aidandj

iTrader: (5)

Come on man. You're in NYC. Solution=fixie.

Joe Perez

iTrader: (8)

It's a $150 department store bike, so I know for an absolute fact that I've been pushing the performance envelope since day 1.

One of the dilemmas faced by commuters in NYC is that a nice bike is great to ride, but you have to counter that against the fact that it stays outside every night, and bike thieves own battery-powered cutoff saws, you sometimes see expensive Kryptonite U-locks cut in half lying on the sidewalk. The lock and chain I use cost nearly as much as the bike did, and despite being a POS, I've still had accessories stolen off of it. (My bell disappeared last week, and my $10 bidon cage was lifted a few months ago.)


Also, I have a single front chainring- no derailleur. 7 on the back, 1 in the front. This happened while slamming the rear all the way from one end to the other (twist shifter, I hate trigger shifters on the street.)


It really is an astoundingly cheap bike, but it's been a champ. Been riding on the rough streets of Manhattan every day for a little over a year, and no major damage. I obviously did a complete teardown of it before I put it into service (cleaned and repacked every single bearing with Park PPL-1 grease, including the bearings in the pedal shafts) and I keep the spokes true, the cables lubed, and the chain clean and oiled, but for a steel-framed Chinese copy of a '70s vintage Schwinn, it's been a trooper.

The rear is SRAM , I do have the manual, and I do keep it properly adjusted. One click = 1 cog, every time.

And it ain't broken per se, it's just cheap. I've been eyeballing a Diamondback recently which has an 8-speed internally geared hub and hydraulic discs. Being able to shift while stopped would be very nice, for when you come to an abrupt halt on an incline when a taxi cuts you off, and don't have time to properly shift all the way down before coming to a stop.

Joe Perez

iTrader: (8)

We do have a lot of them. And I chuckle to myself every time I blow past a fixie rider going up Murray Hill in the morning.

HOWEVER, true story:

Last night on my way home, I watched a guy on a fixie with no brakes get hit by a taxicab. He was in the bike lane (which runs along the left side of 1st ave, with some separation from the traffic lane), and the cab made a left turn right in front of him. If he'd had normal brakes on both wheels, he could have stopped in time. Instead, he collided with the front-left corner of the taxi, and was thrown about 6 feet onto the pavement. I stopped (along with a few other riders) and stayed with him until the meatwagon arrived. I don't think he was seriously injured (he stayed conscious and was talking) but he was definitely in pain and slightly disoriented.

Itty

I'm so glad I don't live in a city. Sorry to jump to conclusions about your inability to adjust a FD.

aidandj

iTrader: (5)

I did something similar to that. Except I had zero chance of stopping because the car was directly to my left, and made a right turn in front of me. I flipped over the trunk and into the intersection. Lost both my shoes actually, it was kinda funny. Got somewhat torn up, but no ambulance or anything. Friend gave me a ride home.

Was he wearing a helmet?

The lady who hit me was terrified I was going to sue, and kept asking what she could do. I kept saying nothing until she offered me a check. She gave me $70 bucks and I bought the new headset I wanted.

emilio700

iTrader: (3)

I see. Better bike, not an option. Maybe fab an ugly little chainguide?
Inspiration: Chain Catchers for Road, Cross, and MTB Bikes - K-EDGE

Check the chain for stretch though. Stretched (worn out) chain will round down chainring teeth and derail too easily.

Joe Perez

iTrader: (8)

Hehe, no sweat.

There are dozens of bike shops in NYC, maybe hundreds. The crappy ones don't survive. This is just the lower half of Manhattan, which is just one of the five boroughs. Don't just look at the named spots, look at all the little red dots whose names don't even fit on the page:






There are two small shops near me in particular which I visit when I need parts (tubes, bearing *****, brake pads, etc) and they're both extremely competent shops run by knowledgeable cyclists who stock quality parts. And, surprisingly, none of them have ever laughed at me when I've brought my bike into the store. (They see a *lot* of old, beat-to-**** bikes around here.)




Yeah, he had a helmet on, and gloves. I'm guessing he just got the wind knocked out of him and maybe cracked a couple of ribs. Looked similar to what happened to me last year when I broke my hand in a pedestrian near-miss.

Joe Perez

iTrader: (8)

Hmm, interesting.

A better bike isn't totally out of the question, like I said, I've been thinking about upgrading anyway. I just don't want to assume the risk which comes from chaining $2k to a streetlamp on the side of 1st ave every night. One of the reasons I bought the bike I have now is that it looks extremely cheap and ugly. It doesn't catch the eye, just blends in with the hundreds of other cheap, ugly bikes in my neighborhood. What I'd *love* is something with a belt drive and an 8-spd hub, but I haven't found anything like that at a price that doesn't make my eyes water (and in a frame size that fits me.)

