How to Wrap Road Bike Handlebars

I have posted on the topic of How to Wrap Bicycle Handlebars before. Twas a YouTube post before too.

However you may recall I only gave that video 4.5 stars out of 5.

I think I have found a 5 star video on the topic, a two-parter. Both parts of the video are shown below.

Should Toronto have elevated bicycles lanes?

Should Toronto have elevated bicycles lanes?

Post your comments below and let everyone know what you think of this Utopian idea of building elevated bicycles lanes across Toronto. See the photo and map below if you are unfamiliar with the concept.

Toronto Architect Chris Hardwicke wants to build something pretty futuristic. He proposes "a high speed, all season, pollution free, ultra-quite transit system that makes people healthier. Using an infrastructure of elevated cycle tracks, velo-city creates a network across the City. "

His Velo-City idea, although novel, is largely unrealistic. I can still admire it however and daydream about it. The kind of spending required to even start a pilot project like that however should really be going towards subway expansion instead.

Below: Chris Hardwicke's map of where he would build elevated bicycle lanes.

Or you know, we could just improve the quality and number of existing bicycle lanes. Much more feasible. (Although not so much under our current crack-smoking temper-tantrum wife-beating mayor Rob Ford.)

Slightly Oval Chainring - Look for better quality!

Q

Hi Charles,

I own a good quality fixed gear bike. Nonetheless, is it normal for there to be tight and loose spots on the chain. When the crank side arm is facing front, the chain is at it's tightest. Turn 180 and it is loose. It is not so loose that it will come off the chain ring. For a Campagnolo crank I was expecting higher tolerances. I have read that tight and loose spots are to be expected on a fixed gear bike. I would like a second opinion. What is yours in this matter. Thank you

Andre

A

Hello Andre!

It is the result of lower quality chainrings and cranksets that are more oval shaped instead of perfect circles. It is only off by a mm or so, but its enough to be annoying. (With bicycles, being off by even 0.5 of a mm is often a big deal.)

If it bothers you then you can purchase higher quality parts that are more perfectly round.

Make sure you mounted the ring properly. Try removing the chain ring and remounting it slowly by tightening the bolts, every 2nd one in a star pattern, so they are evenly tightened. Tightening all the way on one side and going around can warp the aluminum ring. Let me know if this works and helps you. :)

The companies that are making such shoddy parts are the ones who like to spread the claim that such imperfections are "normal". Yes, imperfections do happen. Its the result of a faulty manufacturing process that results in a percentage of chainrings being slightly oval shaped.

Even better quality companies sometimes have this problem, but their quality control should be ensuring that the chainring is as close to perfectly circle as they can make it. And anything less than quality should be tossed and recycled.

But claiming that such imperfections should just be "accepted" as normal is misinformation on their part.

Sincerely,
Charles Moffat
The Bicycle Mechanic

PS. I do agree, I would expect better quality from a Campagnolo chainring. If I was the manufacturer I would be apologizing and offering to send you a new one.

FOLLOW UP

Hi Charles,

 

I just finished putting my bike back together. I followed your directions and found there to be much less play on the loose side. Much better!

 

Thanks

 

André

Sylvester and Arnold Bicycling

I just thought this photo of Sylvester Stallone and Arnold Schwarzenegger on bicycles amusing.

:)

What is even more amusing is how they both chose black bicycles (trying to fit in and look badass eh?) and are wearing roughly the same things. White running shoes, blue shorts, watches, black sunglasses.

I wonder who would win in a bicycle race?

(Note: Robin Williams would probably beat them both in a bicycle race. Robin Williams is pretty serious about his cycling. See the photo further below.)

Bicycles and Bike Parts prices to go up

The Conservative government of Canada and Finance Minister Jim Flaherty are raising taxes (tariffs) on bicycles and bicycle parts being imported to Canada.

Canada annually imports $125 million in bicycles from the 72 countries covered by the increase.

The Conservatives are raising tariffs to 13 per cent from 8.5 per cent, which will result in a price increase of roughly 4.5%.

The tariff tax increase is part of a larger plan by the Conservatives whereby imports from 72 countries will be increased.

In 2012 Finance Minister Jim Flaherty trumpeted the benefits of his budget in October 2012 by announcing various budget measures in a bicycle shop, the Joe Mamma bike store in Ottawa. This year Jose Bray, owner of the Joe Mamma bike store, says he feels misled by Flaherty.

In October 2012 Flaherty declared that he would not raise taxes and would give small businesses a tax credit.

But instead Flaherty has increased taxes, by way of new tariffs that he says will increase prices for a number of consumer products, including bicycles.

Pensioners and Native Canadians are also getting the proverbial shaft with the new budget.

