Gardening!

Today was another time I'm glad to own the quad. Since last posting Ben (TriSled) has added a Rohloff and two wheel drive. And 5kg I reckon, it's up to about 33kg without bin now. But it is excellent to ride now, traction is noticably improved and the Rohloff... is a Rohloff. So nice. I have a 30/50-ish double chainring on it which has a shifter but is pretty much loaded/unloaded gearing. Tyhe hub is geared down about 2:3 before the rear axle so gearing is pretty low. I could put a smaller chainring on (triple) to get decent gears for really steep hills when I'm loaded but I might wait until the warranty on the Rohloff expires.

Here's me weighing the beastie: (Click for large)

Total about 200kg of load. Felt quite good to ride (the garden shop is a long, gentle uphill from here so coming back is mostly a matter of occasional pedallingto get up slight rises in and overall downhill trend. I still managed to get a bit sweaty though.

More photos on moz.net.nz (Bibble is giving me the shits so I've just deleted the index file and left you to it)

Cheeky Transport xmas party

My local bike shop have an annual party in the park with food and entertainment laid on. Pics and stuff on my site. I'm slightly sunburnt and very full of excellent food. Check out the photos...

Power Tool Selloff

When Megan went overseas I bought a pile of tools and stuff off her, while she was in her "get rid of everything right now" mood, so I ended up with a few duplicates. Including some bulky power tools, so I'm selling those off. Pics and stuff at moz.net.nz, email me or ring me if you're interested.



Workshop construction continues, probably post more pics later but I'm still working on the bench, adding drawers right now, then a shelf. And waiting for Ben to send me bike bits.

Workshop!

I've finally found a flat where I can actually build bikes. We have a single garage about 8m long by 3m wide with brick walls and no close residents. So I've started by installing 10 hooks along one wall to hang bikes on (and all the hooks are full, but we still have bikes left over). Between me (three bikes hanging, two not), Phuong (three bikes hanging) and Mitchell (four bikes hanging). Unfortunately that uses about 5m of wall and there's not much left for the quad and binbike (each about 2m long).

So I've bought a TIG welder and built a 2m long workbench that will eventually have a lockable shelf for the welder and tools, but right now just has a vice on it. This week I will hopefully get the shelf and drawers installed, and another shelf up in the garage to hold more of the stuff we seem to have accumulated.

I'll probably blog more about it, but mostly just update the page at Mozbike where I will describe the stuff I use to build the bikes you see here. You don't need lots of expensive tools, people like Alex have almost everything you need in a much smaller space and much lower cost, but I've been there and done that, and now I want something a little better. At Ken's place I built One Less Ute in a space exactly 5cm shorter than the frame, with no flat surfaces. It was not fun. Designing bikes to fit around the workshop is a bit of an avoidable limitation. So since it's my workshop, the bench is two metres long and there's a decent vice bolted to one end, and a nearly decent vice bolted to the other end. And I have a TIG welder. But I'm going to have to sell half the tools I got off Megan, having two circular saws, two power drills and a router is a bit much.

More details on Mozbike.com

20" Wheeled Commuter Bike

I've destroyed two 8 speed Shitmano nexus hubs so far, they each lasted about 5000km before failing. I've decided they are just not designed for people like me. So I've got a third one in my commuter (a 26" wheel On-One "Inbred" singlespeed frame). I'm pretty happy with the bike except for the hub, but putting a proper hub into it would be quite tricky, and I'd have to buy another one (about $2000).

So instead I will spend way more than $2000 on a TIG welder, tools and tubing to build my own. I told you I was a really smart guy!

My plan at this stage is to put my 20" wheel Rohloff into a forth bike, this time a fairly lightweight commuting frame. Possibly even a frame that breaks in the middle so it packs smaller for transport. If the bike works I'll build one for Phuong too, as her existing 24" wheel MTB is somewhat on the heavy side for someone who only weighs 50kg or so.

But first there's tools to acquire, workshop to arrange, and bits to buy.

Rocco's version of One Less Ute

I just got email from an italian called Rocco who was inspired by www.mozbike.com to create his own version of One Less Ute. it's very cool, and I like hearing from people that have done stuff like this with my help.



That's currently hosted on a site, www.piubici.org that promoted cycling in Milan which he's helped to set up. In Italian, for those who read that language. There's cool pictures for the rest of us.

Fancy Trailer

I've been thinking about a replacement for MegaTrailer for a while now. MegaTrailer is big and old, and I've donated it to Bike Club. Basically, I'm trying to justify spending big bucks on a TIG welder and this is yet another project that will use it :)



Simple design, easy enough to execute, and should work quite well. I've got a proper write-up page on MozBike

Moving stuff on the quad

Today was a little busy, I had megatrailer on the quad and was biking around the place for a couple of hours. Phuong went to a fan-dancing lesson and found a somewhat overstuffed couch and reclining armchair so we traded up. It's definitely better than our old couch (also found on the side of the road), which we put out the front and then neighbours in unit one grabbed it.



After our usual lunch at the Addison Road Organic markets (thanks Paul and Fiona) we rode off most of the way to work to pick up a single bed that Phuong found on Freecycle Sydney. That was not huge fun, Old Pyrmont Bridge road is pretty busy and there's not a lot of spare road space for moronists to go round me safely on the uphills. On the way back we found a queen size mattress so that got piled that on top. Then in Enmore we got a couch-frame for Phuong's futon base but luckily for me that turned out to be a lightweight steel frame rather than the big heavy wooden one that Kelly had. So, now we have a lounge organised. Yippee