Queensland Newsletter 30th May, 2019

John McMullan - 30/05/2019

Welcome to the late May edition of the Queensland Newsletter. In the last two weeks we have seen some firsts: the Far North Queensland riding of the Fleche Opperman All Day Trial; A new Ride Organiser and a brand new ride.

2019 has been an awesome year for the Oppy. Paraphrasing Mark, we have had a record number of teams, our first dirt petite team, the men’s and women’s records broken twice in the one year. Read Mark Riley’s roundup here.

Ride Reports

The Far North Queensland TrOppy season is over with the second round of broken Queensland Records for the season. Discover the teams, their support crews and ride reports here.

Awesome riding by all, setting the bar a little higher than the SEQ Oppy. Looks like we will be in for a South and North series of one-upmanship every year now.

What’s the Point?

We have been blessed with Hugh Fyson becoming a first time ride organiser with a brand new 105km BA on the south side of the Brisbane river. I found this route to be a very pleasant ride, hanging on to the back of the pack for about 15km (a record for me) only to drop off the back at the start of the 7 sisters. Apart from the perfect riding conditions, I found an unusual situation of me being at the first crest and seeing a rider at each of the next two crests on the 7 sisters.

At Wellington Point I have found a new challenge for the Brevet Dirt (or should this be Brevet Sand or Mud?) – timing will be everything…

King Island off Wellington Point – at low tide you can walk (or ride) to it.

Well done Hugh.

Brett Fyfield produced a video ride report.

Fassifern Folly this year was a tough ride with strong winds for a good portion of the distance. Whilst I didn’t complete the ride (something to do with a lack of riding and walking the hills of Woodfordia as a cheer squad at Tough Mudder and an ongoing mechanical issue with the derailleurs) I take my hat off to the riders who did finish. Those I saw were quite exhausted at the end.

This was Rosie’s last running of the Folly but fortunately there will be a RO to take up the reigns and I believe there will be some equally awesome catering for the support. Many thanks to Rosie and Ann for providing support for this ride over the past years.

All things maintenance

Whilst the umpires are out on such things as chain lubrication, tyre and saddle selection, I have continued my journey of maintenance on Curly (my Giant Defy)

Alignment issues

I found some issues with the rear brake cable binding recently – this was due to the previous owner installing a plain steel cable which due to my riding in all sorts of weather had started to rust and bind on the brake casing. The solution was simple – replace the cable with a stainless steel unit except I needed to replace the casing as well. That also meant removing the bar tape, which also meant replacing the front derailleur cable and casing. Fortunately I could re-use the bar tape as it was only recently installed. When replacing the derailleur cable, the usual setting up process is required to ensure the derailleur is indexed and with the limits set properly. I commuted to work (4 x 25km rides) and thought it was bedded in properly but the rough dirt roads on the Fassifern Folly bedded everything in so well that both the front and rear derailleurs had developed enough maladjustment that the chain was coming off every few km (front and rear) giving rise to delays and building frustration. I did sort the issues out in the days after the Folly by completely resetting both derailleurs.

Revisiting light mounts

I manufactured some light mounts using a combination of some extender bars and fittings and some 3d printed bobbins. One of the problems I discovered was that the lights didn’t really have enough clearance from the handlebars and cables and the lights rotated downwards as the ride progressed. As a solution, I re-designed the bobbins to have a keyway to stop the lights rotating and instead of using the original extender bar rods I designed the bobbin to include the 20mm rod in an offset position that moved the lights forward. Here is my handiwork:

For those interested in the design software, I don’t use anything elaborate – Autodesk has an on-line design website called Tinkercad that allows you to make the 3d models using basic block style shapes that are creatively combined to make quite complex designs.

If you have any contributions to the newsletter or ideas for articles, please send them to qld.communications@audax.org.au