LEL 2013 / London - Edinburgh - London Audax

Andy Allsopp;

Notes from the tech. Things I learnt:

- Avoid bladed straight pull spokes. I'm sure there are many who will read this and say "I ride them all the time, never had an issue". Good. I'm glad to hear it. From my stints as tech at Market Rasen, all but one break was a bladed straights, and nobody was carrying a spare. I think it peaked on the Wednesday, when we saw 3 inside of half an hour. Combined with the low spoke count lacings typical of these wheels, and you're into taco territory pretty quickly. The only wheel necessitating replacement was a bladed straight (which I will admit was quite handy as it became the donor for a few of the others).

**- Deep rims. **Fine. Again, I know plenty that ride them, and there's no reason that they should be any more problematic than the more standard fare. Unless you're not carrying a valve extender or spare tube that fits. Most punctures were fixed easily by the riders themselves. We fixed a few that we spotted whilst a rider was asleep. The only ones that were brought to us were on deep rims where the replacement came up short.

- Internal cable routing with STI shifters. Yes, I know, that's pretty standard kit. We didn't see a lot of failed mechanical shifters. Those we did were exclusively STIs with concealed cables. Seems to me that STIs live on a diet of cable ends. I'm used to bar end levers so was largely relying on LeeW to know how to extract the shuttlecock of shame these things leave behind. Its a fiddly job and I had a queue of 7 bikes at one stage with the same complaint. Fortunately, Lee is a genius and he cleared the whole backlog in the time it took me to fix the other two. The internal routing isn't massively problematic, but it does make diagnosis a whole chunk harder when you can't just tug on exposed cable and feel
what moves.

- Di2. Ah. Its a great technology and one I lust after daily. However.... We saw 3 at Market Rasen, all borked. One had a signal light flashing and wouldn't shift the front. Another seemed alive, but was insufficienty motivated to change the rear gear. The other gave up the ghost entirely and was reincarnated as a very expensive chain tensioner. At least two of them had failed considerably prior to our stage, and been dragged to us via numerous other techs, each of whom were unable to find a fix. Lee had a spare friction shifter to rescue one, but all others left us in the same state they arrived. Our box of spares does not extend to kit at this price point, and our knowledge of how it works is limited (is it magic?)
In short, if you are carrying spares, are of independent means, are trailed by a team car, or know a wizard, you are probably safe with Di2. Otherwise, even on this tiny sample size, I can't recommend it.

**- 10(+) speed chains without quick links. **100% of the the victims of the prior two points were running 10 or 11 speed chains. Those that had quick links and a bust front derailleur were given the option of breaking the chain, removing the cage from the chain path, picking a ring, and riding on. Those without had to keep the cage, so were dialled into one of the rings via limit screw then given a choice of 6 gears that didn't rub. We had a few spare links, but were generally denied the time to fit them. Again, little issue on a normal ride, but more than possible to knock yourself out entirely on something like LEL.

I'm sure more will come to me, and that Lee would be a far better source of information than I on these things. I also acknowledge that I didn't pay as much attention to the bikes that were working fine, and I'm sure for every point illustrated above there's a counter argument. But, if you're looking at your bike for 2017 and can count more three of the above, well, give serious thought to how you might be able to fix it at the side of the road.