A week into my recent cycling trip I noticed an issue with the bike brakes. As I wrote in an earlier post, the bike had been knocked off its stand outside a 7-Eleven. This had placed strain on both the front hydraulic brake hose and the cable to the brake sensor.
The brake hoses are slightly too short as a result of me increasing the height of the stem using an extender. I needed to extend the height because bending to reach the handlebars was hurting my back. I had the brake hoses replaced in Hualien making them longer. This left the problem with the rear brake sensor cable.
The brake sensor is part of the e-bike control system. It consists of a brake sensor mounted on the body of the brake and a magnet glued onto the brake level. When the brakes are not being applied the sensor and magnet are close together. Applying the brake moves the magnet away from the sensor breaking the magnetic field. The motor controller identifies the brake has been applied and cuts power to the motor until the brake lever is released. The issue was with the sensor which had been pulled away from the brake body resulting in the motor controller thinking the brake was being applied. Consequentially I would get no pedal assistance from the motor. I attempted a temporary repair by taping the sensor in place. However this didn't always work.
Time has moved on and the earlier Bafang e-bike brake sensor system has now been integrated into the body of the brake. I asked Jan to order me a pair from Aliexpress whilst I was in Taiwan and they arrived today.
The magnet and sensor are now built into the brake.
Unfortunately I can't do the brake replacement as the bike is at the local bike shop. As I was disassembling the bike in Taipei ready for boxing a number of ball bearings fell out of the lower fork headset. On closer inspection I noticed the bearing was broken. Both the upper and lower headset bearings require replacement and that is being completed by the shop.
Although I don't have the bike I can do some maintenance on the Shimano Alfine internally geared hub which is in the rear wheel.
The first step is to partially disassemble the hub laying out the parts in the order with which they will need to be reassembled
Whilst it is possible to disassemble the actual gears for cleaning I'm not going to do that as I have an alternative method
It looks clean. and so did the interior of the hub housing
The gears went into a container of petrol. Which was then placed in the ultrasonic cleaner
Where it started to bubble and fizz as the petrol was vibrated. The next photo isn't blurred. It's the vibration of the petrol
After 60 minutes the petrol had changed colour
Despite it's initial appearance the gear mechanism must have been dirty
After removing it from the petrol the gears were left to dry before reassembly and re-oiling the hub.
Before I forget. I measured the 9V from the 240 to 9V converter and it is AC rather than the required DC. I have another idea. My box of "might be needed one day" has a number of 240AC to 12DC power bricks. I could relatively cheaply reduce the 12V to 9V.
And now a photo which tends to give credence to those rumours about English farmers.
2 comments :
English farmers are Ok it's the Welsh one's you have to watch......bit like the new hands on the isolated Australian sheep stations being told 'you can have the horse come Saturday night'.................on being discovered doing 'strange' things in the stable on Saturday evening, they realised it was meant for transport purposes to the local town........... Excellent blog, as always. Thanks,
Hi Mike, with the name Jones I don't think I should write something derogatory regarding the Welsh. Besides, the land in the photo looks flat and I didn't see that type of terrain in Wales. There was also the story about the new recruit in the French Foreign Legion and the camel :-)
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