Bike Noob

Because I'm Always Learning Something New

  • Home
  • About
  • Contact
  • Partners

My Computer’s Kaput

09.20.2011 by Ray Niekamp // 1 Comment

It was a good ride Sunday morning. Temperatures have finally started to moderate around here, and it was even a little cool when we set off. I was B ride leader for a trip to Creedmoor, a town southeast of Austin. We’d be doing a round trip of about 35 miles.

Only two other riders opted to take the route I wanted to take on the way back. The others decided to take a shorter route home. I liked my route, because a stretch of road has been repaved — with asphalt instead of chip seal — and on one section you crest a hill and swoop down out of the country into a suburban-style subdivision. Fun. I watched the speed on the cyclocomputer climb until it hit 32 mph near the bottom of the hill.

Back on the chip seal again through the houses. I shot through a stoplighted intersection just before the light turned red, but realized that my riding partners hadn’t made the light, so I slowed to wait for them to catch up. As I did so, I heard a ping. Something — I thought it might have been a twig — hit a spoke on my rear wheel. I thought nothing of it, but just seconds later, another, louder ping! and then a clack, and something fell into the street.

“What was that?” I shouted back at the other two riders, who were now getting closer.

I looked down, thinking maybe the water bottle cage had come loose, or the hose on my mini-pump had unfastened as was flopping about. Nope.

Barbara, following farther back than my other companion, stopped in the middle of the street.

“I can’t tell what it is,” she said, as she bent to pick something up. “It says Cateye.”

I was walking back toward her now, and I froze. “Cateye?” I went back to the bike, lifted it off the ground. Sure enough, the speed and cadence sensor unit wasn’t there anymore. It was in Barbara’s hand.

I had no idea what caused it to pop off. I put the unit in one of my jersey pockets, and figured I’d be able to rig some kind of fix when I got home. After all, it was probably just the zip ties that attached it to the chainstay that failed.

But when I had a chance to look it over closely, I saw it wasn’t a zip tie problem at all. The unit broke at one of the points where it attaches to the chainstay mount. I don’t see how I can fix it. I suppose I could find use #254 for duct tape…nah.

Here’s the unit when it was new.

You can see the broken part in the lower right of the picture.

There is some good news in all of this. I remembered this morning that I still have the unit it replaced — a Cateye Strada Cadence. It’s a pretty good computer. It’s wired, rather than wireless, so I’m less keen on it than I have been on the wireless Cateye V2C, but I’ll be able to get it back on the bike this week and be able to keep score on my upcoming rides.

But I’d still like to know what caused such a clean break in the mount.

Like this:

Like Loading…

Categories // Accessories Tags // Cateye, computer

Sync’ing Odometers

08.25.2011 by Ray Niekamp // 10 Comments

I’m on my third cyclocomputer since I started riding. It’s a Cateye V2c, and is the best of them all, because it’s wireless and has cadence as well as the usual assortment of current, average and maximum speed readings. It gives me everything I want to know about a ride (Okay, being able to see the percent grades of my favorite local climbs would be nice too) without involving the steep cost of a GPS unit.

However, I do have a minor gripe: accuracy. I’ve noticed that with each computer I’ve owned, I get different distances for the same route.

My benchmark ride is a trip from my house to the Austin Veloway, three laps of the track, and back home. It’s my 15-mile ride. To be precise, it’s 14.9 miles — 2.8 from my house to the Veloway, three laps at  3.1 miles per lap, or 9.3 miles, and 2.8 miles home. But my computer clocks it at 14.7.

Now, you adjust your computer according to the outside circumference of your tire. A 23 mm tire should have a circumference of 2096 mm, and the instruction book that comes with the computer suggests setting it to that number. But tires flex, and since my computer’s sensors are on the rear wheel, which carries the most weight, I thought I would measure by hand.

