Bike Repairs, This Time With No Carbs
So... I had a dandy little fix for my shifter lever. Then I snagged my judo bag* on it and popped it back off again. Unfortunately, I lost a very small piece of plastic that triggers a lever which releases a spring which brings my bike up a gear.
*The Cathy bag, in case anybody's wondering.
Naturally, I replaced it with something similar to plastic: a dry noodle. I took a soumen noodle I found in my cupboard and broke four small pieces of roughly equal length off of it, then taped them together.
Then I did it again, this time being careful not to snap the noodle by taping too vigorously. At left is the second one that didn't break. I cut it apart so you could see I could stack them and make that super-cool picture.
So... as it turns out, 80%, 15C thermal cycling, and a few heavy rains turn a noodle into a wet noodle. Normally, you don't care when that kind of thing happens, but you don't normally include noodles in bike repairs, either.
To illustrate - and because I was bored in Photoshop a few days ago - I took a few additional pictures.
If you were to look at figure A, you'd see an arrow pointing to the hole where one end of the noodle was glued. You'd also see a bunch of suspiciously mold-resembling spots that are little bits of superglue. I don't know how it did that, but that's what it is.
If you were to look at figure B, you'd see what the noodle-repair looked like in one piece.
If you were to look at figure C, you'd see why it is that it doesn't make for a great replacement for a piece of plastic.
At that's the story of how I fixed my bike with a noodle. The end.
Ish.
Yesterday, while I was talking with Yanavy, I cut a part of a spoon to size and I'm going to try that next. It's actually made of plastic, so I have high hopes for it. I've left it inside for a day to cure, and I had planned on putting the assembly back on my bike tonight, but I don't want to try and explain to the manager tomorrow morning why I'm riding my bike out the front door. I'll probably put it on tomorrow night as a break from studying for my doom kanji test.
*The Cathy bag, in case anybody's wondering.Naturally, I replaced it with something similar to plastic: a dry noodle. I took a soumen noodle I found in my cupboard and broke four small pieces of roughly equal length off of it, then taped them together.
Then I did it again, this time being careful not to snap the noodle by taping too vigorously. At left is the second one that didn't break. I cut it apart so you could see I could stack them and make that super-cool picture.
So... as it turns out, 80%, 15C thermal cycling, and a few heavy rains turn a noodle into a wet noodle. Normally, you don't care when that kind of thing happens, but you don't normally include noodles in bike repairs, either.
To illustrate - and because I was bored in Photoshop a few days ago - I took a few additional pictures.
If you were to look at figure A, you'd see an arrow pointing to the hole where one end of the noodle was glued. You'd also see a bunch of suspiciously mold-resembling spots that are little bits of superglue. I don't know how it did that, but that's what it is.If you were to look at figure B, you'd see what the noodle-repair looked like in one piece.
If you were to look at figure C, you'd see why it is that it doesn't make for a great replacement for a piece of plastic.
At that's the story of how I fixed my bike with a noodle. The end.
Ish.
Yesterday, while I was talking with Yanavy, I cut a part of a spoon to size and I'm going to try that next. It's actually made of plastic, so I have high hopes for it. I've left it inside for a day to cure, and I had planned on putting the assembly back on my bike tonight, but I don't want to try and explain to the manager tomorrow morning why I'm riding my bike out the front door. I'll probably put it on tomorrow night as a break from studying for my doom kanji test.
Labels: bike, not dead yet, not メロンパン, pictures, repair
posted by William at
12/15/2008 10:54:00 PM
2 Comments:
Good luck with your kitchen bike project...noodles and spoons, eh.
Good luck with doom kanji test, also. Perhaps noodles would help with that, too.
Hey, kanji for noodle? Or probably multi kanji since there are multi varieties of noodles.
That Kathy bag has had 3 different owners now, I think, and now it's been across the world.
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