New bike! So far both good and bad…

Saturday, April 9th, 2005 at 05:59pm

This morning I picked up my new bike, a Giant XTC-3, and while I was there I finally got some gloves and also a saddle mounted bag. It is certainly a different feel compared to my old bike as the handlebar is wider by about 60mm and more significantly it has front suspension.

After getting it home I proceeded to spend the majority of the afternoon transferring the accessories from my old bike across to the new. Unfortunately not much of this went to plan:

  • I could not install my speedo (a now outmoded Cat Eye Mity 2) as the clip for the sensor was not large enough to fit around the suspension fork.
  • As the frame on the new bike is 19″ instead of 20″ as well as the top tube meeting the seat tube at a lower point it proved impractical to have a bottle holder mounted on the seat tube as it was difficult to remove the bottle. I may review this however.
  • The down tube (and the top tube) on the new bike are of signfigantly larger diameter than the old bike which mean that the batteries for my lights have to sit at an angle. I also had to dig up some longer bolts that would reach through both the bottle holder and the battery holder into the nuts embedded in the frame.

The one thing that did go smoothly when transferring the accessories was that I was able to mount the two lamps for my lights directly to the handlebar. Previously I had the lamps mounted forward of the handlebar on a Minoura Space Grip.

While I was trawling through the drawer that contains miscellaneous bolts and nuts I began to wonder if I really had to mount the batteries under the bottle on the down tube. What if there was an extension cable that would let me place them in a pannier bag? This would mean I would have to accelerate any plans I had to buy a rack for a bag but it would also mean that I would not be restricted to the ABS battery packs, I could use another 6 volt rechargeable battery…

When I went to the Cat Eye website to see if they made such a thing as an extension cable for ABS I found that what I have no longer exists. The only ABS product I could find was the ABS-10 the single 10W lamp and single NiMH battery product. No mention of the ABS-20 ( two 10W lamps and two batteries), the ABS-25 (one 10W and one 15W lamp with two batteries) or the ABS-30 (two 15W lamps with two batteries). On a hunch I checked the UK site (ie ‘English (UK)’ instead of ‘English’) and there I found a mention of the ABS-20 however this has NiMH batteries instead of the NiCad’s mine has. It makes me doubt the reliability of the Cat Eye website as there are plenty of sites out there that mention them but the manufacturer’s doesn’t…

And now for the really annoying thing; it appears that when the front brakes were assembled in the factory they didn’t tighten the bleed value enough as the fluid leaks out if I depress the lever. This means that I will be dropping the bike off at the bike shop on my way to work on Monday and picking it up on my way home…

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