Following the video guide I mentioned in a post the other day, I today replaced the handlebar tape on my commuter. Turned out to be pretty easy, which makes a nice change, as typically things lately have ended up being more of a PITA than I originally thought it would.

This is a picture of the job half done – I did finish it later, honest. The black stuff is what came on the bike when I bought it. I thought a change to red would be good, the Fulcrum Racing 5 wheels I put on the bike a while ago have a bit of red on them, so it matches that a little.

The only real problem I had was taking one of the bar stops off the bike to begin with. The bike came with bar stops that were screwed in. One came out easy, the other seemed to be jammed in to begin with, but with the help of a trusty hammer, I got it out.

After that, it was just a case of following the instructions on the video. Previous experience of changing the tape on my badminton racquet many hundreds of times stood me in good stead, so it didn’t turn out to be a nightmare.

I had bought some white spirit from B&Q before I started, with the intention of needing it to clean the handlebars of crap. But when I took the old tape off, all that was left on the bars was some of the sticky stuff, and to be honest, I figure the more sticky stuff there is, the more likely the new handlebar tape is going to stay stuck to the bars, so I left it on.

Also, there turned out to be some handlebar gel under the old tape, so I decided to keep it and put the new tape over the top of the gel. Extra padding is never a bad thing.

I used some black electrical tape to fasten the ends of the tape to the bars before I used the included finishing tape that came with the red tape. That worked well. And the bar stops fitted in nicely. I suspect all handlebars much have uniform sized holes at the end.

So, job done!

There’s a junction in Edinburgh that’s close to the most dangerous I’ve ever experienced, at the north end of North Leith Sands. The specific point is highlighted by the green arrow (not the red marker, damn you Google Maps).

If you are heading west from Ocean Terminal, and are *not* turning left up North Leith Sands but are instead heading west straight on towards ASDA, then you are in grave danger of being t-boned by a car coming northwards downhill on North Leith Sands. The reason for this is that virtually no-one goes straight on (i.e. continuing west towards ASDA), since it is a cul-de-sac for cars, but there is access at the end for peds/cycles. Every day I go through this junction, and almost every time a car comes down that road, I have to be very aware that they are almost certainly going to go straight over, turning right towards OT, as they will assume I will be turning left. Indeed, yesterday someone actually stopped correctly, and I thanked them because it is such a rare occurrence. I’m very surprised no-one’s been killed or seriously injured there (or maybe they have and I am unaware of it).

Therefore, if you happen to be planning a visit to Ocean Terminal on your bike, do take care at that junction.

OK, I’ve now discovered since my last post that Shimano Claris is indeed a new name. It seems to be a new groupset introduced in 2013, and that Wikipedia page was just trying to confuse me. Therefore, the groupset on my commuter is indeed the 2300 groupset, not Claris.

Sometimes, you have to break things to see how they work. I’m not recommending this practice, but it does sometimes make things clearer.

So I’ve always wondered how to get in at the cables within the ST-2303 shifters. For those who, like me about 2 hours ago, have no clue what that is, it’s the “dual action control level” on a bike with a Shimano Claris groupset. Indeed, I didn’t even know the name Claris until 30 seconds ago, when I discovered it on Wikipedia, but I’m also not convinced that this name has existed for very long because I’ve found a couple of Shimano specifications, one for Tiagra which says Tiagra and another for the 2300 series which says bugger all about Claris. Odd. (Note I later discovered it’s not Claris after all; see next post) Either way, the 2300 groupset is basically the bottom of the range groupset, which is fine considering the bike I have with that on it was a low-spec Specialized roadie. I bought it in 2010 as my first road bike in many years, and didn’t want to break the bank, and it’s fine, tbh.

Anyway, on with the story.

The shifters on this bike are ST-2303, because it’s a triple chainring bike (ST-2300 being on the double chainring version). I’ve never figured out how to get the cables changed, not that I’ve tried, but I’ve mainly not tried because it’s not been possible to see how to get at the bastards, and therefore how to get the cable out.

