Rejuvenating my old bike

In the 1960s, 70s & 80s, I did a lot of touring cycling in the UK, Ireland and France. Typically 50 hilly miles a day. I put together a nice Mercian frame and decent parts to make an effective touring machine.

As I lived in Cheltenham, which is fairly flat and prone to cycle theft, I also assembled a shopping/commuting machine with just 5 gears, straight handlebars, a basket and a powerful horn. The mudguards didn't match partly to save me buying a new set and also to uglify the machine and make it less likely to catch the eye of a thief.

Recently I moved to Stroud, a town that has hardly any flat roads at all - and neither does much of the surrounding countryside. I brought my old Mercian with me and did some basic maintenance to deal with it being almost entirely unused for 35 years.

As the washer in the pump had perished, I ordered one through Amazon and also 2 inner tubes. Being used to an 18" pump, I was pretty dubious about the 34cm Draper pump but it was very efficient. I discovered that although my tyres were flat, they were airtight and have already ridden over 100 miles on them. They don't look good though...

Even back in the day, my saddle attracted adverse comment

Surely it's very uncomfortable? Not really. Contemporary saddles did have more leather but the excess didn't actually do anything.  Another eccentricity was the gear changers on the ends of the handlebars. 

Made by Campagnolo, so much more convenient than the traditional lever on the downtube. You could fit levers up on the steering column but they tended to get in the way of swinging your leg over or if you upturned the bike for roadside repairs. These control a 5 speed rear block and a double clanger giving me 10 gears from 32" to 108". The lowest gear definitely isn't low enough for the local hills. In years gone by, that 32" took me up just about everything but I often had to stand on the pedals to do it. There was so much torque that I once had the thread under the freewheel block strip when climbing a hill in Ireland.

 Another Campag part is the pedals - they cost me £19 when ordinary parts were about £1.50 in Halfords. (I remember the price because £19 was a lot and a friend had a pedal disintegrate and I was shocked at how cheap the replacement we bought in Hereford was) My toe-clips and straps would appear to be totally obsolete these days 

Another eccentricity is the dual brake levers - actually "lazy levers" were quite popular at the time. They work really well and give you access to braking from several different handlebar positions.

Another anachronism is the bottle dynamo supplying front and rear lights - with tungsten filament bulbs. Nowadays, I guess it's LEDs and rechargeable batteries.

It's adequate for taking my legally allowed exercise during these CONVID-19 days but rather than a renovation, I think I'm going to use the experience to inform my purchase of a modern machine with disk brakes, indexed gears and maybe a little suspension.

Power to the JBL Link 10

A couple of months ago I bought a JBL Link 10 "smart speaker". It worked fine with a couple of niggles:

• Every few days, it would mute itself. You could tell it was still alive by the way the lights flashed for the appropriated length of time when you asked Google something. A full power cycle was needed to get it to speak again
• If I unplugged it to use it as a "radio" in the bathroom, it shut down after 15-30 minutes

I finally got a clue when it it was providing the sound for a YouTube video over Bluetooth and it muted itself while I was "watching". This coincided with the sound of my central heating system shutting down for the night. 

So I suspected a power surge issue. Looking at the back of the speaker, I noticed that the battery indicator had just one flashing light rather than the 5 available. Now, JBL don't supply a mains charger, but they do supply a micro-USB cable which I didn't have a convenient socket for. What I did have was a Nokia charger for one of their small dumb phones that had the correct connector so I used that and it worked. Sort of.  There wasn't enough power to ever raise the charge above one flashing LED.

Next, I replaced the Nokia charger with a USB lead to a 10,000maH power brick and left it overnight. In the morning, the power brick was flat and the JBL charge indicator was at three flashing LEDs.  Encouraged by this I connected a mains-powered source of USB and within an hour, the JBL was fully charged.

The speaker still self-mutes occasionally but it's only about once a month now.  So the moral of the story is that the JBL Link 10 is quite "thirsty".  Check the power connection you give it - it's best to chose one that has a track record for charging larger devices quickly.