|
Boxchain: thanks for the suggestions. I wear a reflective orange jacket made by izumi whenever I ride from back when I did road racing, it works really well both as a wind breaker and reflection additive, it also has removable sleeves if I get hot which is a plus! I was also actually considering that milk crate thing, I was thinking about it this morning and wondering how well that would work, you saying you did it makes me more confident in the idea though, I might just do that instead since weight was a concern for me, however, I may be making this an E-bike sometime in the future so when I do that, the batteries will unfortunately take up the rear rack space. I also noticed how much I miss having fenders yesterday when I accidentally found a mud puddle while riding through some construction that they are doing on the sidewalk between my apt and walmart.
SVOboy: yes getting wet is half the fun, but only when I don't have my laptop on my back in a bag who's water proof capability is questionable. However, I have no clue about the shifting issue. The best thing I can come up with is that it was dropped on the de-railer at some point in it's previous life since it does look a little bent. I tried tapping it with a mallet a bit which straightened it out pretty well though. Now I think it may be a lubrication issue. I noticed that the swing arm on the assembly doesn't swing as freely as it should which makes shifts pretty clunky and sometimes unpredictable so I'm going to buy a can on WD-40 on my way home from work today and see if putting some of that on there doesn't help. If all else fails I'm going to try to find a junker bike at a garage sale with a decent de-railer and see if I can Frankenstein it on. It shifts pretty well into the other gears though, it's manageable at least. I'm also still looking for a longer seat post because I definitely felt the lack of leg extension going up hills today, I just couldn't get proper leverage so it was just that much harder to do.
I also meant to note that my headlight fell off during my ride yesterday to the store, looks like the screw for the handlebar clamp got stripped somehow so while I was at walmart I picked up an $8 replacement light. I was actually surprised at how nice this is for the price, it's got a very bright xeonon bulb in it so it will definitely give me better visibility as well as better visibility to cars.
__________________
|