After a particularly shit day at work (that’s another story), I got home having set a new PB on a Strava segment and decided to unscrew a screw within the shifter. This, it turns out, was not a good idea, but at the time I couldn’t see how else you could possibly change the cable. Indeed, it’s possible that this wasn’t a bad idea, but at the time, when I couldn’t get it back together again, it certainly seemed like the worst idea possible.

You will note from the picture above that there is indeed a screw evident when I pull on the brake (I’m pulling on the brake to take the picture). This was the fateful screw I removed. The casing then twisted slightly and I could not, for the life of me, get it back in again. No matter what I did, it just wouldn’t move back into position. It stayed slightly twisted out of alignment.

The answer was really quite simple. All I needed to do was to put the bike in the lowest gear (smallest chainring, those are the ones next to your cranks), and low and behold, I could put the casing back in place again with little problem.

So what I learned from this experience was a few things:

1. Don’t remove that screw, unless you have to
2. You don’t need to remove the screw to change your inner gear cable
3. If you do remove that screw, make sure your gear is in the lowest one, and you should be able to get the casing back in place relatively easily. If you are not in that gear, you have no chance

Next up, I’m going to see how to replace the brake cable. To do that, I need to be ready to put new handlebar tape on. This is something I’ve not done before, but I watched this video and it looks pretty easy:

Not only that, but it looks very similar to wrapping a badminton racquet with new grip, which I’ve done hundreds, or possibly thousands, of times, so I reckon I should be ok.

Oh, and incidentally, if you want to get the instructions for a Shimano 2300 / Claris shifter, you just need to Google for “Shimano ST-2300“, and you should get a link to a PDF pretty high up in your search results. That PDF probably came with your bike and ended up in the bin / filed so well you can’t find it. That PDF is also pretty handy as it tells you the part names of other bits of your groupset, such as the rear mech, which is cunningly named RD-2300 (RD being for Rear Derailleur, the proper name for a rear mech).

Hurrah!

I can’t recall when I put the Continental Gatorskins on my commuter, but it was a bloody good decision, because the number of flats I got significantly reduced. However, I needed to replace them today, having purchased a pair for £52 from Velo Ecosse. I managed to get a stone stuck in the side of the tyre within 4 weeks of putting them on my bike, and it was really quite amazing that the tyre didn’t puncture, because the tyre took so much damage. However, the hole has been getting gradually worse over the months, and on Friday, I noticed that the inner tube was prolapsing through the tyre, so it was finally time to replace it.

I took the front and back tyres off, and inspected them to see how much crap was stuck in them. And it defied belief. The amount of glass that was embedded deeply in the tyre was amazing, including one large piece which was completely hidden from view. It was under the smallest slit in the tyre, but once the tyre was off the wheel and I bent the tyre over around the slit, it opened up to show this huge chunk of glass deep within the tyre.

To be honest, the amount of glass I took out of the tyre is enough to start a small double glazing firm.

There’s not much I can do in terms of taking routes that avoid glass. If you want to go from one side of Edinburgh to the other twice a day, every day, then you need to accept that broken glass is going to be everywhere, especially on cycle paths, so the only way to deal with it is to use a tyre that is quite resistant to glass. And the Conti Gatorskins have done a good job for me so far – fingers crossed the next pair do as well.

On the commuter roadie, I can’t get the rear mech into the lowest gear. The limit screws are fine as I can manually push it in there, and the bike can easily get into all the other gears without any issues at all. It just won’t shift into the lowest gear.

Methinks I need to remove and grease up the cable, as I suspect it’s just a bit sticky, but this scares the crap out of me.

I have always wanted to get my bike on a train, such that I could cycle to some faraway place and get the train back home again. I’m not going to do this every time I take a cycle at the weekend, but I was intrigued to see what it was like, and how easy it was.

Turns out it’s really quite easy.

First of all, you can reserve a bike space when booking your train ticket online. You have to reserve a seat at the same time, but that’s no problem since it’s free. Win. Your cycle reservation is also free.

The space itself was completely different to how I imagined it would be. You basically have two sticks that protrude from the side of the train and you rest your bike on said sticks. The sticks have a ribbed plastic thingy on it so that your bike doesn’t slide around all over the place, and it also has straps for you to put around your bike so that it stays in place.

