Three bike maintenance hacks

Here’s one you can use at home or even on the road should a tumble put your handlebar stem out of alignment. The only tool you will need is an Allen wrench to loosen and re-tighten the stem.

Turn your front wheel at an angle, then closing one eye and sighting from above, sight the front and rear of the stem to center on the front tire. (See picture above.)

Stand straight and with one hand on the nose of the saddle, and the other on handlebars. Lean the bike towards you, rather than try to position your head above the bike.

In other words, move the bike to line up with your eye, rather than the other way around. Make sure the brake cables are tucked away under the stem, so they don’t interfere with your line of vision. (See picture)

Do you have trouble in centering side-pull brakes? Here’s a simple little trick that I have always used.

First, tighten the brake. Don’t worry too much about centering the brake pads at this stage.

With a flat punch, (An old bolt or ¼ inch socket extension works well.) and a small hammer, tap on the top of the brake spring as shown below.

Tap on the right or left side, moving the pads in the direction they need to go to center.

What you are doing, is not bending the spring, a light tap with a hammer will not do any harm. By tapping on the spring, you nudge the brake bolt into the center position without loosening it. 

Make sure your brake cable housing is not too long, or too short, or it will constantly push or pull your brake pads off center. 

 

If you need to remove the Power Link that joins your chain. (Right.) and don’t have the specific tool for the job, you can manage quite well using two thin screwdrivers, placed one on either side of the Power Link.

Hold the screwdrivers with one hand and then squeeze them together using a pair of pliers. (See Picture below. Left.)

This will force the two halves of the link towards each other and the two sides fall apart.

No tools are needed to re-join the Power Link. Making sure the link is in the top part of the chain, above the sprockets and chainwheel. Place the pins through the wide part of the slot.

Apply downward (Forward.) pressure on the right-hand pedal to hold the link in place. Then apply the rear brake and push down hard on the pedal with your foot, and the link will snap into place.

Check to make sure the side plates on both sides of the link are in the groves machined into the pins. (See picture above right.)

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The Joneses

Do you remember the old expression, “Keeping up with the Joneses,” where if your neighbor got a new car, then you had to buy a new car? It would seem kind of douchey in current times to admit to this kind of petty jealousy, and yet I believe it is as rampant today as it ever was.

Today there are millions of Joneses and they are all on social media and the Internet, and everyone is trying to keep up and fit in. Anxiety, depression, suicide is on the increase, along with drug and alcohol use.

Looking back at the changes during my lifetime, as I see it, it all changed after WWII. Before then if you were born working class, you stayed working class, you knew your station in life, and you were for the most part content with your lot.

Men returned after the war, with the attitude, “Hey, I laid my life on the line, I want a piece of the pie.” In Britain a socialist government was voted in with a huge majority. This also happened in other European countries. Much of the world went Communist.

Communism would appear to be fair in theory, sharing the wealth amongst everyone, but it eventually failed because without the incentive to “Get Ahead,” no one wants to work. Those ambitious enough to get ahead in the Government, held that position by force and corruption.

America resisted communism to extremes in the 1950s with McCarthyism, when there was never any danger of communism taking over, because they had something unique called “The American Dream.” Someone working class could work hard and become wealthy.

It seems we had two glorious decades through the 1950s and 1960s, then coming out of the drug induced haze through the 1970s and 1980s, to head slowly downhill after that through the 1990s. Accelerating out of control in the last twenty years which coincided with development of the Internet.

Now capitalism has developed into corporate greed, where the working man is paid less and less, and kept even poorer by constantly being encouraged to buy more and more stuff. There is no longer the American Dream there once was, and many young people are losing their desire to work. Which only makes a bad situation worse. Hence, sadness, depression, etc., etc.

Something must change; the current system cannot sustain itself. Capitalism requires a working class to not only produce stuff, but to buy it. In the meantime, I am reminded of this:

Grant me the serenity to accept the things I cannot change,
Courage to change the things I can,
and Wisdom to know the difference.

It is no use waiting for the world to change, it will probably not happen in my lifetime. Learn to adapt, be content with less, live simply, and spend less. Develop a habit of working hard, make yourself irreplaceable and you will always have a job, and you will probably get paid a little more.

Save money, invest wisely.... Oh and screw the Joneses.

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Fractal Geometry and Frame Design

Benoit MandelbrotFractal is a word coined by mathematician Benoit Mandelbrot (Left.) who published his findings as recent as the 1970s.

