Bicycle repairs a la Milton Keynes

I’ve moved up so far as to say I’m in Milton Keynes proper now.

Had one stop in-between. That was at somewhere called ‘Peartree Bridge’ which I guess is the South East edge of Milton Keynes. It’s on the edge of a park, surprise surprise. I didn’t mind it there. My bike wasn’t quite working, and I didn’t really have chance to do anything cycling wise, so there aren’t many pictures or adventures.

I did manage to fix the problems with my Trek hybrid bike, that was that the gears were shifting, also they would crunch and the chain would jump off of the front sprocket, or chainring, as they call it on pushbikes.

Fixing the ‘Ghost-shifting’ on my bike

Problems first started when I replaced the rear wheel. I replaced the chain shortly after.

After this, the new chain used to jump continuously off the front or back sprockets and make a crunching sound under any pressure. This made it impossible to ride up hills and unsafe to ride in traffic.

I used Gemini AI, and we gently worked through the problems. These are the steps I took to repair the problem.

1. Fit new chain: 8 speed chain from Halfords. Didn’t sort the problem, made it worse. Split pin chain, anyone can fit one of these although it is fiddly. Cost £9.
2. Fit new front chain-ring: This is the front set of gears. I have three rings. The original gears made it difficult on steep slopes, (28x38x48t). When I replaced the front chainring, I got a higher geared alternative (24x34x42t). I also increased the stem size on the crank by 5mm. This is not noticeable, but it meant I could get the gearing I wanted. I bought it off Amazon. Cost £27.79. Also required a Crank Puller to get it off. Total Cost £3.99 + £27.79
3. Replace front derailleur: After I changed the front chainring, a problem developed. It would no longer shift gears. I had to buy a new front derailleur that was compatible with the new number of teeth. Once I’d done this, it shifted correctly. Cost £18.25
4. Rear cassette: The chain was still jumping. Ghost shifting. I put it to Google what the problem might be. As a result of me having carried out all the previous steps above, which I’d fed back, Gemini was fairly convinced that the problem would be a worn rear cassette. I replaced the rear cassette with an identical (spec) one from Amazon. Cost £19.88

When I followed all of these steps, the problem was solved! I did all the work myself, of course. A total cost of £78.91

Yesterday, I took the bike out around Olney and some villages for about 30 miles. This was the longest ride I’ve been on for a while, but aside from some fine tuning of the gear shifting and front derailleur, the bike is now in commission.

Bonus!

Visit to Wales

Went to visit my old school pal, Dan, in Wales.

It was close to the Pontcysyllte Aqueduct, which I took a walk around whilst I was there.

These two bridges are within about a mile walk of each other. The river you can see flowing beneath is the River Dee.

Willen Park

Aside from that, I’ve moved up to somewhere called ‘Willen Park’.

This is as close in to Central Milton Keynes, or CMK as they call it in these parts, as you can get. I recon it’s about 6 minutes to CMK from here on the bike.

Willen Park has the Christmas Fair on at the moment. All the lake is lit up at night with reflections of the attractions.

There’s two pubs within walking distance.

I went to one on Sunday for curiosity. As I was saying to another boater I bumped into on the walk down there, you get in to these pubs and often wonder why you came in the first place.

Still, the beer wasn’t too expensive. Maybe I’ll visit the other one before I move on, balance things out a little, who knows…

As you can see from the picture, it’s possible to moor on either side, depending on how early, or late you get here. It says 2 days free mooring on the other side, but the boats on the visitors spots have been there for 2 weeks, minimum I recon. Even though there’s sign saying overstay beyond 2 days is ‘charged at £48 per day’, the CRT can’t enforce that side as it’s private property. Likely they can stay as long as they want, either that or some man will turn up asking for hundreds of pounds off them when they try to leave! I’ll let you know on that one!

I’m over here with the riff-raff, on the CRT side.

Sorting out Bonnies winter charging profile

As an essential addition to the boat’s power resources, I’ve purchased something known as a DC-DC charger.

In the summer, the Lifepo (lithium) batteries charge off the solar. All is well. Fine and dandy.

Come the winter, there is little, or sometimes, no solar during the short days. At these times, we need to power the boat using traditional sources, by that I mean fossil fuels.

Two sources being:

• The engine: Also heats the water, uses red diesel which is cheap.
• A generator and smart charger (Victon Ip22): Doesn’t heat the water, noisy. Uses forecourt petrol, expensive.

You can however, safety parallel charge Lifepo’s from both of these sources at the same time! By having the alternator, (via the DC-DC charger), and the generator/shore power, (via the Victron IP22), connected simultaneously, you maximize the current flowing into the battery bank, significantly reducing charge time.

Blast the batteries!

The last week, I’ve been making some modifications to the boat to get these two devices to safely charge the batteries at the same time.

I’m going to address that in a specific topic related, how-to type of post, Safely Running your engine (DC-DC Charger) in Parallel with Generator (IP22 smart charger) for Faster LiFePO4 Charging.

And that’s it for today’s blog.

I’m going to leave you with some pictures I’ve gathered from the local environs in the last few weeks.