The picture of my bike on said device is above. Note that the front wheel isn’t straight because a family had their buggy in the space too. Technically they shouldn’t have had it in there, but it wasn’t a problem as my bike and their buggy could easily share the space. I’m pointing it out merely to explain why my wheel is sideways rather than in line with the rest of the bike.

The space you can see there is for 2 bikes, so if the front wheel was straight, that wouldn’t be a problem; indeed, I reckon you could likely get 3 road bikes on there if you needed to.

I took a ride out to Fife again today, but instead of stopping at Inverkeithing, I went to Cupar, from where I took the train home. I had my route all planned out using the Garmin Connect web site, and it was uploaded to my Garmin Edge 800. However, some of the cycle paths turned out to not be suitable for the bike I was riding, which is a road bike. I ended up giving up on one of the paths because it was so slow. Therefore, mainly so I remember myself in the future which bits to avoid and what I should have done, I’m making note of them here.

The main parts of the route that were troublesome are visible in this image, which is of the planned route, not what I actually did. Click the image to see the full sized version.

Now, I will tell you what I will do next time – I’ll take the A921 from Inverkeithing, all the way to Kirkcaldy. Yes, that’s a fairly fast road with cars on it, but the time it took on the cycle path was ridiculous.

First, Dalgety Bay. The cycle route at first was ok, nice wide paths and it was obvious where to go. That is, until you get to the street called “The Bridges”, where I went the wrong way. However, that was quickly resolved as the Edge bleats loudly at you when you make a wrong turn. Up to Moray Way, bit of a climb, but still fine, and then you travel north to get to the ironically named Moray Way South (ironic, in that it is north of Moray Way, albeit south of Moray Way North; a lack of future planning, perhaps?). At the roundabout, you turn right and then go on a massive detour to get to a cycle path that runs parallel with Moray Way South, but is not suitable for a road bike. Some bits were ok, lots of bits were not. However, the rest of the route up to Aberdour was good, so maybe you sacrifice some speed for a safer ride.

Once in Aberdour, if you are following cycle routes, you don’t stay on the main road for long before turning right and taking another cycle path, as shown here:

Planned: Aberdour to Burntisland

Big mistake. While the previous one out of Dalgety Bay is touch and go as to whether you take it, the one going east from Aberdour is absolutely to be avoided. It got really bad at a point where you have to go through a small tunnel under what I can only assume to be the railway line. It was a mud-pit at this point – and this was at a dry period in Scotland! I got halfway to Burntisland and decided enough was enough. This path is just shocking; maybe if you are on a MTB you would prefer it, but if you’re on a roadie, do not take this path from Aberdour to Burntisland, just stay on the A921 instead. Here’s what I did instead, and you can see the point halfway where I abandoned the path as it’s where I doubled back on myself to get up to the road:

Actual: Aberdour to Burntisland

I have on occasion used a tactic to prevent cars from overtaking which doesn’t sound like it should work, but seems to work 99% of the time. And what’s more, it doesn’t seem to irritate drivers in the same way that taking primary does.

The scenario is relatively specific, but happens a lot – you’re coming up to some kind of pinch point, there’s a vehicle behind you and you can hear from its engine that it’s going to try to overtake and that, with the pinch point coming up, they have not realised that the speed the bicycle is going at, this isn’t going to end well (for the cyclist, anyway).

What I now do when this situation is about to happen is simply to look over my right shoulder at the vehicle. Indeed, not even so much as turning my head right round, but merely turning it enough so that I can see him out of the side of my eye, much like I would when I’m glancing behind me, but keeping my head turned like that for a good couple of seconds. It helps that I tend to ride with sunglasses on, because this means I can actually continue to look straight ahead with my eyes, but the driver behind me doesn’t know this and thinks I’m continuing to look at him.

What seems to happen is that the driver then slows down. Very, very rarely does the driver continue with their manoeuvre. Indeed, I can’t recall the last time the driver did this.

