Buckley's ride 2022

 

Shim repair

At the start

A tandem was the only other non standard bike

In the train

Back home, .......

...... I was able to start ........

......... the autopsy / redesign / triage / improvement think process.

Hi

Quite often, I've started the riding year with this 210k Audax equivalent of Round the Day, and I had a crack this year as well. In other years, I hadn't really trained much, but this year put in some effort, doing a 90k hilly ride, and 2 50k relatively flat rides in the week prior to the event. The bike was going well and fast but occasionally the back tyre would rub against the tailbox. To fix this, I put a shim in the rear suspension and it seemed to work.

Anyway, I got to the 6:15am start no problems, and I stayed with a bunch of riders all the way to Werribbee, and was very happy to be doing 26kph when riding solo, or about 29kph and with less effort in a bunch.

Just out of Werribbee, the bike broke when I went over a not-very big bump. This was really just the straw that broke the camel's back and I'm reasonably certain that there had been cracks in the back of the frame for the few days before the ride. Some closer inspection when shimming the suspension would have helped!

So anyway, I walked to the station, and took the train home, and was able to ring home, and text Bryan the ride organiser.

The break in the back of the suspension was due to the way I built it, with light cromoly steel, and holes drilled all over the place causing stress concentrations. Pretty sure I can rebuild it stronger, but for the moment some "think time" is quite useful while I work out how to fix and improve the rear suspension. Certainly there will be less drilling!

A few things went wrong but I wasn't injured and got home easily by breaking down near a train station.

With apologies to Tom Petty

Breakdown, go ahead give it to me, 

Breakdown honey, take me through the night

Breakdown, near Werribbee station

Breakdown's alright.

Regards Steve Nurse

 So I felt fit