Personality of Things

Two recent book finds.  I think these might have more personality than an ebook file.  In the board game I designed which is sort-of-things-that-happen-to-me-on-bikes, one of the cards reads "Your Graham Greene Book has been signed by the author, move ahead 2 squares" almost the same as "Found Graham Greene First Edition on dumpster" which is what has happened here!

Back of recent book finds

From the German book documenting 10 years of their HPV organisation:  "You see so many of them these days, I have to make mine look a bit out of the ordinary!"......

and a 2015 equivalent: Spokey Dokes on my leaning trike. 

Hi

I have been reflecting on how Stuff seems to be disappearing: we don't need newspapers, books, DVD's or CD's any more because random knowledge, ebooks, movies and video can be delivered to our houses via the internet, and its possible to share a car instead of owning one, and phones have taken on multiple roles including camera, map, fitness tracker, text messager and brag book. 

After pondering this for a while, somebody mentioned this at Uni, and there's an actual name for it, "dematerialization".   More pondering, and I wondered, with all this dematerialization going on, what does it mean for the stuff we still own?  The answer is possibly "more personality please".  If we only have a few items, then those we might want those that we do have to exude personality.  Records, which just say bugger off to any notion of musical compactness, and have room enough to display real artwork seem to defy the dematerialization trend and have started to sell in increasing numbers.

When it comes to bikes, fixie-style bikes seem to offer the most scope for buy-in options with an abundance of colours available.  Or, you can go way over the top with one of those recumbent things.  Add spokey dokes if you find some on the dumpster.

Regards

Steve Nurse

Load Carrying Bike

Load Carrying Bike at our local mulch depot.

Industrial chain (bike chain) is used to support the tray at one end....

and a drilled aluminium plate is at the other.  The fork is a 26" MTB fork set up with brakes on the back for a 20" wheel.  This arrangement works to make the fork and wheel the right size for a 24" bike.

Hi

For a while, I have had a 24" Victoria separating bike with a 2-speed Sturmey Archer Hub and have also had plans for making it into a load carrying bike.  Also, there are way too many bikes hanging round the house to have one of them not doing anything.  Anyway, needing mulch for our front garden got me motivated to finish the job I'd started.  It didn't take too long but I had a bit done already.

*  Custom fork: this is a 26" fork with brake bosses moved to the back and repositioned to take a 20" wheel.  This ends up being the same size as a 24" fork and wheel, and the new fork makes a good start on a "low gravity" bike.

*  For the tray support, I've used a chain and strip of aluminium plate.  Its very minimalist and I like it.  The support can be categorised as pie tray or cigarette girl tray support, that is, tension cables to the front.  

So the first test went ok, but the front wheel rubs on the bit of wood, and the front brake isn't hooked up yet.  The tray is quite flat, and I'll spend a bit of time making the tray removable so the whole bike can still fit in a suitcase.  Will post more on that as it happens.

Regards

Steve Nurse

The Way Back Engine

Hi

Several years ago, Jim Wilson from BikeRodnKustom interviewed me by email.  We'd been in touch over several years about bikes I'd built and I sent him my book when it was published.  Anyway, he ended up interviewing me by email, and I looked for the interview online yesterday.  Not there, and I was saddened to read that he had passed away.  I'd never met him but he was always polite and the interview came out well.

Tried getting the interview through an internet archive site but it didn't work, then I realised I had my own archive in the form of a printout.  So here's the link to a scanned pdf, hope you find it interesting.

And more than 10 years ago, my family and I went to Europe to compete in the Spezi folding bike competition.  Here are the reports I came across online, in German with photos and in English.

Regards

Steve Nurse

Two Tilters in St. Kilda

Robert W. and a tilting fixed bottom bracket trike he made from a few months ago, and

 me riding it.

Robert C. riding the new moving bottom bracket version, Alan B. and Glen look on, Voung trike in background.

Easy Peasy for Robert, he rides a moving bottom bracket bike all the time.

Graham S. on a Rans X-stream.  His helmet has front and rear multiple LED lights built in and looks pretty good for use on recumbents.  Graham is a bit of a crowdsourcing fan, and this helmet came through Torch .

Contrasting Vuong and Parellelogram Leaning mechanisms.

 Hi

Here are a few photos from today's Be-Spon ride.  Glen was riding a new tilting trike which Robert W. had made for him and this made it 2 (!) from different makers in the same spot at the same time.  It has the party trick of being able to stand up by itself at traffic lights by applying the twin back brakes. The ride was very pleasant as always, good to catch up with old friends again. 

Thanks to Robert W. for organising the ride.

Regards

Steve Nurse

Winter Surf Ride on Vuong Leaning Trike

The trike with the seat removed and handlebars tipped, necessary to.......

make it fit inside our Kia Rio to get to the start.

All set up and ready to go at Werribee.  Andrew in foreground.

Hi

Every few months I go on an Audax ride and it takes a bit of training and organisation to get bikes and body up to speed for riding them.  A few weeks ago I started eyeing off the Winter Surf 200k ride which I had done before.  On that occasion a huge storm front came through and I finished the ride, but not on the proscribed route.

