Suspension

The suspense is kil.... no, wait a minute. NO suspension is killing me.

flying saucer in the dusk

Annual Velomobile Meeting in Giessen.

I finally made time to edit the 3 hours of material that I had gathered during the trip to Giessen in september 2010.  I have made my way together with some 20 others to this annual meeting several times and each time again I enjoy the wide roads and the long, regular descents in the mountains of Sauerland. The whole thing took 6 days and about 850km. We were staying for two days in a beautiful castle that nowadays is a youth hostel where we met a lot of other velomobilists.

It seems that this coming fall will be the last time that this meeting takes place, so grab the oppurtunity to take part in this legendary gathering of long riders.

Commute with Mango in Groningen city

GPS underneath carbon laminate

In my preparations for Roll Over America (Yes, I decided to take the plunge and do the Coast-to-Coast ride of 4500km in 4 weeks with some 40 other velomobiles) I was wondering how much worse the GPS reception of my Garmin 60CX would be under the carbon top of my Mango Sport. Carbon has a reputation of blocking radio signals and conducting electricity. My Garmin usually sits on top of the wheelarch well underneath the top of the Mango, so in the worst case I shouldn't have any GPS reception at all. Fortunately it seemed to be not that bad at all, since I have navigated with the Garmin and my iPhone while riding without dramatic loss of GPS reception. It does get worse though, as I can see when I move the Garmin under the "hood". To give an idea how much the reception worsens, I made two photos:

 The first photo is made with the Garmin looking at the clear sky. It was cloudy and I was parked right next to houses. Not the best circumstances, but the chipset of the Garmin has no problem with it.





The photo below shows the GPS reception with the Garmin under the carbon hood.  The reception is noticably less, but still good enough to navigate accurately. There is no need for a seperate antenna that pops out of the body, so I don't have to make yet another hole ;-)

Wheel changing from a Quest.

 My girlfriends Quest had two non-standard frontwheels with a 25mm wide rim, that I put on especially to match the wider tires that give a comfy ride. Go figure that the wide tire of choice, a Vredestein Perfect Moiree 47-406, does not fit this particular rim. The tire kept on having a low spot even after putting in 7,5bar/110psi, which is 3bar/45psi more pressure than the advised maximum pressure of 4,5bar/65psi. When I measured the circumference of the rim, it turned out that it measured some 3 mm more than the standard rim and that one is already a tight fit with these tires. No wonder the tire kept bubbing up an down as it did when I gave the wheel a spin. In order not to make my girlfriend seasick, I'd better put on a boring standard 19mm rim.
On the photo the 25mm rim on the left and the 19mm on the right. I measured with two wires, simple but good enough for a quick comparison.

 First I laid the Quest on it's side on a blanket in our living room. Too cold to do this outside.
The allen key loosens the bolt that keeps the wheel on the drumbrakes' axle.

 I'm forgetting something here, because you can only get a standard allen key in the confined space of a Quests' wheelbox when you loosen the balljoints on the strut. It takes some puzzling how to loosen the balljoints, but I'm confident you find out when you really have to. You could also use a shortened allen key, but since you have to loosen the balljoints anyway etcetera, etcetera.
Okay, so we loosened several items and now with some jiggling, it's possible to lift the drum from the brake. You have to get the damned thing over the terribly long axle, which at first sight seems impossible, but it is! It's such a tight fit that even the width of the 5 mm thick brakecable has to be manouvred out of the way to push the strut competely against the inside of the wheelbox.

The wide-rimmed wheel is off and in the opposite manner, a new rim (or old when, like me, you have some parts lying around) can be placed. Don't forget to put the magnet of the speedometer on the new wheel.....

Weight weening in winter: Exustar pedal

Mango Sport in winter conditions

Riding in the winter can be fun, especially with a threewheeler. You can slide as much as you like, as long as you stay far enough away of hard objects like street furniture, trees and the few other occupants on the cyclepath. Unfortunately the snow presents a problem for my Speedplay Frog cleats: they attract snow to a point that I have to walk like a duck until I get in my trusty steed. Then it gets even worse, the snow turns to ice around the cleat and it becomes very difficult to clip into the pedals.
Since I changed to real wintershoes that do a pretty good job in keeping my feet warm, I thought that while winter lasts, it would be good to adopt a pedal system that can shed the snow without problem: good old SPD.

Unfortunately Shimano SPD is about the heaviest system around, but there are compatible systems. Sending in the clone: Exustar E-PM-25 that only weighs 139 gramms including cleat. The lightest Shimano MTB pedal, the PD-M980 XTR CX weighs 180gramms and is just as expensive. A road pedal like the Shimano PD A-600 is doing better with 168gramms and it's quite a lot cheaper than the beformentioned pedals, but since the Exustar was on sale on the webshop of my choice (e.g. the cheapest) I decided to go with that.
After two weeks of riding to work with them, I have no regrets. Clicking in seems easier than what I was used to from Shimano SPD's and unwanted exciting is less likely. The only downside so far is that the stunning look of these magnesium pedals with titanium axle will never be revealed, obscured from sight as they are by the beautiful body of my Mango Sport.