Following my decision to ride 100 miles to a meeting (see Taking the 100 mile plunge) I have been sorting out my Trek bike.
My Trek is a Pilot 1.2 and is now about 4 years old. Very similar to the one pictured here (the stem and brake hoods look a little different on mine).
I have had a rack on the bike from the beginning. It’s a Tubus Locc which is fantastic. It has a special holder for older Albus U-Locks as well as a light mounting and low pannier rails.
Sadly I don’t think you can get Albus U-Locks that are compatible with the Tubus Locc any more.
For this long ride (between 110 and 120 miles on Friday, 10 miles on Saturday and about 120 miles on Monday) with luggage I felt the bike had a few problems which I have been working on.
- The rear wheel which is a nice one from Shimano with 28 straight pull spokes is too light weight. What is more it is already my second wheel as I broke spokes on the previous one riding to another meeting. Rather than break this nice light wheel I have ordered a heavier duty touring wheel from my local bike shop.
I wanted to be able to use my Ortlieb handlebar bag, but the standard bracket fouled the gear cables. So I ordered the bracket extension. At the same time I ordered the map pocket. This has solved a couple of problems. I can now have 3kg of stuff handy (reducing the load on the rear wheel and balancing the bike better) and I can put my Samsung Galaxy Tab in the map pocket running Google Maps with the route loaded. The Galaxy Tab has a much better battery life than my phone and I get a 7.1″ map 🙂 You can see the result:
However, this means there is nowhere to put the front lights (normally mounted on the handlebars. The solution I am trying is to use Sugru on the front fork to create a mounting point for my Cateye front light (I want to mount 2 small on the left and one larger on the right). The first mounting point is on and is now drying. Hopefully ready to test tomorrow. The light is very low but it needed to be where the fork was narrow enough for the strap to be long enough to fit diagonally so the light can point downwards. This feels somewhat experimental so we will have to see how well it works.
- The remaining issue is still battery life for the Galaxy Tab. I am hoping to sort this with a Biologic Recharge powerpack. This is a battery pack that can be charged in a variety of ways. In the long term this will be used on my Bullitt cargobike and will be charged by the Schmidt Delux hub dynamo (that will mean I have self contained power for my phone and Galaxy Tab while out and about without a need to remember to charge everything fully beforehand). In the short term I am hoping that if I leave home with it fully charged it will give enough extra power to the Galaxy Tab to last a day of navigation. Of course I will be stopping during the day and will be looking for places with mains power to top up the charge.
That completes the changes I have planned. I will be using my normal Ortieb Back Roller panniers (Sustrans branded ones) and my racktop bag for the bulk of my luggage.
Next step will be to use the Trek as much as possible over the next week to make sure that I am acclimatised to the riding position.
Recent Comments