The chain on my other bike got so loose that it simply fell off whenever I drove on cobblestones. I went to Unirad on Monday, a bike kitchen at the Technical University Berlin, to fix it. What I tried was too lazy, so the chain started jumping off again just a day later.
With this particular bike the chain is tightened by moving the wheel back as it sits inside the frame. This has to be done once every couple of months, and I kind of like doing it. The tools needed for it are commonly available: one 15mm and two 10mm wrenches and the chain can just stay in place, so your hands stay kind of clean, too.
I flipped the bike upside down, and loosened some nuts and screws: one for the bell crank (the clicker at the back wheel used for shifting gears), two that were connecting the back pedal brake to the frame, and two left and right of the rear wheel. Once these were loose I pulled the rear wheel back as far as I could with my left hand, and started tightening the nuts left and right of the wheel again with my right. When it sat reasonably stable in its new position I hit the chain with one of the wrenches to see if it sat any tighter around the chainring. It did, so I tightened the nuts as much as I could and went on to put the rest back together.
The entire procedure took about 15 minutes and I was able to do it in my back yard that is often used as a chillout spot by my neighbor’s cats.
I saw this washer lying around today and realized that I must have missed it when putting the brake levers back together yesterday. They each have horizontal lever that is held in place by a screw on the side, allowing you to break when grabbing the handlebar on the top without having to reach all the way to the front.
Things were rattling when I rode the bike, but this bike is over 40 years old and some parts of it are ratlling at least slightly all the time anyways. I haven’t thought much of it.
I took the lever off and put it back together how it was before. Now things are rattling a bit less.
I changed the handlebar tape on my randonneur bike. The tape had a nice animal print that I liked a lot. I waited forever until I originally put it on because I did not want to mess it up, but only couple of days after putting it on the printed top layer at the upper part of the handlebar – where i would touch it the most while riding the bike – already wore off.
I still kept it on for several months after; in a way I see bikes looking a bit run down as a kind of insurance against them being stolen. And a lot of the animal print still remained, and that was still nice to look at.
When I recently did a bike tour however, small bits of the EVA foam got stuck on my hands and everything got increasingly messy.
I got some lavender-colored handlebar tape to replace it, which is essentially a roll of fabric with some glue on the back. It makes the handlebar a bit slimmer to before and while it’s less cushioned and a bit harder, and has a good texture that feels nice to touch.
I have headphones that I like quite a lot. They have been recommended to me years ago as the de-facto standard DJ headphones. They sound great, and while the plastic frame sems a bit wiggly and unstable it actually held up quite well.
They come with cushions that can get uncomfortable over time, pressing into your ears, but it’s possible to replace them with softer cushions. Some are offered not just with softer foam on the inside, but with a velour covering that doesn’t get as sticky as the default leather-like synthetic material.
I replaced the cushions a while ago, but now the ones cushioning the overhead rest came off.
Removing the glue was quite easy: I bought some chemical glue remover a while ago in a hardware store, called “Soluwash” (which I misread as Soulwash every single time and I do think it is a missed opportunity to give it that name). I put some of it on cosmetic pads and rubbed over the old glue until it was gone. The new cushions already came with glue stripes on their back, so all that was left to do was position them nicely and pressing them in place.
I’m happy about the result. The cushions feel so nice!
I wanted to repair my Bluetooth speakers but for now they repaired themselves.
I bought some portable Bluetooth speakers last year, something to take outside and play synths on. They are quite bulky and heavy, but the sound quality is decent. They use standard Phillips and Torx screws and have an Aux input in addition to Bluetooth. It’s also nice that they use off-the-shelf batteries: I felt this ensures that the part that would likely to wear out first could be replaced easily. Plus I found a cheap offer on Kleinanzeigen.
I don’t just use them outside, I also carry them around in my flat and into my bathroom to listen to music when taking a shower. Unfortunately I splashed quite a lot of water over them a few weeks ago when doing that. While things seemed fine at first there recently has been a loud grainy buzz after turning them on. It actually sounded quite nice, but it drowned any music I wanted to listen to. I thought some contact might be corroded, and I wanted to look if I could clean some of the inside to solve that.
Just before starting to repair them today I turned the speakers on to see if I could record a sample of the buzz, but it was gone. Seeing how the speakers seemed simple enough to open I continued anyways to check if I could see anything that looked off.
I started by simply loosening all the screws in the back, but had trouble pulling off the back plate. I found that there are guides to open the speaker on ifixit, put some of the screws back in, took out some screws at the bottom to remove the battery, and pulled off the back plate using the ventilation vent. It was a bit finicky, but on the bottom side of the vent there’s a little dent that provided enough grip to pull everything out. Disassembling the speakers took less than 5 minutes once I knew what to remove and where to pull.
To my surprise the inside actually looked quite good! I couldn’t spot any corrosion and there were no traces of moisture. The components were laid out comfortably spaced apart.
I thought about it for a minute and figured that since things are so easy to disassemble, I might as well put it back together and take it apart again once I had a better idea what to look for if the problem reappeared. So that’s what I did - I put the back plate in place, tightened the screws that I removed, and put the battery back in. I turned on the switch and things are now working as before.
My laptop battery was due for a replacement. It didn’t hold charge for as long as it did, and it become uncomfortable to only have a few hours to use the laptop at a time. The battery gave out incorrect readings, too, and sometimes the remaining charge would drop from 17% to 3% all of a sudden.
The laptop has two batteries, an internal and an external one. The degraded one I’m talking about here is the external battery, which is easy to replace by sliding away two hinges on the back of the laptop.
After swapping the battery the new one wasn’t recognized at first. I’m using TLP which tries to help batteries live a little longer, setting charging thresholds and monitoring battery statistics, so I ran tlp-stat -s -b to see if the battery was detected correctly. It only showed the internal battery and it wasn’t listed under Linux’ sysfs either, where the previous battery showed it as /sys/class/power_supply/BAT1. It still didn’t do that after I rebooted the laptop, and it also didn’t do that after I performed a Pinhole Emergency Reset that some people suggested. So I assumed the replacement battery was dead.
The next day the battery was listed fine, and I saw that it actually came with a bit more capacity than it said on the tin (51.3 Wh vs 47.5 Wh)! Nice.
I’m not certain why the battery didn’t show up at first. I’m not sure why the battery only showed up the next day, and I asked around briefly but didn’t find a definitive answer (“could just be some EC/charge controller bug”). I’m not too bothered by that though because it’s working fine now.
