Picture of Mango130

Silly me, not posting a picture of my Mango. Here is a picture of Mango130 in front of Velomobile.nl; where I purchased it secondhand.

I skimmed a wooden pole today on my way to work. Luckily no obvious damage, not even scratches to the bodywork. It sounded horrobly loud though, I even felt the bike getting a knock. Come to think of it, I need to check the location where the suspention leg is held in place to the bodywork. The knock I heard & felt must have been the hub axle (since not even a scratch on the body).  The picture below is a schematic, not exact the Mango's suspention, but good enough to illustrate my point of interest. The ellipse is the connection which I definatly need to check. It's likely the one taking the most abuse... I should make a habit of checking it more regulary; here in Belgium the roads are not always as forgiving as Mango130 would want them to be.

Foggy morning

Today was a misty morning. I went to work a bit earlier as usual since I had to make an early phone call. This meant it was nice and calm on the roads, a welcome plus due to the fog. Makes me wonder if I should install a fog tail light...  I had planned on installing a brake signal; now I might consider combining this with a fog light.  We'll see.

Test drive

Just returned from a short test drive. All is well. In fact, it's splendid! These velomobiles are excellent for cocooning in grim wether.

22T sprocket

Eventually I ended up drilling the four holes in the sprocket myself. Quite a few washers needed grinding. Not the cleanest of all jobs, but happy to have done it.

Replacing axle

Prompt responce from Sinner, they would send me a replacement axle. One could argue that such a critical component should not fail. Still, it does Sinner credit that they did not make a fuzz out of sending a replacement axle. Free of charge. Keep in mind that this Mango is from 2008; in Europe warranty does not typically last as long. I did not have to wait long for the replacement part to arrive, all in all I'm happy with the service Sinner gave me.

Let's get cracking. 

I applied some anti-seize to the axle in case I would have to remove this one someday.  I don't know if I did a good thing with the anti-seize, but I figured it could'nt hurt. I hope the future will not prove otherwise.

Sinner adviced me to try to use the new axle to push the old out. Although this helps, I assisted myselve by 'devising' a pulling mechanism using a wrench.

Aligning the axle on the bolted side is a bit tricky, a small mirror helps as one can't look around the corner...

The axle-plate needs to be rotated into position; this is how I did it. Again, there are likely other and better methods.

A picture of the old axle where the axle retainer plate tore off

The testride will have to wait untill the weekend; I'm using the oppertunity to have the sprocket on the mid-axle taken care off. The standard holes in the sprocket are not wide enough to let the (don't-know-the-word) pass through. I don't have the tools myselve to drill such a large hole, through metal, with any precision. I hope I can find someone willing to do so tomorrow.
Up till know I've been riding with a 'workaround', yet this did not result in a proper chain alignment. I've been longing to fix this for a while now. The original 26 tooth sprocket had larger holes, I replaced it with a 22T one, in order to ease the climbing of some slopes.

Axle trouble

Last Saturday I had a ride planned together with a friend. The intend was twofold:

1. I needed to get out of a house refurbishment dip, figured a short ride might clear the head
2. I commute twice a week over a one-way distance of 18km. This is a bit short to get a somewhat healty condition.

So we started out for a ride of 85km. We did not get far though, after 20km or so, my rear wheel was clearly not tracking straight any more. Even worse, it even rubbed the bodywork.  After examination, a weld broke on the rear suspension axle. We did an on-the-road-fix in order to drive Mango130 back home, carefully....

My first post....

I'm a firm beleaver in the use of a universal language. As it stands, on the net, this seems to be the English language so here we go... 

Figured I'd start a blog relating the adventures of Mango 130. I'll start with a bit of history on Mango 130.

• Build March 2008 by Sinner
• Obtained in 2010 as a second hand velomobile via ww.velomobiel.nl. The original owner is unknown to me. I'm interested in the name of the former owner(s) though; so if you happen to know..... please contact me.
• I love cycling it ever since :) 

P.S. I'm not a native English speaker, so there will definately be a spelling mistake here and there, live with it.