Atomic 22 Nuts

Atomic 22 Nuts is a solution for people who are worried about having their back or front wheels stolen off their bicycle.

What are they?

Basically, they are weirdest looking pair of nuts you've ever seen (pun intended).

The idea is simple. If the bicycle thief doesn't have a wrench that can take off the nut, he really can't steal your wheels on you. Thus you really don't need the extra D-lock for your bicycle.

However these nuts and other parts are pretty expensive and are usually sold in bundled sets. But hey, if its expensive then the bicycle thieves won't have them. See the prices at http://atomic22.com/buy-tribe-tracknut.aspx

Learn more by visiting atomic22.com

Bicycle Mechanic Apprentice

"Hi Charles,

 

I tried to post to 'The Bicycle News' but was unsuccessful. I wanted to pass on some news for March 2013.

 

 I have just signed a training agreement with the Ontario Ministry of Training Colleges and Universities to be a bicycle mechanic apprentice. They in  turn gave me a 31 page training and curriculum schedule for bicycle mechanics. I am to complete 2000 hours of on the job training followed by 250 hours of class room time. In six to eight weeks they will send an 'Apprentice ID Card'. The fee for filing the form was $40.00. I am also a recent graduate of the Winterborne School in Guelph. To my knowledge I am the first and the only official bicycle mechanic apprentice in Ontario and Canada. You may want to pass this most current information  on to your readership.

 

My name is Roy Berger.

 

Keep on wrenchiing. Cheers. Roy

March 27th 2013"

 

Well congrats Roy!

I wish you luck in your new career as a bicycle mechanic.

 

I hear Gears Bike Shop is always hiring new mechanics. If they have a shop in your area I recommend checking them out and asking for work.

My personal recommendation for people is the Quadra Bicycle Mechanic School in B.C.

And failing that, there is also Winterbourne and of course the Barnett Bicycle Institute. They all offer training programs, certificates and fancy names to go with their course.

I myself got a BTAC Certification from the old BAM program back when they were training bicycle mechanics under Smokey Dymny. That was a big deal back then because it was BTAC passing out the certifications.

However as you may have learned, being a certified bicycle mechanic doesn't mean squat if the local bicycle shop won't take the risk of hiring you. They all want to hire experience mechanics with years of experience - but they never bother to take on new mechanics because they don't want to be bothered with training them.

 

Or retraining them as the case often is, because each bike shop likes their own way of doing things - which results often in shoddy mechanics doing sloppy work because they are rushing the job of fixing a client's bicycle.

And as many bicycle mechanics who are older will also tell you, being a bicycle mechanic is often about loving what you do. You just love fixing things, and you love bicycles. The pay is horrible, but you're happy because you are doing what you love.

London Police criminalize Critical Mass

Over in merry ol' England the police have decided to criminalize bicyclists who gather for monthly "Critical Mass" meetings. Read more below.

The trial of the nine cyclists prosecuted after last July's Critical Mass ride ended last Friday, with five found guilty after a trial that dragged on for 10 days over a three-week period.

The sentences handed down were relatively minor – most of the defendants received nine-month conditional discharges and were required to pay £300 costs – and the rate of successful prosecution is low considering 182 were initially arrested on the opening night of the Olympic Games.

But the fact remains that the Metropolitan police apparently found a group of cyclists such a threat that they effectively criminalised riding a bicycle north of the river Thames for the night. What is believed to be one of the biggest mass arrests in recent history targeted a peaceful group deemed dangerous solely because they gathered to ride together in large numbers.

The Met chose to heavily police the ride on the basis that they considered it to threaten "serious disruption" to the community and the successful prosecutions were for breaches of an order made under section 12 of the Public Order Act. Despite 18 years of experience of dealing with Critical Mass, the in-depth knowledge that presumably must have come with trying to ban it in 2005 and plenty of advance reconnaissance from the infamous forward intelligence teams, the Metropolitan police singularly failed to demonstrate any understanding of the ride's dynamic.

The policing of the ride was farcical, with the rolling roadblocks at most of the major Thames crossings in central London causing far more disruption to traffic than Critical Mass could ever have hoped to, even if that had been the intention. Given that Critical Mass has been happening on a monthly basis in London since 1995, the Met had five years to consider how to deal with the ride on the night – and mishandled it in a spectacular fashion.

Either we have to work on the assumption that a sophisticated police force completely fails to understand the leaderless consensual model Critical Mass follows, or we are forced to accept the much more unpleasant possibility that they understand very well what Critical Mass is and what it represents and chose to act in such a way that allowed them to criminalise recreational cyclists. It appears to me that the Met is keen to frame the ride as a protest; their own report on the incident describes the ride in these terms, and they have had some level of success in selling this representation to the media.

