More Handlebars

A while ago I changed my handlebars with some success, but I wanted to see if I could do better. The main issue with the new handlebars was that they were a bit too low which made the riding position less than ideal.

So I looked around until I found some mountain bike handlebars with 65mm of rise (compared to 30mm on the other set) that were still 25.4mm wide at the clamping point. A handy hint if you're looking for bars like this is that they are often called jump bars (I believe because they flex a bit on landing). Anyway the ones I went with are the "Full Bore" model made by a company called Funn and came from Chain Reaction Cycles.

Unlike the previous bars, the Funn ones widen out well before the clamping point, in fact they are virtually 25.4mm in diameter even at the curves. This makes them very difficult to get through the clamp. Even after spreading out the clamp a bit with a screwdriver wrapped in a cloth I still managed to scratch a fair bit of paint off the handlebars. Fortunately some Brompton black gloss paint tidied it up fairly well.

The Funn bars are also even wider than the XLC ones so I decided to cut them down a bit. I did it a little at a time an eventually took off about 5cm from each end. Note that this was the most I could take off and still fit my brake levers and grips on, and that my grips were already cut down a bit from when they were on the original Brompton bars. So if you have a larger hands you'll probably want to take a bit less off.

I also cut down my brake and hub gear cables by about 5cm to get them to sit a bit better in their new positions. In truth they could do with being cut down a little more, but they're OK as they are and I haven't had the time or motivation to tidy them up any further.

With these adjustments made the Funn bars are a bit more comfortable than the XLC bars, and I think comfortable enough to live with - I've been using them for about 6 months now. I haven't noticed my knees hitting my stomach since changing over either. The other improvement is in the clearance of the brake levers and cables over the front luggage which is now enough to not worry me.

The extra rise in the bars does make them a tiny bit more flexible, but not enough to be annoying (unlike the original un-braced Brompton bars)

Like the XLC bars I can have the bar ends set up in a comfortable position without interfering with the fold.

Overall I'm happy with this set up and will stick with it for the forseeable future, however I have to wonder if I'd have been better off just getting an S-type bike and the smaller luggage to begin with. The larger T-bag is nice to have and the extra capacity has been useful at times, but most of the time I'm sure I could have made do with the smaller S bag. Mind you, if I'd done that I wouldn't have had half as much to write about!

Kudos to Apple

I have a second hand 13" white Macbook. Like most Macbooks of that vintage it has developed cracks in the palm rest where the ridges in the lid push on it when it's closed. I recently found out that Apple in the US are still fixing this problem for free, I guess because it's seen as a design defect.

So I thought I'd call up Apple here in the UK and see what their policy is. It turns out that as long as your Macbook is less than 5 years old they will fix it for free - even a second hand one like mine!

I didn't know when my laptop was bought and it turned out that the original owner hadn't registered it when they bought it. However the AppleCare guy was able to determine that it must have been bought after November 2007 (I guess from the model number) so it was still within the 5 year window. After checking with his supervisor he told me that it would be fixed free of charge, gave me a case number, and told me that I'd need to make an appointment in an Apple store to have it done (actually he offered to make the appointment for me, but I needed some time to work out which store would be most convenient so I did it).

They do also recommend that you back up your computer, presumably to cover them in case they accidentally break something.

Making an appointment at an Apple store is handled on their website and is a pretty nice experience, you pick from a list of available dates and times and leave a message explaining the problem.

When I got to the store today it seemed that they hadn't actually read the message much in advance as the person helping me told me they'd have to check that they had the parts in stock. Fortunately they did and I was asked to come back in about 90 minutes.

I had read that the palm rest, keyboard, and trackpad are all one unit so I was hoping for, but not expecting, a new keyboard and trackpad. As it turns out, I not only got a new keyboard and trackpad, they also replaced the bezel around the screen, I'm not sure why. Perhaps the new one is less likely to break the new palm rest, but it looks the same to me, only much cleaner - the original looked like this:

So credit where it's due, I'm very impressed with the way Apple have stood behind their product here, and as a result I'm happily typing this on a brand new keyboard.

Tyre Update

I've been using Schwalbe Marathon Pluses for a few months now (switching from the original Kojaks), so I thought it was time for an update.

Since moving house there isn't anywhere near as much broken glass around on my commute, so it may not be a an entirely fair comparison, but nonetheless I've been puncture free since switching tyres.

The Marathon Pluses do seem to have very slightly more rolling resistance than the Kojaks. I'm not sure if that is due to the make-up of the tyre or just that they can't be inflated to as high a pressure as the Kojaks.

However, given that I cycle to get to work and back, and to get some exercise, the slight increase in pedalling effort is more than made up for by the extra reliability.

Broken Mudguard

I managed to break the rear mudguard on my Brompton recently. I don't think I put the bike down any harder than I normally do (it was parked), so my best guess is that the recent extra cold weather had made the plastic more brittle than usual (I keep the bike in an unheated garage). I managed to tape it up for a few days, but then the remaining bits of plastic snapped and I was left with what you can see below.

This rapidly got annoying, as whenever the bike was folded the little remaining bit of mudguard got pushed round onto the wheel so I had to move it back every time I unfolded the bike.

Fortunately a replacement mudguard doesn't break the bank at £11.50. I've also scraped the metal screws attaching the mudguard to the remaining wire a fair bit, so I ordered a replacement plate and screws for an extra £3.50 (both including free shipping from Simpson Cycles).

As you can see below, the mudguard comes with instructions for replacing it.

