Repair/Hack: Knog Front Light to Rear

My Knog front light used to look like this:

But unfortunately, it now looks like this:

Well the story is that I wanted to change batteries, and to do that you gotta push the plastic body that encases the batteries out from its silicon body. And either I was too rough, or I had done it so many times that the LED got severed from the mounts.

Oh well! Time to hack it. It was originally a front white LED, but I already have a better blinker so I thought I could change it to red to mount on me helmet! Alas! I found a red super bright LED in my toolbox (the perks of being en engineering student).
I thought I had recorded the whole process, but turns out I only recorded the part when I was just fiddling with it.
1. Get a soldering iron and melt the solders holding the LED in place.
2. Suck the solder using a sucker
3. Rinse and repeat till there is little solder left.
4. Use small pliers top hold the LED and melt the remaining solder on the mounts, wiggle the LED free.
5. Put the new LED in, put in new solder and cut off excess metal.

Done! This post was inspired by Saving a light by Den

Bike spotted and impromtu to KTM tracks.

Initially, just wanted to go eat some black soy sauce hot & spicy large prawn noodles from my yesteryear poly days. Unfortunately, the stall is no longer there and there was a not so appetizing copycat taking its place.

Anyway, after the meal at Beauty World, I walked down the stairs to the bus stop. And, right there next to it were the KTM Tracks... I thought... Might as well go visit em.

Just before I made it to the tracks I saw this:



Seems like your everyday market bike parked by the railings... But behold! A DIY U-lock of sorts!

The owner must have lost a bike once... A thick looking cable lock, his DIY U-lock, and a chain lock at the back. Bike theft in Singapore is crazy!

[slideshow]

tags: bukit timah railway bridge, bukit timah railway tracks, ktm tracks

Bike theft: Securing bolts

Whenever I think of my market bike which I park downstairs at the common void deck, I keep thinking about more deterrence. Whenever I do something, whether it's changing the suspension fork to a rigid fork, or the adding a cable lock to secure the saddle it just makes my bike less attractive to the thieves...

 

I read bikehacks.com, on how to secure bike parts. And one of the methods is using some solder to fill in the hole where you would normally insert a allen key to remove the bolt. According to their post, it can be expensive if you don't have the parts. Well, as an engineering student I had the tools:





After I was done:



 

In case you don't have the tools, you can also try this.

Or if you are feeling rich, this will do you good:

A special product that replaces most bolts into one that only a special key can open. No more stress about that quick release part you whole no ones notices...

Prague: bike hack or metal pannier product?

 

Whether or not its a bike hack or a well done product, its definitely a good looker. Got to love it when cyclist are everywhere overseas!

Bike hack : Dustbin lid

Probably to keep the wild animals away from thrash, after all I have seen many discarded bikes around already. As usual work is keeping me busy, but I would like to thank sister site bikecommutinginsg.blogspot.com for linking me! Views on my blog have increased! Woot. I will work harder :)

My rear shifter cable broke...

I was riding home after work, on a Friday (Does rebecca remind u of anything?). I wanted to take a hill easy, so I wanted to shift up a couple of gears. I pushed the thumb shift and CLICK. I stopped. Looked around to see if anything broke, saw nothing I continued riding. Only to have the gear shifter down instead of up, initial reaction was maybe it just out of tune and shifted down. So I wanted to shift up, but there was zero tension/resistance.

That was when I guessed the shifters itself gave way, although i now know it was the cable instead. I was able to continue riding, the rear dee went to its "natural" position (the smallest cog). Yesterday, I went to inspect the bike and saw this.



Sweet. I searched youtube oh rear dee adjustment as i knew there were such things as lower and upper limits. So what was initially a 24 speed bike, after losing a cog was supposedly to be a 21 speed bike, but the actual usable gears are more like a 18 speed bike( after my bike hack with a paper bag), is now a pitiful 3 speed bike. Thanks to the front dee. Gee...

 



If any1 is wondering, I screwed the "H" limit all the way to try and get a lighter gearing. Good to know stuff.

Lock hacks?

Bikehacks posted this: http://www.bikehacks.com/bikehacks/2011/04/rear-lock-hack.html

I was always thinking if I had a longer padlock like that will it actually do the job of securing a wheel? Well, it definitely more hardly than a cheap cable lock! How about some shorter and than maybe just lock the rear wheel with the part of the frame nearest the front dee, albeit just slight on top.

Know what I mean? Damn, some bike shop should sponsor me to keep coming up with ideas to deter thieves.

Bike hack: U-lock weight.

Was climbing a hill and took a break... And when  I looked around I saw the above. An old U-lock re-purposed as a weight. Not much of a hack but it was something that caught my eye. One thing's for sure... U-locks are heavy!

The bike hack.

That is what a cassette looks like if you ever happen to dismantle it. separate gears one by one. And you know the bike my colleage loaned me? It was missing one.

I didn't know that when I first got it. I thought... Hmm... The chain got stuck in between the gears, engaged on a spacer. Thus giving me zero transmission to the rear wheels... I tried shifting the gears up and down... But whenever a powered down hard it would shift off the gears to another spacer nearest the gear I was on. Initially, I thought wear and tear must have lossened up the gears... So all it needs is a good tightening up of the sprocket or whatever. So I brought it to the bike shop and tried my best to explain to him what was wrong. A quote of 1025 Yen later, he said ok. come back in an hour's time. I asked him how much to tighten the headset? he said dun worry included. Than I looked around the bike somemore to see if I can get more bang for my buck. And spotted the bike's stand broken. So I asked him to take that off.

An hour later I'm back told its 525 Yen. Cool I thought. I cycled across the road, the chain engaged the spacer again and the steering was so heavy that I thought he replace the air in my front tires with water. Brought it back and the mechanic was no longer there. He explained my shifters were 8 speed and my cassette was 7. So I asked him to loosen the headset, but apparently despite him having knowledge of the English language he couldn't understand me and simply put oil in the headset. It did help but the steering was still heavy. So he didn't fix the rear cassette and I wanted to know what I paid for. He said you paid to take off the stand.

Ganna chopped carrots! A slang that means I have been cheated!

So what the heck did I do? I figured I could fix the damn gears from moving around as long I as filled the gap where apparently one gear was missing, how the heck did it go missing remains a mystery to me. I got this:

I did not have string, and this was the closest thing to it.

I tied a double knot and it has since lasted me about 50km and counting! hahahaha. My own bike hack! Truly surprised myself.

Get more here at bikehacks.com

Car brands on bicycles.

Let's face it, it definitely cool when you own a Lamborghini car and bicycle. Heck, its cool just to own the bicycle.

Or if you are like me, a mere peasant. Owning a Chevy sounds awesome too!

"My choice of transport, is my trust Chevy!"

"Drove my Chevy to the Levee!"

In the land that produces a significant portion of the world's cars, I am not surprised!