While this suspicion directed towards public gatherings, and the imposition of the section 12 order that it resulted in, undoubtedly represents an affront to the right to free assembly and free association, the most worrying aspect of the policing of the ride on the night was that it was directed towards an explicitly apolitical social event. Not only must protests be constrained, but any large public gathering is de facto considered a protest.

The police report contains various other inaccuracies; to suggest that "the procession usually attracts approximately 100 cyclists" and that the July ride was exceptionally large is ridiculous – as the Met is well aware, the ride regularly attracts up to 1,000 cyclists during the summer months and has been doing so for years. Playing up to Olympic exceptionalism should have been beneath our police force.

The legality of Critical Mass in London depends on being a "public procession" which is "commonly or customarily held", and since their defeat in the House of Lords in 2008, the Met should know better than anyone else that Critical Mass is not a protest and should not be policed as such. In fact, it is not unreasonable to suggest that it is in the interest of the Met to radicalise the ride; if, as has been suggested, this month's meet-up explicitly protests the guilty verdict, it plays into a vicious spiral of reactionary policing and protest that might eventually allow them to get the ban they failed to secure five years ago.

Unfortunately, this official disposition towards cycling is not limited to the Metropolitan police's overreaction to a monthly fun ride around London. The Met's attitude towards Critical Mass represents in microcosm the profound disinterest in engaging with cycling that permeates all of our public institutions.

It is readily apparent that they did not consider it to be in their interest to engage with cyclists on their own terms. Similarly, the lip service paid towards the development of a proper cycling infrastructure in this country demonstrates that our public bodies readily grasp the PR value of claiming to be bike friendly but have no real interest in following through and promoting schemes that have any significant benefit to cyclists. The £62m set aside by government for the development of bike infrastructure borders on the insulting when the figure is contextualised; as critics have pointed out, it's a sum equal to the cost of building a mere two miles of motorway.

While five relatively minor non-custodial sentences for the unfortunate few that the Met decide to prosecute may not seem like a big deal in itself – the complete lack of any mainstream media coverage of the trial is testament to the fact that it is not deemed to be of interest to the general public – the precedent that it sets and the attitudes that it reveals make this a deeply worrying outcome.

Beeyond a Bike

The girl in this video was trained by the same bicycle mechanic as I was.

To learn more about her Beeyond a Bike program visit http://www.indiegogo.com/beeyondabike

Hub City Cycles is Hiring

Hub City Cycles Community Co-op in Nanaimo is currently looking to hire someone as a Bicycle Mechanic in the spring of 2013. Possibly more than 1 person.

Preferably someone who has some experience working in a bike shop as a mechanic and even more preferably someone who has graduated from a bike mechanic training institute such as the Quadra Bike School. If you had some experience teaching (people how to fix their own bikes) that would also be great. All of this is on their wish list and would be great to have, but not essential.
 
If interested visit http://www.hubcitycycles.ca/?p=1387 to learn more.

Bicycles as Art

Making art out of bicycles is nothing new for bicycle mechanics - but it can be very interesting. Here are some images of bicycle art I've collected.

Bicycle Sidecars

Need some extra carrying capacity on your bicycle? Maybe enough to take a whole extra person with you?

Basically what happened was I was watching a Japanese Anime called "Bamboo Blade" and one of the characters had a bicycle with a sidecar and I thought "Hmm... sidecar eh..." so I tried looking for that online.

Not many people have made a proper sidecar for a bicycle. Oh sure, there are children's sidecars and there are some custom made jobs like the one on the right here...

There is the Smike company in Switzerland which does mass produce, but to my knowledge they don't ship to North America. There are probably also some companies in China / Vietnam which also make sidecars for the local market. (Below you can see an example of a Smike bike with built in detachable sidecar.)

But nobody in North America mass produces them for adults. Its all children's sidecars / custom jobs. Even found one made for carrying pets.

I even asked a friend if he knew of any companies in North America that made bicycle sidecars. The closest thing he could find that was somewhat mass produced was Xtracycle's SideCar... and it is really more for carrying large boxes / groceries, etc.

Still, its worth noting. Check out the video below.


And further below here are some more photos of bicycle sidecars, custom or for kids, plus one motorcycle sidecar at the bottom which I have included just because it was so amazingly decorative.

Winter Bike Parking

If you store your bicycle outside in the winter, preferably in your backyard where it is marginally safer from thieves, you may want to consider some protection for your bicycle.

By Smokey Dymny of the Quadra Bicycle Mechanic School

 Yes, it’s winter in Canada and many cyclists don’t seem to have places to park their steed (bike) in a warm, sheltered spot. Instead they are locked to those ugly post-and-ring affairs, which we told the Toronto City Council long ago, weren’t very good for bikes. The edges of those cast aluminum rings are sharp enough to scratch the bike’s paint, AND more importantly, aluminum is a brittle metal, so these rings can be cracked with a two by four piece of wood – so your bike is not exactly safe if left overnight.

