First 'proper' ride after many yrs, many rants, some q's

[Mr Footlong]

Sorry for the bad word shortening but could only fit so much in.....

Well I finally had the time to go on my first proper off road ride yesterday. Was only supposed to be 20 miles as I didn't know the area, that went horribly wrong but more on that later. I used to be a 'pack rider' as a teen. All my friends were also MTB nuts so we used to regularly ride all over the north/south downs at the weekends, ride miles to school together etc etc.

Now I am just riding on my own with my MP3 player for company and it's not very enjoyable to be perfectly honest, I am using it purely for exercise and not really stopping to take in the scenery which is a real shame but anyway....

I had been riding the Voodoo regularly over to Basingstoke on road and took the Raven last week in MTB trim due to all the flooded backroads and she was brilliant so decided that yesterday was the day to go get back in to the mud.

Now i bought a Garmin Edge 705 a couple of months ago and although it had crashed once or twice on the route to Basingstoke/back, I wasn't prepared for the MTB trip from hell that it took me on yesterday! I have the GB street maps on it and the OS topographical maps and had found this to be the only real ride around here that was documented: http://www.gpsies.com/map.do?fileId=vjedrpzcshhudctr

I had ventured part-way out on that trip in the snow but ran out of daylight and had to come back. The GPS had crashed a good couple of times just on that trip but I tweaked it down to show much less detail etc etc and hoped. My Time ATACs had turned up finally and I stuck those on the raven instead of the Egg Beaters that kept launching me out of them for no good reason, turned them to minimal tension to engage/release. So, with the Raven all lubed up and ready for action I went out at 2pm, figuring that was ample time for a shortish ride......................

The Edge was a nightmare, it's ability to follow the loaded map was dead on for all the pre-programmed road stuff but was also off an awful lot and when it deemed you as 'going off the reservation' this was when it would try recalculating it's route and fall flat on it's arse, locking up. It was telling that there were routes in the woods where there clearly were not and this had a habit of presenting itself just after bombing it down a long downhill, forcing me to ride back up cursing, just to find nothing there lol. I lost count of how many times I had to reboot it and then just forgot to start the monitoring again for training/distance, grrr. I have double checked the route against Google maps and it is deadly accurate.

After it had a mega paddy about a mile away from Frensham Ponds I gave up and just used my brain. Once I got to frensham ponds I saw the what I though was the path it wanted but once again it was telling me to make a u-turn etc etc. It was a touch after 4 at this point if memory serves and I was thinking about getting home as quickly as poss due to failing light. Quit the route and pointed it to home, direct route. It started off sending me in what I was sure was the long way around but I decided that it had broken me and I wasn't going to argue. Lovely machine added probably 6 miles more on to the journey around the arse end of nowhere and brought me out near Bordon. Knew it was off but just wanted to get home one way or another. What a pile of steaming junk...............Made it home (Wrecclesham) from Frensham ponds 55 MINUTES after leaving there, thanks Garmin! lol :evil: :roll: .

Next rant, clipless pedals. Now, I have already put up a thread about this before but my god, they just hate me! I had dabbled with spds years back and for road riding they were ok, didn't like them off road. Got a set of standard Egg Beaters with the voodoo and bought the premium cleats. Again, fine for on road but I found that I disengaged far too easily FORWARDS out of them when off road :shock: ! Yes that's right, not twisting my feet out like normal but feet lurching forwards out of the clips when stopping abruptly etc! This was most bizarre and seemed dangerous to me and the last thing I want it is for my legs to come out of the pedals on big downhills etc.

So, I decided egg beaters were pants and due to knee problems/recent surgery on them I bought some Time Atacs. Fitted the cleats with the min 10 degree angle to disengage and min spring tension on the pedals. You really know when you lock in to these puppies! Felt very nice to begin with but I soon realised that these were stupidly tough to get out off in comparison to the egg beaters when I actually wanted too. A lot of the ride was deep silty, sandy tracks turfed up by horses too and the bike really bogged down in these, prompting me to disengage to balance, but couldn't in time so just fell over.......an awful lot....... embarrassing as hell. The angle to get out seems pretty damn heavy too.

This did my head in as I am a pretty agile cat for my size and haven't forgotten how to ride a bike well, I just need pedals that lock me in, don't disengage me at random points forwards, but also bloody well let me get my feet out quickly. Seriously, there must be something otherwise I am going back to toeclips and don't want to My right hip is actually bruised up today from all the falling.

Now, on to my next concern and this really was concerning/bloody scary!. Disc brakes, more specific, mechanical disc brakes. Mine really scare me. The Raven has BB7's fitted front and rear and I upgraded to a 203 disc up front and a 185 on the rear. Both discs werefairly straight so dialled the pads in and tightened the cable nice and tight, proper man-tight so that the discs were very responsive, the second you started to touch the lever the calipers would start moving to engage to I could stop on a dime. Now, the brakes started off perfectly but after just 2 downhills where I had to engage the pads for maybe 5-8 seconds I seemed to have no brakes left! Cables were done up tight, dialled the pads in quite a bit and got half my brakes back. 1 downhill later and I ran out of brakes while coming to a stop, levers to the bars, scary stuff. Once again dialled them in even more and cursed, lots, got the Front responding well again but forget about the rear......... Seriously guys, what't the cop with these over normal rim brakes???? I could trust my old rim brakes a HELL of a lot more that these disc doobries and they seem to need a lot less upkeep non?