It seems an odd tactic that really shouldn’t work, but for some reason, it does. Maybe the driver is suddenly thrown into the mindset that the cyclist, now watching them, is carefully watching whatever stupidity they are going to attempt before it happens, and therefore they think twice about doing it. I’m really not sure. But as I say, it seems to work.

I bought a pair of Specialized Tahoe shoes today, as my old MTB shoes have a sole that is really solid plastic, and when walking on hard floors at work, it sounds like I have high heels on.

I’ve not tried them out yet, but the point of this post is merely to state how phenomenally difficult it was to remove the plastic cover so that I could attach my cleats. The instructions were correct, in that you do lift the rubber patch off the shoe, but it was stuck on with industrial strength glue and took a hell of a lot of effort, including many minutes hacking away at the rubber with a Stanley knife.

I finally got there, and I took a picture when I had removed one, just to show you what they look like once you have the rubber patch off, in case you run in to the same issue:

Specialized Tahoe, cleat space

The hoods on my road bike looked a little odd when I went for a spin last week:

I didn’t remember then being aligned inwards as much as they were. It looked odd. But the thing was that it didn’t feel uncomfortable, it felt normal. But it still looked strange. A quick chat with a friend identified that they were indeed not right, in that they should not be converging but instead should be parallel with each other, therefore in line with the drops.

What I’d never managed to work out before was how to adjust the hoods. I couldn’t even tell how they were attached to the bars. I could tell from the fact that the handlebar tape was under the hood rubber that the hoods go on after the handlebar tape goes on, but there was no obvious way for how to attach the things. They seemed to stay there by magic.

However, I have now discovered how it’s done. Ultimately, you need to peel back the rubber and find a hole into which you can stick a 5mm allen key. Turn it left to loosen it, not too much so that it comes out completely, but just enough so you can rotate the hoods, and bingo – align them, turn the bolt back right again to tighten, and you’re done. Then do the other side.

As with everything, it’s easy when you know how. The biggest issue I had was merely finding the hole. It was so hidden, that even when I could see the hole, it wasn’t obvious that it was a 5mm hexagon into which an allen key would fit. But now I do. Therefore, it ended up being a 5 minute job.

I think they ended up like that because the bolts were not particularly tight, as it was quite easy to loosen them. I therefore think that the bolts have been a tiny bit loose and I have therefore pushed the hoods inwards slowly over time, and it was only when I had put the bike away for 5 weeks (due to breaking myself, see previous posts) that it was then obvious that something was wrong, when I pulled the bike out of storage.

I’ve always been keen on cycling, ever since I was a kid, but I didn’t really know that much about the bikes themselves. Back in 2010, I decided I wanted to get a proper road bike, not a dirt cheap one, but certainly not a super-expensive one, but I ran in to trouble when it came to selecting a bike, mainly due to the lack of understanding of all the options that you are faced with when looking at the technical specifications. Therefore, this short article is my take on what you really want to concentrate on, and more usefully, what you should be safe to ignore. If you’re someone who understands bikes and their different components, then this article isn’t for you – it is truly for people who want to get a road bike, but don’t know what to look for when comparing bikes.

So, let’s take an example. The Specialized Allez Sport 2013:

http://www.edinburghbicycle.com/products/specialized-allez-sport-13

I’ll copy and paste a screen grab from EBC’s web site, just in case the above link ever dies (click on the image for a bigger version):

OK, so what is important here? Well, there are three main things to look for, although rarely will you be able to see one of the items. They are:

1. Frame and fork
2. Wheels
3. Groupset

That third item is the one you won’t see. It is basically everything which makes up the drivetrain (gears etc) and your brakes. It is a lot of components together, but don’t worry, I’ll explain that shortly.

First, the frame and fork. Unless you’re spending big money, your frame will likely not be carbon. The main thing for your frame is the weight of the bike. If it was a carbon frame, your bike would be lighter. However, they are expensive, and if you are in the market for a carbon framed bike, you really shouldn’t be needing to read this article. Lots of bikes come with carbon forks, and that’s cool, but ultimately, most of the frames themselves will be (in my experience) aluminium or steel. I often read things like “A1 Premium Aluminium, fully manipulated tubing with smooth welds, 1-1/8″ lower bearing” which doesn’t mean a whole lot to me, but bottom line, it’s not carbon. And that’s really not a problem, unless as I say you want to spend big bucks.

