#ortlieb

I took the Ortlieb Quick Rack Stay Adapters off the Scandal back in October as part of a trouble shooting procedure, trying to diagnose what turned out to be pinging Mavic spokes. I also wanted to see if I could make them work on the Cannondale monstercross, allowing me to swap the rack between bikes, but they won't play nicely with seat stay IS disk mounts; you'd end up with the rack sitting too high and forward.

So, back on the Scandal, and it wasn't a job I was looking forward to - because fitting these adapters is an absolute pain in the arse! They work, right enough, but there has to be a better way of doing this. You can probably figure it out from the pictures. There's a tiny degree of engagement with the bolt threads into the square plates banded onto the stays - difficult to get them to bite, and easy to strip if they're slightly misaligned. I did the not-a-bothy trip two weeks ago with zipties replacing one of the bolts after I mangled it during re-installation. One eBay order and some degree of frustrated muttering on the patio later, and I have a properly functioning Quick Rack again.

Neueröffnung eines e-motionShops  in Pulheim. Musste ich natürlich am Freitag hin. Denn die hatten in der Ankündigung der Eröffnung geschrieben, dass sie auch Dreiräder im Angebot haben. Also dachte ich, ich frage mal, ob sie mein ICE in die Wartung nehmen.  Tun sie nicht. Ist verständlich. Die Dreiräder sind eher auf solche für eingeschränkte Menschen konzentriert. Pfautec und Van Raam habe ich…

A little while back, I met up with my friend Chris McG to talk bike touring. He’s planning on doing some extensive touring through Canada next year, and wanted to pick my brain about it. Over pizza and beer, we chatted for a bit over all things bike touring. Eventually we started to talk about panniers, as he needs a new set and has specific needs: something with a locking mount that wasn’t…

Wieder einmal ein Reisewochenende. Am Freitag Nachmittag von Horrem aus nach Paderborn. Und es war einmal mehr eine ziemliche Bahn Horrorfahrt, mit einem langen ungeplanten Aufenthalt in Düsseldorf und einem Stehplatz in einem proppenvollen Zug nach Paderborn. Gut, dass ich zumindest für die kurzen Strecken vom und zum Bahnhof mein Dahon dabei hatte. In Paderborn regnete es allerdings so stark,…