Now finally, not a rant but another question. Tyres. I stuck to what I remembered so have a Panaracer Dart/Smoke combo. I found that the Smoke wasn't all that amazing in the proper slop mud (spinny but controlable) but the combo really bogged down and cut in to the sandy silt which I didn't like at all, prompting may fall offs combined with the ATACS. My concern is that I have to ride a fair bit of road around here to get to the off road sections so I spose rolling resistance is a bit of a concern for me but off road slopp mud AND siltuy sand performance is important to me. What would be a kick ass tyre combo for this and should be riding big wide tyres?

At least the Raven as a bike was a beauty as I expected, think the Risse lost a fair bit of pressure but have yet to check, that wasn't expected tbh. Due to having the MP3 player going, I couldn't hear any creaks/rattles so here's praying that all is still well lol.

Sorry for the life story but there you go!

Cheers,


Nick

 

[Jamiedyer]

Good ride

Sounds like an adventure........as all good rides should be.
Things like pedal problems and brakes going AWOL must have been really trying.
BB7's are good brakes so dont know what happened there, maybe they were too tight and maybe not bedded in. If too tight you will burn them up as they need to be able to release fully and if not bedded in either disc or pad and given heavy use, they will just glaze over and refuse to stop.
I use shimano and wellgo pedals on road and off and never had any problems once setup. The wellgos I really like, I have had one set for the last ten years and they are used regularly and always work perfectly. Use, clean and put away. Cant get better than that.

Jamie

 

[JeRkY]

Pedal wise, it sounds like a case of adjustment and practice. Everyone has had their SPD foolish fall off moments, once you have the adjustment suited to your technique (or the other way around) it should become second nature with practice.

Brakes, I have had a friend suffer similar issues with a BB5 on the rear. managed to patch it on the go by winding it in a bit more but it soon started to feel sloppy again. Not really heard any other complaints about them to be honest.

Satnav...bah! :roll:

 

[Mr Footlong]

Trust me, the Satnav is purely because I don't know around here. I could quite happily go off to Oxshott etc 16 years on and know exactly where I was going! I really don't know what was going on the the BB7's either. I am a real tweak freek and had them set up dead centre to make sure that there was plenty of pad either side to make good contact and allow me to dial in more pad as they wore down on rides

The Times are set to min spring tension and the cleats set to the lower exit angle, they just soooo don't let you exit without a fight in comparison to the CBs. I think I am going to have to get another set of spuds and see how I get on. If only the CBs had stronger springs, I would be sold..

Any subjective opinions about tyres? Looking at user reviews on CRC etc only gets me so far. Without my old crew around to compare against, I have noooo clue these days

Cheers,


Nick.

 

[legrandefromage]

england is too small to require sat nav on a bicycle ride. Just pick a couple of well known points of interest, coms towers, TV masts, etc and keep them in sight.

SPDs - the only time I've had real issues with these is in snow, they work great under water and when covered in mud. Have never used any other type.

Brakes, I had a problem with cable operated brakes where I hadnt shifted one of the pads over far enough for the piston to engage so the piston could only push onto the disk up to a certain point. That was scary and my fault for not checking.

My last ride was on 20 year old Wolber MTB tires - they were fine...

 

[zigzag]

Is there a software update that'll stop the Garman from crashing so much? If not, sell the bugger - sounds like a lot of heartache for very little benefit.

Hook up with your local retrobike group and get riding with them, don't worry about your fitness level - up in MacRetro land, we've got a pretty broad range of fitness levels, and nobody gets left behind. And stopping frequently for a blether is part of the experience.

Hopefully you can figure out the pedals/cleats, as stated TIMBERRRR moments are inevitable, no matter how comfortable you are with them. I think the benefits outweigh the occasional embarassment. Find what suits and persevere, for me SPDs suit me, although I run the tightness backed way off so clipping out is nice and easy. You mentioned bad knees too - I've found SPDs can be pretty sensitive to cleat positioning on the bottom of the shoe, and if I don't get it just right I do end up with a sore knee.

No experience of the BB5s, but I just love hydraulic disc brakes and 1-finger braking. If there is one thing I hate about riding retro, it's bloody rim brakes!

 

[legrandefromage]

looking up your BB5 caliper they look like the are similar to mine. You should have a dial on the inside or an allen key adjustment to bring the static pad over. So when you pull your lever, the arm brings the active pad towards the rotor and into contact with the static pad.

if the static pad is set too far away, the rotor will just flex and the active pad will come to the end of its reach.

 

[Mr Footlong]

The BB7's to have a static pad and this was dialled out to make sure decent contact was made with the disc (plenty of pad out) without the active pad having to push the disc over much. I always do them so that either side is just 2 click off catching the disc. Hearing the 'tssh tssh tssh of disc rub would do my nut, or do you all put up with that when you setup? The one good thing is that you can dial the active and the static pad by hand. Until I take the wheels off and have a good look at the state of the pads who knows...

 

[legrandefromage]

The BB7's to have a static pad and this was dialled out to make sure decent contact was made with the disc (plenty of pad out) without the active pad having to push the disc over much. I always do them so that either side is just 2 click off catching the disc. Hearing the 'tssh tssh tssh of disc rub would do my nut, or do you all put up with that when you setup? The one good thing is that you can dial the active and the static pad by hand. Until I take the wheels off and have a good look at the state of the pads who knows...

unfortunately, as only one pad moves, a little 'tish tish' has to be put up with.

hydrolics dont have this issue...

 

[JeRkY]

Thinking back to the time my mate had issues with his BB5, there was a locking grub screw that needed to be done up tight other wise the pad adjustment vibrated out.

I assume you have this tight (if it even exists any where but in my mind)?