Up until that point, throughout history geometry was all about straight lines, triangles, pyramids, circles and cylinders, etc.

This geometry applied to everything man-made, buildings, bridges and other engineering projects, and of course bicycle frames fit right into this category, being made up of straight lines and triangles. Up until Mandelbrot’s findings, everything in nature outside of that which is man-made could not be explained by geometry and mathematics.

Mandelbrot changed all that when he discovered that shapes and forms in nature. For example, cloud formations, trees, mountains, river flow and even blood vessels in our bodies, were a series of repeating irregular shapes, which could be recreated and proven mathematically.

Like many great minds, Benoit Mandelbrot was at first scoffed at by other experts, but now with improvements in computing his theories are being proved mathematically. Now taken seriously, fractals are being studied and used in the medical and the environmental fields.

One of the places we also see fractal geometry in practice is in special effects for movies. Not only are images of nature being created, like landscapes, plants, trees, and even human and animal forms, but fire and explosions can be created and animated on a computer. 

This subject has always fascinated me, because on the one hand you have the bicycle which is traditional man-made geometry, and the task of the frame builder is to match that to the human body, so the two become one, and the bicycle becomes an extension of its rider.

The human body, like all forms in nature, appears to be chaotic and infinite in its makeup. Yet it was possible for me to build a series of production frames, the Fuso for example, in a range of sizes that would fit just about anybody.

From as far back as the late 1960s I found I could fit someone to a frame “Intuitively.”  I did not let this be widely known for fear of being labeled a crack-pot. I was basing my estimation of frame size primarily on a person’s height.

Long after I left the bike business, and therefore the effect of the “Crackpot” label had diminished, I wrote an article here in February 2006, stating that frame size could be estimated around a person’s height.

I came to this conclusion, not so much by what I could do in sizing a person, but more by what I could not do. A person who is six feet tall would normally fit on a frame around 58 or 59 centimeters (Measured center to top.)

However, it is quite a common occurrence to find a person six feet tall (183 cm.) with a 30 inch (76 cm.) inside leg measurement. You cannot put a person like that on a 51 centimeter frame as his inseam would suggest then build a long top tube to accommodate his long body.

I would simply drop the frame size down to a 56 or 57 centimeter because of the short legs, and leave the top tube as standard for that size frame. (55cm. or 55.5 respectively.) This same frame would also suit a person 5’10” tall, (178 cm.) with an inseam around 33 inches.(84 cm.) The difference being the taller guy with short legs would have his saddle lower and possibly use a longer stem.

I knew this was so, but never knew why. It all became clear to me on watching a PBS Nova episode back in 2010 on Benoit Mandelbroc and his discovery fractal geometry. The program mentioned a group of environmentalists were studying rainforests. They cut down a large tree, then measured and documented the dimensions of all its branches, overall height etc.

They then found that a seemingly random pattern of trees of all sizes growing throughout the rest of the rainforest followed the same pattern as the branches of the one tree they had documented; both in the position of their branches, and their position in the forest relative to other trees.

Watching this, it occurred to me that if you took a large group of humans all the same height, you could fit them all to the same size bicycle frame. (Within a centimeter or so.) This is why this theory works, although on the surface it appears that my group all the same height are each different in every other way, they are no different than the trees in the rainforest. They all follow the rule of fractal geometry that can be plotted mathematically.

Fractals are once again in the news with this recent article, which prompted me to re-visit my previous piece written back in December 2010.

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Another New Year

Here we are at the end of another year and the beginning of a new one. Not only a new year but a whole new decade. Time to reflect on the past year and decide what I want to achieve in the coming new year.

I ended 2018 and began 2019 with a four-month course of Chelation treatment. If you remember three years ago, I was diagnosed with Parkinson’s. I was tested for toxic metals, and found I had extremely high levels of Mercury and Lead and other toxic metals in my body. The Chelation Therapy was helpful in that it lowered the levels of all toxins by approximately half.

My condition has not worsened in the three years since my diagnoses and it some aspects it has improved. I take a very low dose of the prescribed medication, (One tablet a day, rather than the full three tablets daily.) I continue to exercise and maintain a strict, meatless diet. I still have a tremor in my right arm, but I can control it somewhat, and it does not stop me doing any I want to.