Which is why you see some of these rings have now been doubled in thickness to prevent such easy breakage.

Some smart civic employee decided that expensive, brittle aluminum should be made twice as expensive to solve the theft problem. So now, if you have a short U-lock, you know, the one that’s not too heavy to carry around on your belt loops, you can’t get it to fit the extra fat post and ring parking device.

I’ve always admired the City of Vancouver for it’s enlightened approach to bike parking. Their parking racks are diverse, that is they have different designs in different places. They are made of steel tubing which is: round (doesn’t scratch your bike), strong, can’t be broken, and powder coated in different colours to make them attractive. They must have actually asked cyclists how to design those racks.

But, I digress. Let’s get back to winter in Toronto.

You’ve left your bicycle locked to a post-and-ring device and then it snows. The City gets the road ploughed. Store owners shovel their sidewalk. And all that white stuff has ended up piled right where? You guessed it. Right where all the bikes are locked. So now you may not be riding because the bike lanes are also NOT cleared, so you leave your poor bike there, half buried in snow, for weeks or months. The part that is buried, is the most vulnerable. Your drive train. Chain, cogs, chainrings, and derailleurs, if you have them. And if you didn’t oil these VERY well before the snow fell they are all now rusting under a layer of snow and ice. By spring you will be replacing your drivetrain.

Flash! Why not protect your ride with a bicycle cover.

There come for cheap ($12) or a little more if you want better protection. And they keep the elements off your bike. The best ones also have wire threads imbedded in the polypropylene material so that it can’t be easily torn off your bike when you’ve put your lock through it. You may have to lock your bike to a fence when you park at home, and to something else when you ride to school or work. But now you can take your protection with you.

And I assure you that the cover is cheaper than a new drivetrain will be come next spring. So try it!

Bicimáquinas from Guatemala

What are Bicimáquinas?

Bicimáquinas are a series of pedal-powered machines commonly found in Guatemala where they have a shortage of electricity in many isolated areas. Their solution has been to attach their machines to bicycles in order to assist them with a variety of jobs in the home, on the farm, on the road and in small businesses.

Each bicimáquina is handmade in workshops using a combination of old bikes, concrete, wood, and metal. You can see many examples of such original designs that have proven to be both functional and economical on the website http://mayapedal.org/machines.en which lists a variety of fact sheets and instructions for their more popular designs.

They're certainly one way to have fun with your mechanical skills if you have spare bicycle parts laying around.

Example: Bicycle Mill/Corn Thesher

This bicycle machine has been adapted to fit a hand powered grinding mill or a corn thresher. The Mill function has the capacity to mill 3 lbs. per minute of any type of grain. The most common uses are for milling yellow maize, soya beans, and coffee. Huzzah!

The Thresher is used post-harvest and easily degrains 12 to 15 quintales (1 quintal = 100 lbs.) per day and requires only one person to operate the machine.

Below: A Washing Machine and a Food Blender.

Merry Xmas from the Bicycle Mechanic

Merry Xmas from the Bicycle Mechanic! May all your gifts be bicycle oriented and perfect for you!

Line of Sight, 2012 film

DISCLAIMER: DO NOT TRY THIS AT HOME. (Or on the Street.)

Line of Sight is the inside story of underground bicycle racing around the world.

Also known as Alleycat Racing, the races feature bicycles which are specially made for these illegal and highly reckless races: #1. The bikes have no brakes. So there are a lot of crashes and they can't stop at red lights (and don't want to stop anyway). #2. They're fixie bicycles (one gear only).

Through the lens of helmet cameras, the film transports viewers into the wild and dangerous world of Alleycat Racing, where high speeds, traffic and pedestrians combine with riders hell-bent on attaining victory at any cost.

The races include some of the best urban riders in the world in their natural element, including Shino, Ted Shred, Chas, Jumbo, Kevin Porter, Felipe "The King", Austin Horse, Crihs, and Alfred Bobe Jr.

More than just a musical montage of vehicle-dodging, fast paced action, Line of Sight also gives the viewers an insight into the community of bicycle messengers who run and participate in these underground races. Director Benny Zenga turns the cameras back on Lucas, his compatriots, and on the incredible cities where they run wild on the streets. The end result? A world tour of the urban jungles of New York to the actual jungles of Guatemala, from the narrow maze of London streets to the Great Wall of China, making the film as much a tourism documentary as a documentary on illegal bicycle racing.

Amusing Images for Cyclists

Here are a few images to tickle your funny bone. I admit they have nothing to do with bicycle mechanics or fixing bicycles, but sometimes you just have to let loose.