Entries Tagged 'bikes' ↓

The plastic gloves are to the right.

With bikes, you can spend as much money as you like, there’s always some carbon fibre bottle cage (18g), which will set you back £120 if you really want to spend as much money as possible. But, as the old cheesy saying goes, sometimes the best things in life are free.

Here is a list of things which are free or very good value for money and makes cycling more enjoyable.

Plastic Disposable Gloves from Petrol Stations. The next time you fill up with petrol from a major petrol station take a few of the free plastic gloves. These are great for when you have to mess around with an oily chain. It means you can change your chain without getting hands and bike all oily. I also keep a pair in  my bike bag – can be useful for keeping hands warm from unexpected rain and again gloves can be kept clean.

Car Wash Brush. Since I started using this car wash brush on my bike, it’s halved the time taken to clean my bike. It’s much better than the washing up brush I used to use. Also, it’s soft touch is good for delicate paintwork.

Old Water Bottle cut in half. This helps provide a useful storage for a rain jacket.

Small Thin Lock which fits in back of saddle bag. You often need to lock your bike at unexpected moments. Having a lock, even if small, gives much greater peace of mind when you sit inside a cafe. Could save your bike from being stolen. For some reason, people often think if they go out into the beautiful countryside thieves won’t be there. But, it’s alas often not the case.

Puncture Resistance Tyre. The best value purchase you can make is to buy a really top of the range puncture resistance tyre. You could try the Armadillo or Schwalbe Durano Plus

Cheap Cereal Bars like Frusli and Kellogs Nutri Grain. Much better value than buying ‘proper’ energy bars. But, similar effect.

Related

• Simple Tips to Increase Efficiency of Cycling

The freedom of fat tyres!

The last few days have been a very interesting experience riding my budget mountain bike. I’ve always riden road bikes with narrow tyres assuming speed is everything.

It’s quite an eye-opener cycling on a mountain bike. The idea of being able to ride straight over potholes takes quite a bit of getting used. I’m so used to keeping my eyes peeled and avoiding lumpy road surfaces; it’s really great fun just to be able to ride in a straight line – no matter how bad the road surfaces are. (and in Oxford as  most other places, they are pretty bad at moment…)

The snow’s a bit of a pain – but, it has been beautiful.

Certainly a mountain bike is quite a bit slower. If you don’t pedal quite fast, you can find yourself plodding along at less than 10mph – something I’m not very used to doing.

Of course in the snow, a mountain bike really comes into its own. The top photo is from Port Meadow, basically you can go pretty much anywhere.

Be Aware of Melting Snow!

Safer to walk in some places

I have to say, that although the thaw has started, it is more dangerous now than ever. The difficult thing is when you have patches of snow / ice and patches of road. Going from one lump to the next can be slippy – even for a mountain bike.

Road Tyres

When the snow is a distant memory, I’m sure I will revert to thin road tyres. The freedom of riding through potholes is not quite as good as the extra speed you lose. Nevertheless, I could get into mountain biking and for commuting into town, I would be really quite happy on a mountain bike.

The snow weather today inspired me to go and buy a cheap mountain bike from Halfords, which is just around the corner from where I lived. I was the only customer in the store, and I had to help push a motorist who had got stuck in the B&Q car park.

The one good thing about snow is that you don’t need a bike stand (scant consolation!)

This Apollo XC.26 cost me £89.99 reduced from £180. I went and bought a lock for £30, which was a bit stupid, given that is 30% of the cost of the bike!

I wanted a mountain bike to have a better chance on the snowy roads. But, to be honest even a mountain bike was pretty tough in this level of snow. I stayed at home and didn’t even try to go into work.

The Apollo XC 26 is really bottom of the barrel in terms of components and specification. But, I guessed I wouldn’t be using it very often. Plastic components, steel frame (though not excessively heavy) It does come with front wheel suspension which sounds good, though I fear it does little to improve performance for what I will be doing.  But, it’s not in the category of ‘bicycle shaped objects’ from Asad It rides reasonably well (if you can actually test that in this heavy snow)

Sizing Mountain bikes – These mountain bikes came in three sizes 14 17 and 20. Being 6 foot 3, I bought the 20″ bike and had the saddle raised up quite a lot.

It’s kind of strange to be spending £90 on a complete bike, when I have on a number of occassions spent £500 on a back wheel or something. But, it might hopefully prove useful in the next few days.

View from my window this morning. Strangely enough I didn’t see any cyclists go past…

Nevertheless, I still fear the onset of some turbo training sessions.

• Apollo MTB at Halfords
• Mountain Bikes at Halfords

Bike Art - Lake

Just wanted to feature an excellent blog I came across. Lovely Bicycle.blogspot has some great photos of bike culture and vintage bikes.

Joy of Cycling

“Entirely frivolous and self-indulgent, this weblog has no agenda. I just think that cycling is cool and that bicycles are beautiful.”

I love the blog’s mission statement

By River

Sunset

Retro Bike by Vienna

Thanks to lovely.bicycle for use of pictures

Related

Retro Bikes

Readers Question: I came fifth at burrington on sunday, riding fixed, and it was my first hill climb (or competitive event, for that matter), 8.01. i’m interested in the age-old hillclimb debate of fixed vs geared. out of interest, have you ever ridden any fixed?

Well congratulations on ride! It’s a good time for first hill climb and race.

