank Failure

My son, who's a keen Triathlete, came over for the week and brought his bike. "Dad - can you have a look at the crank, I think it's gone wrong":

I'm sure he'll claim it's massive power but I'm sure there's some defect somewhere that's the initial cause. Whatever, the damage is impressive.

Apparently this is not an unusual failure.

See here: Bikeradar, YouTube, YouTube (again), TrainerRoad forum for examples, or just put "Shimano Crank failure" or similar into Google

Wheels Downgrade

I have run Shimano WH-6800 (Ultegra) wheels on my Scott for the past 6 years and almost 13,000 miles. They have been great to be honest - they are light (a claimed 1640g for the pair), and yet after all these miles are still round and true.

The front wheel still has the wear indicator showing but the indicator has disappeared from the rear wheel, and the rim is slightly concave - not surprising given that I have used them in wet conditions and it's the rear that gets the grit and mud on it. It's difficult to tell exactly how worn the rear wheel is but even I felt that some care needed to be taken and it was time to renew.

 This is a stock image of WH-6800 wheels from ~2014:

I'd spent a number of months occasionaly surfing the online bike stores to see what was available and the initial proposal was to get a like for like replacement - however equivalent Ultegra wheels today are about £700 and there was no way I was paying that - the older I get the slower I am getting and £700 of wheels is not going to make a difference.

Plan B was to get some (effectivley) handbuilt wheels from one of the small traders in the UK who advertise on EBay etc. This route would appear to get me a similar build to my Ultegras for around £300-350.

However I needed to be careful as my Scott has quite a narrow frame. I have run 23mm Continental GP4000S II ever since I have had it and I think that even going up 25mm tyres may be very tight for clearance. The current trend for wider tyres is coming pretty common, but I needed to keep to wheels with the same rim width (within 1mm or so) as the Ultegra wheels.

So plan C was to "downgrade" to some cheaper wheels and keep the Ultegras for occasional riding when I wanted to save some weight. So I ended up getting a pair of Shimano WH-RS330 wheels for a lower price than even the "handbuilts". Yes - they are heavier (I weighed them at 2100g with no skewers) but the are effectively the same wheel with heavier materials and the rim width was identical (20.8mm). The main difference is that the rim depth is ~24mm on the Ultegras and on the RS330 it's closer to 30mm. Finally, I trust the Shimano brand and the fact that I've got 6 years and 13,000 miles (with more wear left) meant it was not really a risk.

Here's a stock image of WH-RS330 wheels (as you can see from here - basically the same wheels):

 

I also needed to replace the tyres on the Ultegra wheels. If I could, I would have bought another pair of GP4000S but these are no longer available having been replaced by the GP5000S. Given I was letting the weight go up on the wheels I decided to put a pair of Continental Grand Sport Race on. I have a pair of these on my Pinnacle (winter and commuting bike) - and they have proven hard wearing currently at 7000 miles so far with more wear left, but with good grip all year round. However I am sure the rolling resistance is probably higher than the GP4000S and they are heavier. But they are also a lot cheaper and hence these seemed a good compromise as well.

So I spent a Saturday morning swapping the wheels over. It's always exciting to get new bike bits to open:

 

 

I was running a 105 11-32 Cassette but put a new (spare) Ultegra 11-32 Cassette that I had lying around on the RS330 wheels. Thus with new wheels, tyres, tubes and cassette I now have 2 sets of wheels for the Scott ready to go that I can just swap over.

Given the concious decision to allow the weight to rise I also weighed various components as I went to see what I ended up with after the wheel swap. This is shown in the table below.

Note that the scale is a simple and cheap luggage weigher device with a display resolution of 0.01kg like this

I doubt it's that good in the 0.01kg range but actually calculating the wheel weight change seperately to the whole bike weight change only gave a discrepancy of 0.01kg - so actually not that bad! It would be interesting to use it on some calibration weights and also do a Gage R&R to see how good it is

Whole Bike: Initial Weight: 8.28kg
WH-RS330 Rear wheel (bare): 1.19kg
WH-RS330 Front wheel (bare): 0.91 kg
Continental Grand Sport Race 23mm: 0.25kg Note continental clain 0.245kg in the spec so not too shabby  For the GP 5000 in 23mm claimed weight is 0.20kg - so I could save 90g total running these tyres
Continental inner tube 42mm valve: 0.11kg
Ultegra 11-32 Cassette: 0.29kg
WH-RS330 Rear Wheel, tyre, inner tube: 1.56kg
WH-RS330 Rear Wheel, tyre, inner tube & cassette: 1.90kg
WH-RS330 Front wheel, tyre, inner tube: 1.32kg
WH-RS330 Total Wheel weight: 3.22kg
Ultegra Rear Wheel, QR, tyre, inner tube & cassette: 1.60kg
Ultegra Front Wheel, QR, tyre, inner tube: 1.07kg
Total Ultegra Wheel weight: 2.67 kg
Additional weight: 0.55kg (3.22-2.67)
Whole Bike: Final Weight: 8.82kg
Bike weight increase: 0.54kg (8.82-8.28)

A few other things I was interested in

I usually use 105 cassettes although my Giant does have Ultegra. What I'd not realised is the Ultegra cassette has 2 spiders - the first is for the biggest 3 gears as per the 105 cassette, but gears 4 & 5 are also on a spider that's made of plastic of some sort!:

 

Also I knew the chain was quite worn but was not aware it was this worn - the full 1% and more:

Strava Data Analysis Tool - sort of Version 4.x

First 2021 Update

Since the better weather arrived in April 2020 I have spent a bit more time cycling than tweaking my Strava Data Analysis Tool. However I am always making a few updates in the background and over the past few months I have made a number of changes making it worth issuing an update

You can get the update here: Link - Strava V4 - Full Installer.zip

The main changes are as follows:

• Some improvements to the GUI and redrawing the various tab pages when selected
• Some minor error fixes
• GUI improvement with an informational form popping up when downloading the Ride Meta data (which is a single long operation and I can't report and form of % progress)
• Many minor tweaks and changes that I have forgotten about due to poor tracking

I am the limit of the features that I had thought about implementing and there are very few left to do

I need to revisit the Authentication code which now does not seem able to re-authenticate automatically

I also want to integrate my fit file reader and tcx reader code into the same application so that if you don't use Strava but do have a device that creates fit or tcx file you can still use the tool and get the data and analysis 

Next steps are I think a "start from nothing rewrite" and implement all the coding learning I have made over the past 2 years  - I now know that I need to plan better, and split the code into more smaller classes that are easier to manage. I'd also like to look a optimising some of the code - there are bits that seem to take ages when I think about what they are doing. I appreciate that looping through tables of data with 1000's or rows will have a performance impact but it seems 

It's become a huge code base that's all intertwined and it takes a lit longer than I know it should to make changes as it's hard for even me to follow - and I wrote it!

See previous posts for instructions here:

Post 1 - Posted 11 December 2016

Post 2 - Posted 7 January 2017

Post 3 - Posted 4 December 2017

Post 4 - Posted 22 April 2018

Post 5 - Posted 25 April 2019

Post 6 - Posted 4 May 2019

Post 7 - Posted 15 June 2019

Post 8 - Posted 6 March 2020

Post 9 - Posted 15 March 2020

Post 10 - Posted 29 March 2020

You can see here the erratic nature of my development pace!