Monday, November 14, 2011

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.

Sunday, November 13, 2011

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.

Saturday, November 12, 2011

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.


Thursday, November 3, 2011

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.