Actually replacing the mudguard is fairly simple if you've taken the wheel off before. First you need to remove the back wheel, which involves a few steps. Brompton have a handy video explaining it, although I prefer to deflate the tyre to get it past the brake blocks - they take me a while to get adjusted correctly again if I undo the cable as they suggest.

Then you just need to undo the allen bolts holding the mudguard to the wires and the nut holding the rear brake and mudguard onto the frame. The nut is a little tricky to get at so you need to be patient and undo it 1/6th of a turn at a time until you can turn it by hand. Once it's off you just need to remove the washers and rear light making careful note of the order, pull out the bolt, take off one last washer, and then finally the mudguard:

Fitting the new mudguard is simply a matter of reversing the process and re-fitting (and in my case re-inflating) the wheel.

Bye Bye Baldy

When I was originally ordering my Brompton and looking through the myriad options, the one I thought was simplest was the choice of tyres. The Schawalbe Kojaks were high pressure - so low rolling resistance, have a "Raceguard" strip, and are lighter than the alternatives. A no-brainer, or so I thought.

Now, nearly a year later, I'm not so sure. On my full size bike I have some Kevlar lined tires and they have lasted for years with only two punctures. I was hoping that the "Raceguard" part of the Kojaks would work similarly effectively. Unfortunately it simply doesn't - I've had around 7 punctures in under a year, cycling perhaps 3 miles per day (and I wasn't cycling for a couple of those months) which is too many for me. Below you can see some of the chunks gouged out of my rear tyre by bits of glass and sharp stones.

Having looked around a bit, it seemed that the Schwalbe Marathon Plus is the way to go for reliability, so I ordered a pair of those. I saw a number people online complaining that they were very difficult to fit. Fortunately during my research I also found a video that explained how to fit them fairly easily. The trick is to squeeze the sides of the tyre inwards so that you can push them into the well in the middle of the wheel, this then gives you enough slack to get the last bit of tyre over the rim without needing any tyre levers.

I'll update this blog in a few months with details of any punctures or any other issues with the new tyres.

Pedal Update

A few months ago I wrote about how my pedals had detached themselves a couple of times. I thought it was only fair to post an update to say that since then they have behaved perfectly. I also haven't removed them deliberately in that time which may or may not be related.

However, having now started my new commute, I've come to the conclusion that I would have been better off just getting some rather simpler and cheaper non-detachable pedals and using a pedal spanner if I ever had to remove them.

Handlebars

As I mentioned before, I now have some fairly comfortable bar ends on my Brompton, but they were unfortunately set at a less than ideal angle, to keep them (barely) clear of the ground when the bike was folded.

Looking at the variables open to me it seemed like the simplest and cheapest to try was a new set of handlebars. Whilst it seems that you can spend upwards of £100 on handlebars(!) for this experiment I went with a rather more modest set at a grand cost of £11.81 including shipping from Amazon.

The most important thing to look for when buying new handlebars for a Brompton is to ensure that they are 25.4mm (1 inch) in diameter at the clamping point. Some mountain bike handlebars are rather wider. The set that I got are shaped so that the grips are about 3cm above the clamp. I hoped that this would help to stop the riding position from being too severe and also provide some clearance for my luggage (a T bag).

Fitting the new bars was fairly straightforward it was just a case of:
- Removing everything from the old handlebars, noting the routing of the cables. (Also note that if you still have the original Brompton grips you almost certainly won't be able to get them off without ruining them so you'll need something to replace them with).
- in my case undoing the handle bar brace on one side.
- loosening the handlebar clamp.
- sliding out the old bars and sliding in the new ones.
- reversing the other steps above, remembering to route the cables correctly.

The new handlebars went in fairly easily as they only bulge out at the clamping point (the grip ends are at the normal 22.2mm diameter) which meant that the curves in the bar went through the clamp without much trouble.

With everything fitted I found that I could easily position the bar ends at the angle I wanted and keep them clear of the ground when the bike was folded.

However, there are a couple of other clearances you need to worry about when changing the handlebars:
- The clearance between the brake levers and any luggage you may have
- The clearance between the cables to the rear of the bike and the front cog

With these handlebars the brake levers are a little close to my T-bag for my liking, I wouldn't be able to pack it too full. The brake and gear cables, whilst closer to the front cog, seem to be OK.

In use the first thing I noticed was that the riding position felt very strange compared to before. My arms felt quite widely spread, the steering felt a bit less lively, and my knees were getting rather close to my stomach when peddling.

The first two of these changes are down to the fact that the new handlebars are rather wider than the standard m-type handlebars and I got used them fairly quickly. The third change was down to the new handlebars obviously being much lower. I've never owned a proper racing bike but looking at picture it seems that they often have their handlebars down below the height of the saddle so it may just be my overly large stomach getting in the way! (Or it may be that having a longer distance between the saddle and handlebars on a full size bike counteracts this issue somewhat).

After a couple of rides I also noticed that the saddle feels rather less comfortable than before, I'm not sure whether this is down to the change in riding position or just the fact that I haven't ridden a bike for a few months. I may try tipping the saddle forwards a little to see if that's any more comfortable.

Overall I'd say that these handlebars are a qualified success. They allow me a good bar end position but are a bit uncomfortable at the moment - I'd not go on a long ride without a few trial runs first to see if I could get comfortable in the new position.

Given my findings I think I'll try to find another set of handlebars with a bit more rise in them to see whether I can get a better compromise between bar ends and overall comfort.