6th March 2014

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Thursday 6th 34-46F, 1-8C, still at first, thick mist, overcast. I found new forest tracks to explore which led to another wood and  return path away from the roads. A very dark brown (red) squirrel with a black tail ran across the track in front of me. First squirrel I'd seen in more than a decade despite spending so much time out of doors. The last squirrel I saw was in one of or own trees and that was a red squirrel. Lots of birds in the woods including two large birds of prey. Probably just buzzards. Visibility had improved from 50 to 200 yards by the time I returned home. No sign of the promised sun yet. 5 enjoyable miles of walking. A breeze is picking up now.

The wind was so cold I wore the winter Dintex/HeatPax gloves. Though I took the GripGrab Windster gloves to change into later. Gears still jumping. 21 miles. Going out again. Plus 7 more miles. A half turn more on the adjuster seemed to fix the gears. Passed my first 1000 miles for this year. About time too!

Friday 7th 39F, 4C, high cloud with a hint of brightness, breeze picking up. Rain and wind promised for this afternoon.

I am wondering whether I reversed the cable clamping plate on the Ultegra rear changer when I put it back together. I had been experimenting with different cable clamping before fitting the ShiftMate. The clamp was reversed and I put it back to normal. This may be the reason for the newly indecisive indexing. The odd thing is that the ShiftMate is supposed to have taken care of the incorrect pull-per-click ratio of Campag Ergo levers with Shimano changers. [Shimergo] So cable re-routing should not have been necessary.

Another oddity was the Ultegra triple front changer. I discovered it was literally hitting the seat tube when fully inwards. There is a big bump cast onto the parallelogram mechanism. This hump was hitting the tube before the chain would hop cleanly onto the inner ring. It is strange that this never happened before. I can only imagine the chainwheel crank has pulled further onto the square axle taper this time. The hump may be a safety device should the front changer cable break while out on the road. It would allow the rider to get home in a low gear. Or even on another chainwheel if a suitable packing "wedge" was placed between the hump and the seat tube. Attentive readers will remember that I was searching for a really short axle to overcome cable tension when on the outer chainwheel. The distance between the crank and the BB cup was still further than I wanted even with a 107mm axle. Now the crank has pulled in quite close to the fixed cup. So I had to file the changer hump a little to get clean changing.

Click on any image for an enlargement.