Bike maintenance

Posted in: Drivel

Been riding around on this seriously unsafe back tyre for several months (well, several months before my several months layoff from cycling ;-).

D'ya reckon?

The worst bit was that the sidewall attachment to the rim beading was almost torn through for about 8cm which gave rise to this alarming sideways drift every wheel rotation on corners...

It took me a while to figure out how on earth that tyre managed to become that worn in less than a year, just road riding. What I finally realised was that I, riding a fixed gear bike with no freewheel, had got into a habit of lifting the back wheel (front brake on, lean forward), spinning the pedal to set the crank position, and dropping the back wheel back down mid-spin.

While I was changing the tyre I dropped the gear ratio (using about every muscle fibre in my entire being, jesus wept) from 42/12t to 42/14t, a much more pleasant experience especially after the big gap out of the saddle. Oddly I'm doing about the same speeds as the larger gear, just spinning more, and being fatigued less with all the stop/start/nail-it of urban traffic cycling. I must've looked pretty funny doing 120+rpm tailgating a bus the other day though...

Posted by Paul Makepeace at April 24, 2005 15:14 | TrackBack