I positioned the bike on the garage floor so the rear wheel’s valve was perpendicular to the ground. A black Sharpie made a hash mark on the floor. Then I got on the bike and pushed off with my feet for one rotation of the tire. Used the Sharpie to mark the floor again. When I measured the distance between the two marks, and converted from inches to centimeters, then reduced, I got — 2096.

What I thought was odd was that on my previous tires, which were 25 mm, my hand measurements also came out to 2096. So my computer readings were consistent.

Earlier computers clocked different numbers, though. A Cateye Strada measured 15.1 miles for that benchmark Veloway distance.

I’ve alluded to my finickiness when it comes to record keeping. I had to come up with a way to get accurate readings from the computer. The obvious way is compare it to a known distance.

Several years ago, I zeroed the computer at the entrance to the Veloway. As I mentioned, it’s 3.1 miles around. But a circuit of the track clocked exactly three miles on the Cateye. So if I was a tenth of a mile short for three miles, that meant that I could simply add a tenth for every three miles ridden. If the computer showed I rode 18 miles, I could add six-tenths to that distance for an accurate reading.

This jury rigged system actually worked. When I rode the MS150, the Cateye clocked the second day’s distance at 74 miles. Divide by three = 24.6 — so I could add 2.5 miles (round up the .46), and get 76.5 miles. The official route map showed the distance at 77. Getting closer.

It’s been awhile now, and I’ve been adding my tenths. But I decided last week to check the accuracy of my system again. This time a 3.1 mile lap registered 3.05 miles on the Cateye. Half a tenth off from the previous readings. That meant I could now add a tenth for every six miles ridden, instead of every three.

When I compared a couple of recent rides using this method to maps created on Ride With GPS, the new system came pretty close.

I think you’ve gotta be a certain type of personality to go through the machinations I do just to get what might or might not be an accurate measure of distance traveled. A twisted type. That’s me — accurately.

Like this:

Like Loading…

Categories // Accessories Tags // Cateye, computer, Cyclocomputer

My new toy

06.10.2008 by Ray Niekamp // 8 Comments

Every so often, something happens that reminds me I’m still a Bike Noob.

This time, it involved my cyclocomputer. At the Real Ale Ride, we were packing up to go home. I unclipped the computer from its mount, and slipped it into the back pocket of my jersey. After the bikes were securely strapped onto their carrier, it occurred to me that I could put on the spare t-shirt I had brought to the ride, so I shucked off the jersey and changed into the t-shirt.

That evening, when I looked for the computer to add its data to my ride stats (I’m a dweeb), I couldn’t find it anywhere. I finally concluded that it had fallen out of my pocket to the ground when I took off the jersey. I wasn’t too broken hearted about it. It was a good first cyclocomputer, but now I had an excuse to go shopping. (Which for men is an entirely different experience than for women. They buy clothes. We buy toys. Toys are more fun.)

Anyway, it had been suggested that I look for something that measures cadence. The winner:

The Cateye Strada Cadence.

It’s the Strada Cadence by Cateye. It just looked like a quality unit. It’s wired, which my previous computer was not, so I had to contend with that when I installed it — and it took a couple tries before I got it right. But this afternoon, I got to take it on its maiden voyage.

I did my favorite 15-mile after work ride: My house to the Veloway, three laps, then home. Map My Ride puts the distance at 14.9 miles. The old Ascent consistently called it around 14.6. Today, the Cateye had it at 14.74. Pretty close.

But there’s one hitch. The cadence sensor isn’t working. The crank on my Allez stands out pretty far from the chainstay, and I don’t think the magnet on the crank is close enough to the sensor on the chainstay for it to register. I suppose it’ll just take some experimentation on my part.

The magnet on the crank (held in place by the zip tie) is supposed to pass over the “sensor line” on the sensor mounted on the chainstay — but there’s a wide gap between the two.

Another problem is that the inside of the crank arm has a concave indentation. That forces me to mount the magnet right on the edge of the arm, to get it as close to the sensor as possible. It’s still not close enough.