The thing is, most often you will get a bike with a good frame, and crap wheels and groupset. And so on to those areas we go.

The wheels will almost certainly be shit. No matter what cost the overall bike, the wheels you will get on a stock-built bike will let down the overall bike. But that’s ok – it’s something you can easily upgrade at a later date. My Specialized Secteur came with a pair of Alex S500 rims, which are shit. But they were still good enough for 3 years of use before I threw them away for something better. Therefore, in 99.9% of cases, you should just assume that your wheels are not going to be up to much, and that when you are comparing two similarly costing bikes, the wheels will be crap on both. This is the first big thing you want to consider upgrading at a later date.

And so on to the groupset. What is that? Well, you are mainly wanting to pay attention to a few things: the derailleurs, the brakes, the shifters (shift levers), the crankset and the cassette. Ultimately, all you really want to look for in terms of quality is the make and models. The odds are that they will be made by Shimano, although SRAM are becoming more popular. Shimano have a number of models, such as (in increasing levels of awesome):

• 2300
• Sora
• Tiagra
• 105
• Ultegra
• Di2

At current prices, a full groupset of Ultegra would set you back £700. That’s the same cost as that entire bike above. However, the above bike oddly comes with a mixture, almost entirely Sora with, for some inexplicable reason, a Tiagra front derailleur (aka mech). I can only imagine that is a typo – if I wanted either mech to be upgraded, it would be the rear mech, but either way, it’s basically a Sora groupset. That’s not that good, but still reasonable. The full 105 groupset is about £500, Tiagra is around £375, and I don’t think you can buy off the shelf anything below that, so you’re getting the idea that 2300s are probably about 59p. However, that’s what is on my commuter, and it’s perfectly functional. Yes, I’ll upgrade it sometime in the future, but when I do, I can’t imagine going for anything higher than Tiagra. The higher they are, the lighter they are and therefore the faster they will wear out. If you’re going to be doing a lot of commuting miles, you don’t want Ultegras. They are on my summer bike, and they are awesome, but there’s no chance I’d put them on my commuter which will see more than 3k miles this year (barring injury, illness, typhoons etc). But this, to me, is the main thing you should pay attention to when comparing bikes, and wondering why one bike is a little more than another.

As for SRAM, there’s less choice:

• Apex
• Rival
• Force
• RED

There are loads of arguments about how to compare these to Shimano, and the fanboys of the interwebs have a field day on this, but ultimately, I believe RED to be equivalent to Di2, Force vs Ultegra, Rival vs 105 and Apex are Tiagra. As I say, the SRAM fanboys would say RED is better than Di2 and that Force is equivalent to Di2… pfft. Whatever. You get the idea – and again, if you’re looking at your first proper road bike, Apex or Rival is really what you would be looking at.

There are also Campagnolo groupsets, but you rarely see them on lower specced bikes, so I’m ignoring them completely.

Let’s take an example in comparison, and have a look at the Allez Elite 2013:

http://www.edinburghbicycle.com/products/specialized-allez-elite-13

So what we see here is the same frame, the same wheels, but an entirely different groupset. Tiagras across the board. Is it worth an extra £175? Well, let’s see what else is different. A different stem and saddle, from what I can make out – not a big deal. So realistically, a groupset upgrade is the difference. Whether it’s worth it or not is up to you – but you are talking about a step up in quality of one of the three main components of the bike, which at least explains why the price is higher.