You do see high-end road bikes on the street sometimes, but those are mostly owned by people who bring them with them into the office by day, and carry them inside the apartment at night. Neither my office building nor my apt building allow that. The mainstream cycling population in Manhattan use either 26"-wheeled MTBs or 700c hybrids, with maybe a 5% fixie population (much higher in Brooklyn and the Village) and another 5-10% on good road bikes.



This chain is only about 8 months old (the one that came with the bike was utter garbage which rusted almost immediately) but I'll check it under tension with the dial-caliper anyway. Like I said, common problem on this bike.

DNMakinson

iTrader: (3)

Is the chainline somehow adjustable, as in moving both Bottom Bracket cups to left or right? Also the lock nuts on the rear axle? Is the chainring bent? Did you install a thin (though I don't know how it would fit the teeth of chainring and hub) derailer chain instead of a proper 3/32", stiffer, single-speed chain? (questions are rhetorical).

hustler

iTrader: (6)

You motivated/embarrassed me enough that I read the manuals and bingo, works every time. Shimano documentation is quite detailed, I was a bit surprised. FWIW, I shift under-power to an irresponsible degree with my 6800 stuff and it never drops chain. I'm not sure how often the chain-keeper comes into play, But I suppose it's good insurance.

hustler

iTrader: (6)

I am a bit surprised that you can't bring a bicycle inside. I suppose I couldn't cut it in NYC.

Itty

I definitely wouldn't make it in NYC. I currently have 12 bikes and enough parts to build ~4 more in my garage (between my roommate and me). Couple that with 2 cars and there is just no way the city life would work for me. Unless I sold all my stuff. But I like my stuff.

kotomile

iTrader: (24)

Bikes outside are a no-go for me too, much to the perturbation of my wife.

Itty

When I lived in an apartment in college it was ridiculous. My walls were lined with bikes instead of art.

Joe Perez

iTrader: (8)

First off, let me explain that I'm not trying to troubleshoot a bike that used to work perfectly and then suddenly developed a mysterious fault. I'm just griping about a bike that I knew to be badly designed and cheaply made when I bought it. When I did the initial teardown and rebuild, there was dirt (literally, like soil from the ground) in some of the bearings. My expectations were not, and are not, high.

But, to put the bike theft problem into perspective, this was the first bike I bought when I moved here:



It cost $89 at WalMart. I made the mistake of assuming that it would be safe with the cable-lock which I used when in lived in SoCal & Silicon Valley to anchor my $1.5k ebike. It wasn't. Disappeared in less than a month.



That said, the geometry of the chainwheel is not adjustable in any axis. The crank is one piece Ashtabula-style, the chainwheel is held in place by friction, and the positioning of the whole assembly is dictated by the fact that the inner bearing races are simply metal cups pressed into the bottom bracket.

However, with the chain on the middle cog in the back, everything is pretty much straight-ish and parallel-ish.


I purchased the chain from a reputable LBS, and it is correctly sized. And there's no undue wear, it's just a cheap bike which lives a hard life.

Joe Perez

iTrader: (8)

My workplace is in a very upscale art-deco skyscraper built in the 1930s, with a grandiose gilded and marble-lined lobby, lots of security guards, and RFID-card turnstiles between the revolving-door entrance and the various elevator lobbies. It's in the National Register of Historic Places, and is a recognized National Historic Landmark.

Have you ever seen the original 1978 Superman movie? The "Daily Planet" newspaper was (fictionally) located in my building, and the scene where Clark Kent and Lois Lane have a conversation in front of a gigantic globe was shot in my lobby.




They don't even like it when our field camera crews walk through there wearing T-shirts. No way in hell they're letting bicycles through. (Not that you could easily get it through the turnstile, regardless.)



At home, it's not impossible to bring a bike up into my apartment (I do it for maintenance), it's just too inconvenient to do on a daily basis. You're not allowed to bring them through the front lobby, you have to get buzzed through two heavy doors at the service entrance, balance the bike on the back wheel to get it around a tight turn, use the freight elevator to get up to your floor, and then once again balance the bike on the back wheel to navigate it through the trash room and down the hallway. Not something I care to do twice a day.

Joe Perez

iTrader: (8)

Hehe.

My walls aren't exactly lined with bikes, but I do keep the backup bike hanging on the wall between the kitchen and the living room:





It's identical to the primary bike, just a different color, slightly older, slightly narrower tires (35 vs 40) and with different racks on the back. This one used to be the Jersey-side bike when I lived in Hoboken and took the PATH train under the river every day.

emilio700

iTrader: (3)

Cobbed together chain guide.

hustler

iTrader: (6)

Today I went on a leisurely ride with:
2015 Texas age 40-49 TT champ
201x Leadville age-group winner (40-49 as well, I think)
2015 Texas road race champ age 50-59
Three other dudes who race at Leadville and finish front-half all the time
like five other dudes, all cat-3 or faster

...and I made it 63 or 72 miles with the group. It ******* hurt, bad.

kotomile

iTrader: (24)

Whee!