The Hanger

Recently our junior friend Rejick Mukherjee went for a cycling trip to Ayodhya hills. There, during the climb, the hanger of his derailleur broke down. He managed by cutting the chain short and making it a single gear cycle. This catastrophe triggered a lot of discussion on our whatsapp group. Someone mentioned "this is the reason why I always carry a spare hanger". 

Truth be told. Before this I had no idea about what a hanger was. Had heard the term but never bothered to find out. Now after the incident and the discussion I realised it's an important thing to know because it seemed like a common accident to happen and can potentially bring a tour to an abrupt end. 

First step was to research what on earth exactly a derailleur hanger was. I realised it is a hook like thing that is attached to the frame from where the derailleur hangs. Now where is my hanger and what does it look like? Research revealed that steel frames come with integrated derailleur hangers. They are not replaceable. I felt reassured. But I wanted to get to the bottom of it and actually see my hanger or where it should be.

Inverted view of my LHT hanger 

After the Badu trip (read about it here) I took out the wheels to clean them and this was an opportunity to inspect my hanger. Turns out it is indeed integrated into the frame. It is not really part of the frame but a separate thing, black in colour, that is sort of fused into the frame. It doesn't look like it can quite break. It could bend which would require getting it straightened out (though for that I might need to find out an expert ironsmith) but it is highly unlikely to happen. If, God forbid, it breaks that would not be the only part of the bike that would break. Lot of other things would also break, I am sure. It will have to be a tremendous impact. If I survive and can ride again I will certainly need a new bike then :-)

Next step is to check the hanger of my Red Roadie. The red Merida. It's a road bike. 

Cycling Stats

I want to keep a record of cycling stats so that I can see them later. This I am doing because I just realised that I have lost my odometer recording on the Edge 130. I had set the totals under history to zero on the first day of October. I think this also reset the odo at 0 because the two are showing exactly the same distance. I didn't think this would happen. I always thought the odo reading couldn't be reset unless you did a hard reset of the whole unit. But anyway. Here goes my record keeping. I started using the Edge 130 from the last week of June. For this calculation I have taken the June reading as only what I have recorded on the Edge. Not the full month's real figure (which is less than 30 km before the Edge came).

I am using this page from Garmin Connect to note down the numbers

June 2020 - 162.63 km

July 2020 - 345.10 km

August 2020 - 323.99 km (Century to Canning)

September 2020 - 268.39 km

October 2020 - 457 km (Century to Badu) 

November 2020 - 403 km (was affected due to a week's absence due to trip to Sunderban. Also failed to do any century ride. Otherwise daily average was good) 

December 2020 - 378.46 Km (December is always bad due to various evening type festivals. I had hoped to make it 400 in the last day but even that didn't happen. Felt very lazy) 

Fresh beginning to 2021

Cycling Stats for 2021 

January - 

Wheel Building

I have finally taken the first tentative step towards building my own wheel. I have been wanting to have a separate wheel for my training rides on the Elite trainer. None is available in the used market. So I thought might as well build one of my own. I had initially thought of making it a very cheap one. Then I realised the cheap ones run the risk of going wrong during the build process. So decided to make a moderately good one. Use it as my main riding wheel and convert the current wheel into my training wheel. 

Last night (Friday, 16th October 2020) I brought home the rim and the hub from Rito's Stay Tuned. The rim is an Alexrims DH 19 in size 700c. For more technical details click here. I have the same brand of rim in my LHT that came as OE. They are Taiwan made and of reasonably good quality. It's a 32 holed rim. According to the site its ERD is 599.8 mm. Rito says according to his measurement also it is the same. So I trust it must be correct.

The RS 400 Hub

I also bought a hub from Rito to go with the rim. It's an RH 400 Shimano hub. Now this hub created some confusion. When I opened the box, there was a skewer and a manual on the side. The manual had this boldly written right in the beginning. For rims with disc brakes. Now my bike has rim brakes. Rito knows it very well. In fact my rim is also for rim brakes only. 