Other riders have made this work, and I will, too. But if you have any experience with this particular model, let me know how you solved the problem.

Like this:

Like Loading…

Categories // Accessories Tags // cadence, Cateye, computer, Cyclocomputer

Get Email Updates

Enter your email address to subscribe to this blog and receive notifications of new posts by email.

Join 257 other subscribers

Categories

  • Accessories
  • Bike fit
  • Bikes
  • Blogging
  • Books
  • clubs
  • Cold weather
  • Community
  • Commuting
  • Components
  • crash
  • cycling
  • Equipment
  • Favorite rides
  • fitness
  • food
  • guest post
  • Heat
  • Injury
  • logs
  • Maintenance
  • Mental
  • Nutrition
  • Odds 'n ends
  • People
  • Poll
  • Racing
  • Records & stats
  • Review
  • Rides
  • running
  • Safety
  • soreness
  • Specialized
  • Technique
  • Technology
  • Tips
  • tires
  • training
  • Travel
  • Uncategorized
  • Home
  • About
  • Contact
  • Partners

Recent Posts

  • Getting Back on the Bike: Road Cycling Tips for Older Cyclists
  • Are BCAAs and EAAs Good for Cycling?
  • How to Fix Numb Toes When Cycling
  • How to Find and Vet a Bike Club
  • Celebrate Pearl Izumi with Big Savings in the Memorial Day Sale

Categories

  • Accessories
  • Bike fit
  • Bikes
  • Blogging
  • Books
  • clubs
  • Cold weather
  • Community
  • Commuting
  • Components
  • crash
  • cycling
  • Equipment
  • Favorite rides
  • fitness
  • food
  • guest post
  • Heat
  • Injury
  • logs
  • Maintenance
  • Mental
  • Nutrition
  • Odds 'n ends
  • People
  • Poll
  • Racing
  • Records & stats
  • Review
  • Rides
  • running
  • Safety
  • soreness
  • Specialized
  • Technique
  • Technology
  • Tips
  • tires
  • training
  • Travel
  • Uncategorized

Archives

  • May 2024
  • December 2023
  • November 2023
  • March 2022
  • October 2020
  • November 2018
  • May 2018
  • September 2017
  • November 2016
  • October 2016
  • January 2016
  • July 2015
  • June 2015
  • May 2015
  • April 2015
  • March 2015
  • February 2015
  • January 2015
  • December 2014
  • November 2014
  • October 2014
  • September 2014
  • August 2014
  • July 2014
  • June 2014
  • May 2014
  • April 2014
  • March 2014
  • February 2014
  • January 2014
  • December 2013
  • November 2013
  • October 2013
  • September 2013
  • August 2013
  • July 2013
  • June 2013
  • May 2013
  • April 2013
  • March 2013
  • February 2013
  • January 2013
  • December 2012
  • November 2012
  • October 2012
  • September 2012
  • August 2012
  • July 2012
  • June 2012
  • May 2012
  • April 2012
  • March 2012
  • February 2012
  • January 2012
  • December 2011
  • November 2011
  • October 2011
  • September 2011
  • August 2011
  • July 2011
  • June 2011
  • May 2011
  • April 2011
  • March 2011
  • February 2011
  • January 2011
  • December 2010
  • November 2010
  • October 2010
  • September 2010
  • August 2010
  • July 2010
  • June 2010
  • May 2010
  • April 2010
  • March 2010
  • February 2010
  • January 2010
  • December 2009
  • November 2009
  • October 2009
  • September 2009
  • August 2009
  • July 2009
  • June 2009
  • May 2009
  • April 2009
  • March 2009
  • February 2009
  • January 2009
  • December 2008
  • November 2008
  • October 2008
  • September 2008
  • August 2008
  • July 2008
  • June 2008
  • May 2008
  • April 2008
  • March 2008
  • February 2008

Copyright © 2026 · Modern Studio Pro Theme on Genesis Framework · WordPress · Log in

Go to mobile version
%d