I have never ridden fixed because I don’t have a fixed bike. However, I have taken an interest in the debate. And as far as I can tell these are the arguments:

Benefits of Fixed

• Lighter. With no gears, and one less brake, fixed are lighter. The steeper the hill, the more difference weight saving makes. For a flat race, weight is of minimal importance, but for a hill climb it can make a large difference.
• One study I came across suggested every kilo saved was worth 2 seconds for a 100 metre height gain. I don’t know how scientific that was. But, it’s not like half a minute. If you have a hill with 200 metre height gain, and a fixed bike is 1 kilo lighter than gears then, theoretically, it could be 4 secs quicker. But, this is very subjective.
• 100% Transfer. I’m not sure how much more power is transferred with fixed. But, it is said there is a greater feeling of being connected to the bike.
• I remember hearing Chris Boardman saying – unless the hill has some downhill bits, you will go quicker on fixed. Chris Boardman was national hill climb champion three times before going onto bigger things like Olympics and Tour de France.

There’s also many other benefits of fixed gear bikes like – easier to maintain, look cool, easy to clean e.t.c. but, they are not really an issue for hill climbs.

Benefits of Riding Gears

• If you get the fixed ratio wrong, you can suffer on parts of climb. Gears means you don’t have to worry and will always have enough gear ratios.
• You can get a bike with gears that are pretty light.
• Many hills have variable gradient so with gears you can ride your preferred cadence.
• It’s hard work descending on a fixed, because you can’t freewheel. The fixed hub acts as a braking mechanism though.

It really depends on hill, the general feeling is a steep hill like the Cat and Bec (upto 25% gradient, 1 in 4) fixed is much better.

A climb like Burrington Combe, I don’t think there’s much in it. I know Danny Axford rode fixed when he did the hill once. But, I was changing gears quite a few times when racing. I doubt it’s much quicker on fixed.

I’d certainly like to get a fixed gear bike sometime and find out for myself.

• Fixed Gear Bikes
• Single Speed bikes

A picturesque location for parking your bike.

But, don’t leave it too long. These bikes next to it have been stripped down. A few weeks ago, I took a photo of the Ammaco bike, with all its equipment

Shame, quite a nice bike to be left on the railings for bike strippers.

A bike is stolen nearly every 71 seconds in the UK.

The top 10 worst places for Bike Theft are:

1. Central London
2. Kingston-upon-Thames
3. Cambridge
4. Bristol
5. York
6. Oxford
7. Richmond & Twickenham, south west London
8. Brighton
9. Portsmouth
10. Nottingham

Bike Locks reviews

90% of bike thefts occur in public places. Only 1% occur from someone’s home

BBC Link

Readers Question (Dave) Can you explain why (having found a TT bike that isn’t too heavy) you wouldn’t want to use it as your all-round road bike (possibly after swapping the handlebars)?

It seems a paradox my most expensive and fastest bike gets used the least. My winter training bike cost £500 and has done over 15,000 miles. My new time trial bike may only do 300-400 miles a  year. There are a few reasons I don’t use a time trial bike much for ordinary riding.

The position is very low. It’s very aerodynamic, but, it’s not too comfortable for rides over 2 hours.

The steering on a time trial bike is not as good. It’s certainly more difficult to control on fast technical descents. I think this is due to angles of frame and height of handlebars.

It’s not so manoeuvrable on difficult climbs where you have to get out of the saddle, there are less handlebar positions for when you are climbing on the hoods.

It’s not very sociable to ride with others on a time trial bike. Even turning up with clip on tri bars will have many ‘roadies’ turning their nose up at you. – They will probably  be muttering something like ‘bloody triathlete’ under their breaths.

The aero benefits are much greater at high speed. If you plod along at 18mph, the aero drag is not that great, an aero position will make you go a little faster but not a huge amount. If you increase your speed to 26mph, the aero drag factor increases disproportionately – in other words you notice the aero benefits much more.

Tubs. On a time trial bike I race on tubular tyres glued on to the rims. These have advantages because they can be blown up to 160psi / 10 bar and I find less susceptible to punctures. But, there are much more difficult to swap over. On a training ride, I’d rather have clinchers because if you get a flat tyre, it’s much quicker to mend.

If you’re not worried about perfecting a cool roadie image, clip on tribars can be a good addition. They are a little more aerodynamic and give you another position, without sacrificing the comfort of your road bike.

This commuting bike has clip on tribars. They are actually set up quite high, so they won’t make the riders back more aerodynamic. However, they do bring the arms closer to the body and reduce drag this way. It may not make the bike much quicker but some people find them quite comfortable (though it’s a bit further to the brakes)

Having said all that, I would like to do more rides on my new carbon fibre bike because it is just a joy to ride. The problem is I’m often put off by the though of changing the wheels.

Road Bikes at Wiggle

This Raleigh town bike has a rather interesting seat position. The lock through helmet suggests this bike is currently being used. Presumably, you need a helmet with that seat….

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Dawes Diploma. Notice the leather handlebars. Looks great in British Racing Green contrasted with black. This is the men’s version, the ladies version comes with low top tube for easy wearing of skirt.

Gazelle classic black, the handlebars are much higher than the springy saddle.

A classic triumph hybrid bike. Note single speed (could have Sturmey Archer 3 speed hub, but can’t see it) and dynamo lights.

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Introduced in the 1970s, the Raleigh Chopper Mark I became one of the coolest and most iconic bikes of its generation. Featuring a unique design, the bike was a radical departure from a traditional bike. It came with 3 speed gear lever, wide tyres, long saddle and distinctive frame design. In many ways it resembled a motorbike and has become one of the most sought after bikes. Its phenomenal success helped rescue Raleigh cycles which had been struggling in face of poor demand and higher competition. In the 1980s, the advent of the BMX and later mountain bike meant the Raleigh Chopper ceased production. But, recently, on a wave of 70s nostalgia, the Raleigh Chopper has been re-introduced.

Raleigh Chopper Mk I

Gold Plated Raleigh Chopper Mark I photo Marcus

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