Thursday, 5 May 2011

On a frustrating afternoon

The rear brake pads on die Fledermoose were in need of replacing so yesterday, I picked up some brake pads of the cartridge variety at my local bike store. As I then went to the gym, and it was raining, I put off replacing the pads until today. (It has been raining since Monday.)

This afternoon, I arrived home in a heavy downpour and hauled die Fledermoose up the stairs and into my living room. After setting up the bike stand and removing the rear wheel, I discovered that my rear brakes weren't cartridge type brake pads. I had thought that the brakes on die Fledermoose were cartridge type, but for some reason the rear ones weren't! I replaced the rear wheel, lugged the bike downstairs and rode off through the light rain to the bike store to get new, cartridge-type pads. At this point I was hoping the store mechanic would install the pads and spare me the farting around that comes with installing new brake pads as I was in a grumpy mood which is not conducive to precise adjustment. No such luck, so with the newly acquired brake pads, I went home through the very light rain and with the sight of a rainbow.

Once home, I installed the pads. During the process of fine tuning, I noticed that my rear rim is distinctly concave indicating wear that bears watching. In addition, the wheel is slightly out of true and as luck would have it, the spot in question is where the wheel reflector is. The presence of the reflector makes it that much much harder to true the wheel.

I still have to clean and re-oil the chain as there were signs of rust on the chain this morning. I last oiled the bike a week ago. I am getting rather tired of biking in the rain!

Post-posting scriptum
To clarify: I had thought my rear brakes had replaceable cartridge-type brake pads, so I bought the replacement cartridges. It turned out that my rear brake pads weren't that variety. So I replaced them with the replaceable cartridge type.

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