One final major point to take note of – the size of the cassette and whether you have a “double” or a “triple” set of chainrings (which are the rings that your chain goes on next to your pedals). A double has two chain rings on the cranks (where your pedals are), and a triple has (you guessed it) three. Three gives you the ability to go up steep hills. Unless you live in the French Alps, I recommend getting a double. I bought a triple and I never go in the small (aka granny) ring, even on super-steep Edinburgh hills. If you get a double with a “compact” pair of chainrings (50/34), you should be totally fine. The compact basically means that it allows you to go up hills easier, because it has a smaller small ring. It also has a smaller large ring (50, in this example), so you can’t go quite as fast, but the difference between a 50 on a compact and a 53 on a “standard” double isn’t going to make that big of a deal, and you’ll likely rarely get to that speed anyway, whereas you will almost certainly benefit from having a smaller small ring so you can get up hills easier without killing yourself.

Note that I say this despite having a standard double on my summer bike – that’s a risk I’m taking, and if/when I take my bike to the Alps, I will invest in a compact crankset. But for standard Scottish hills, I’ll take them on with a 53/39 and a 11/28 cassette.

And therefore – the cassette. They also come with two numbers, but that is just specifying the smallest and largest cog. The large cog is your lowest gear, therefore the larger the top number on the cassette, the slower you can go. The smaller the bottom number, the faster you can go. Therefore, compare a 12/25 to a 11/28: the latter is better for both hill climbing and speed; the 11 allows me to go faster on the flat, but the 28 allows me to get up hills easier. I have no clue why anyone would get an 12/25 over an 11/28. Maybe someone will tell me one day, until which I will assume everyone with a 12/25 is mad.

I have run out of advice for a novice road bike purchaser. Feel free to tell me if I’m talking shit.

I can’t deny I was a little worried that the new road bike I have had gears that wouldn’t allow me to get up hills. This was because, as previous mentioned, I didn’t get a compact, and instead went for a 53/39 double chainring and an 11/28 cassette. Today was the first test, and there were a couple of category 3 climbs to get up, plus a few category 4 climbs. Thankfully, I got up them without any kind of real struggle. I was definitely in the lowest gear (39/28) for the cat 3 climbs, but I didn’t at any point feel I was going to need to get off and walk, which would have been quite annoying with SPD-SL cleats on my shoes.

Whether I could get up category 2, 1, or hors catégorie remains to be seen. I seriously doubt it’s possible to get up an hors catégorie without a compact, and I’m not sure where there are 1s or 2s, but I’ll have a search around and see what I can find.

Worst case scenario is I need to buy a compact chainset and I swap them around depending on what I’m doing, I suppose.

When I was choosing the components for my summer bike, I opted to get Mavic Ksyrium Elite S wheels. The freewheel is really quite loud. When I got new wheels for my winter / commuter bike, I opted for Fulcrum Racing 5s, despite reviews saying their freewheel is really loud. I was therefore expecting it to be louder than the Mavic wheels. Oddly, the Fulcrums are silent. I mean, that’s a good thing, to be honest, I’m not exactly in love with the sound of the Mavic wheels, although it didn’t bother me for the near 3 hour spin I was on this morning. But I’m now wondering whether there’s something wrong with either wheelset, or whether the Fulcrums will get loud once they’ve been used (especially once they have had a few rain showers on them), or whether it’s only Campag Fulcrums that have a noisy freewheel.

Maybe time will tell.

The wheels are on! Here’s some info on them. First, I’ve mentioned before, but these are Fulcrum Racing 5 wheels, which I’m putting on my commuter bike.

The front wheel weighed in @ 829 grams. The weights I’ll be quoting are all without the quick release level, which is how the manufacturers typically weight their wheels.

The rear wheel weight in @ 1061 grams. So, a starting point to compare. I didn’t at this point have any clue how heavy the Alex S500 rims that came with the bike would weight.

The wheels sitting side by side. Now, next are some shots of the rear wheel so you can get an idea what the spokes are like.

OK, so next is the bike before the wheels went on. It’s not that clean, tbf.

The wheels on the bike!

And finally, the weights of the old wheels, the front weighing in at 905 grams and the rear weighing 1147 grams.

So the new wheels are 71 grams lighter on the front, and 86 grams lighter on the rear, totalling 157 grams in total. Not exactly huge. The big difference with these however is the rolling resistence, as there’s virtually none in comparison to the old wheels. They just run and run, it’s quite amazing.