2019 was a busy year for my wife Kathy and me. We moved from Summervile, South Carolina, near Charleston and the East Coast, inland to Easley near Greenville South Carolina. It was this week after Christmas last year that we took a week off to visit Easley for the first time. In the months that followed we bought a new home and sold the old one.

We moved in June 2019, and we are now pretty much settled in, and putting the finishing touches to our new home. The Charleston area is a beautiful part of the country, but people are moving there in large numbers and traffic is becoming horrendous.

Plus, every time a hurricane heads towards the east coast the news media throws everyone into a panic, even though the threat might be 100 miles away. People evacuate, businesses shut down, gas stations run out of gas, etc., etc.

Where we live now, there is no threat of hurricanes, it is less populated, and is very rural, like living in the country. Yet we are only half an hour away from Greenville and all the retail shopping we would ever need. Our utility bills are cheaper, and we spend less on gas because we drive less, and spend less time sitting in traffic. I feel the move was a good decision.

At this point I would like to thank all my followers here and those on the Dave Moulton Bikes Facebook Group, for your continued support. My past requests for donations to help cover the cost of maintaining this blog and my Bike Registry, has this year exceeded my expectations.

For example, after my move, my computer quit, and it was necessary to buy a new one. There was enough money in my PayPal account, to cover this unexpected expense. This was largely due to your kind and generous donations. I appreciate your help and thank you.

This year I plan to attend the NAHBS Show in Dallas, TX. March 20 to 22, 2020. I will be giving a short seminar, and I hope to meet many old friends and make new ones. I am preparing by doing hour long brisk walks, as I know the show will involve a lot of standing and walking.

I wish you all a happy, healthful and prosperous New Year.

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Christmas through the years

Once again it is Christmas, how quickly the months and years fly by. Looking back, it is hard to believe I have been through 83 Christmas Days and the surrounding holidays.

Most have been good and happy occasions, but no one Christmas stands out as being different or special.

My childhood memories should have been special, and I guess in a way they were as I seem to remember them the most.

From the age of 5 (The earliest Christmas I remember.) to 9 years it was the war years, 1941 to1945, and every Christmas was so much the same that they all blend together.

I had a brother seven years older than me, and we would go out into the woods and find a Christmas tree, bring it home and decorate it. That was fun. My brother would usually climb a large tree and cut the top off, rather than cut down a small one. There were no Christmas Tree Farms, or trees for sale.

My Christmas stocking was one of my knee-high socks that I wore every day, and I could guarantee every year there would be an orange in the toe of that sock. Yes, an orange was a Christmas gift. Oranges did not grow in England, they had to be imported from Spain or some other Mediterranean country. And bananas, I never saw a banana until the war was over, they came from the West Indies or Florida.

In the leg part of my knee-high sock would be a rolled-up coloring book, and there would be a box of crayons or sometimes colored pencils.  Sometimes there might be a special edition comic book like a Walt Disney’s Mickey Mouse. Balloons were another thing I never saw until the war was over, all manufacturing went into the war effort, nothing as trivial as balloons were made.

I do remember one year going to a Christmas Party, and Santa came dressed in a red hat and white beard but was wearing a khaki army overcoat. We were told that Santa Claus had joined the Home Guard. The Home Guard was mostly older men, veterans of the First World War. They were issued a uniform and a rifle, and would have been Britain’s last line of defense, had the country been invaded.

I think the reason my childhood Christmas memories are good, was because my expectations were met. Had I expected more and then didn’t get it, I might have been less happy. But why should I expect more? I don’t remember the other kids I went to school with getting more than me.

In later years after the war, in my late teens or twenty’s, I had left home and lived in rented rooms. If I didn’t get invited to someone’s house, Christmas was a boring, waisted day. I had no TV, and all movie theatres and restaurants were closed.  Each Christmas since then I do tend to think of those spending Christmas alone.

Later I married and had children of my own, and those Christmases were special of course. Since coming to the USA, half a lifetime ago, it has become a tradition every Christmas I talk on the phone with my daughters, and granddaughters. Now in recent years I have Great Grandchildren too.

I think for me the older I get, the more content I am, and in a way every day is Christmas. It is hard to single out one special day and make it better that the rest. My expectations are always being met.

I have been blessed in my lifetime with the ability to build a few good bicycle frames. The fact that there are some out there that enjoy my past work, for me is the gift that keeps on giving. I could not ask for more, at Christmas or any other time.

I wish you all a joyous Christmas, or whatever it you celebrate at this time of the year.

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