For this ride, I did some training, riding some extra distance on top of my 30k round trip commute.  This included some laps of the boulevarde in Kew, and I copped one tack puncture during the process.

The trike (used the same frame as on Winter Surf 2 years ago but everything else has changed including the wheel count!) got a chain lube, spare tube check, speedometer from K-mart, extra lights, a water bottle and water bottle mount.

The trike fitted almost holus bolus into our small car for the trip to the ride start in Werribee.  The ever-cheerful Helen Lew Ton was there to greet me at the start and all six of us set off at 8am.

The ride to Geelong was all flat and for the first part I was in the middle of the bunch, but I succumbed to a wee problem, having to stop more times than everyone else due to drinking too much milk at the start.

Everyone else must have stopped for smoko or something and despite a puncture near the Geelong racecourse  I saw Helen and some of the others just out of Geelong.  They overtook me by Torquay.

There were steep hills around Bells Beach.  My trike isn't the best on uphills anyway and my tactic for dealing with them was to walk up them briskly.  Not very good Audax riding but the best I could do.

Got into Airey's Inlet at 2pm, had my card signed and was off with the others who'd got in a bit earlier.  On to Moriac and my first real break.  Andrew pulled in after me, suffering from a "hunger flat" and needing calories just to keep going.  Also by this time, I had worked out how to reset the "distance" feature on the speedo and was becoming moderately competent at daytime navigation using the cue sheet.

A few k's down the road and Andrew's guts are complaining, he's bent over his bike not feeling too good and I press on.  Within 10 or 15k, he's with me again though, stomach troubles all cleared up.  We finished the ride together, and I leaned heavily on him for GPS navigation.  Nighttime mapping with a speedo and cue sheet needs a head torch and I didn't have one.

So anyway, steady and easy does it, we pulled back into Werribee well after dark at 8:30pm.  Helen had got in about an hour earlier.

Some lessons were learned, lighting for  Audax needs to be taken seriously including recharging or replacing batteries on all lights.  Having a head torch and cue sheet holder are necessary if you want to read a cue sheet after dark.  Better still, I should contemplate getting one of those GPS.  Thingies.  The more training the less you suffer on the ride as well.

And the trike just worked.  I had already done about 900k of commuting and general riding on it so I guess that was enough to break it in.  For the record I have done a prevoius (November 2013) long ride on a Vuong trike, not as hilly though.

Thanks to Helen, Andrew and Audax for the organising, camaraderie and assistance.

Regards

Steve Nurse

Custom Forks and Steerer

Cutom 24" forks, left hand side.  The 2 small holes in the dropout are for a fairing mount. The other side dropout has the derailleur mount as well.

Steerer with cables running inside.  Robert W. helped me with the welding.

The trike

Hi

Last week I went on a Sunday ride led by Alan Ball on some bike tracks quite near to our house which I've never been on.  I took the opportunity of photographing some of the new bike parts made in the last few weeks.  Thanks for leading the ride Alan, very pleasant and good fun.

Regards

Steve Nurse

16" Wheels

One I prepared earlier, 16" wheels on current Vuong trike

Homemade bearing removal tool: the slotted part expands when the tapered part is screwed in to the bearing or its crush tube.

Apropos of not very much, this is part of an ex-Hallmark Jetset bike I used as "tooling"

This is all the stuff stripped from a Trisled 16" wheel, bearing, crush bar, outer sleeve.

Pressing the replacement bearing back in using my (very much unplugged!) drill press.  The bearing needs to be pressed in using the outer race.

Finished!  This is the wheel with a 15mm custom shaft fitted, and ready to be fitted to a pedal to make a Vuong trike wheelset.

Hi

I'm still building Vuong trikes and need to get parts for them, unfortuately being a very early adopter means many of them need to be custom or highly modified.  Back wheels included!

The 16" wheels I've been using have been good and I wanted to get some more, but the last set needed seperate purchases of hubs, rims and a quite expensive spoking service, not to mention tyres, tube and rim tape.  This time I've simplified things a bit but there's still a bit to do.  I bought WHF-16-32DB wheels from Trisled after finding that the bearings were 6804's, 32 od x 20 id.  My axles are 15mm OD, so swapping bearings for 6002's would seem to be able to fix things.  And in the end this worked.  Custom wheels made to suit would be a bit cheaper with no need for bearing sleeve, spacer or even disc brake mount.

I have some plans for some improved aerodynamic wheel covers for these wheels, and will post on that when the time comes.

A Shopping Trip

While on a shopping trip to Sydney Road I chatted to Darryl who I bump into every now and then.....

 and a lady I didn't know about the trike.

The trike storage compartment.

Hi

I haven't done any long rides lately but am doing about 30k most weekdays and the occasional week end ride.  Sydney Road is a popular shopping strip only a few k away on the bike track, and there's an Aldi and an open-Sunday op-shop there, so I'll sometimes ride over there to blow away some cobwebs.  The trike shown is my current daily driver  and is gradually being improved: it started off being a trike as Ilean mk2 but it has a longer history as a recumbent bike.  The latest changes have been to fit a custom steerer which the brake and gear cables run through and new forks with a bosses for front fairing mounts.  Might even build a front fairing for it one day!