After some discussion with Rito and some online gyan from the wheel building group, I realised I had the right hub. The main thing to see is what is the OLD of the hub. Over lock-nut dimension. For road bikes it is usually 130 mm and it indeed has 130 mm OLD. It is written very clearly on the packet. Therefore it is a rim brake compatible hub. I wonder why Shimano writes this wrong information on their hub. 

The other technical details mentioned on the hub's packet are as follows. That it's a 32 hole hub and its skewer length is 168. I had even checked the skewer by inserting into the old hub. It fitted just fine. That means the two hubs are of the same size. 

Incidentally this is meant for 11 and 10 speed cassettes. Rito has given me a spacer and says that will make it compatible with 9 speed cassette. 

Next comes the difficult task of calculating the spoke lengths. I guess I will need two different sizes for the drive side and non-drive side. I have to first buy a vernier calliper. 

I intend to follow this link to lace up the wheel. The instructions are very clear and step by step, easy to understand. 

The components for making a wheel

November 28, Saturday, 2020

The wheel building project was in limbo for some time. I needed to calculate the various dimensions of the hub and the wheel etc to arrive at a spoke length. In this period I bought a Vernier calliper and tried various sites to find the precise measurements. Finally last evening I went to Rito's house who calculated the measurements and here they are. 

Effective Rim Diameter - 599.8 mm

Axle Width - 130 mm

Left Flange Diameter - 44 mm

Lock nut to Flange (LHS) - 31 mm

Flange to Center (LHS) - 34 mm

Flange to Center (RHS) - 14 mm 

Lock Nut to Flange (RHS) - 50 mm

Right Flange Diameter - 45 mm

I put all this data in the website mentioned above and the result came my LHS spokes should be 293 and RHS spoke should be 291.2. I have informed Rito about it. Let me see what size of spokes he gets. I think he was talking about 291 and go for long nipples. I think best would be 291 and 292 if available.

I must mention a few things about the calculations. The site did not accept more than 3 digits so I could not write 599.8 for effective rim diameter. I wrote 600. I don't think .2 mm will make a huge difference in calculations. 

The site, apart from the dimensions, also needs to know other details like whether it is a front wheel or back, lacing pattern etc. It's my rear wheel with 3 cross lacing pattern. 

Monday, December 8, 2020

I did it. Yahoo. I laced my first wheel. What a joy. What pure orgasmic pleasure. I had to struggle a lot. After some 7/8 failed attempts I finally got it all right. Each failed attempt meant taking off all the nipples and spokes and starting from zero all over again. I even had a minor cut on my thigh from the rough end of a spoke.

After all the calculations I had finally ended up with 290 mm sized spokes. Sapim to be sure. Rito was confident that that size would be fine and I certainly don't need different sized spokes on the two sides. On Friday night I started my project. I sat in front of the computer to refer to the youtube video. The video that I was using (link given above) wasn't working for me. Finally I found this video (click here) which was really helpful. Even here I was getting something wrong every time. But that was not the gentleman's fault really. 

In the penultimate attempt I got the first three steps all right but on the fourth stage after getting 2 spokes to go in I found it well nigh impossible to get the spokes to reach the holes. They were falling hopelessly short. I cursed myself for getting 3 mm shorter spokes.

Finally before giving up I wrote to Rito informing him about the problem. He said get the spokes loose. They are too tight. I took off all the spokes once again. This time I would turn the nipples only one turn or two. Now some of the nipples were coming off on their own, being wound just a bit. 

But with this strategy the nipples all fitted nicely and my wheel was made. Or at least the first step in wheel building was completed. 

First set of 8 spokes laced from drive side

Second set of 8 spokes from non-drive side

Lacing is complete

Third stage of lacing. 24 spokes in

The next step will be to go to Rito's and dish it and true it on a proper stand. Buying all the tools for just one wheel doesn't make sense at all. And there is no demand for this sort of work in Calcutta.