I may have spoken too soon about today being an epic mountain bike adventure. We kicked off for our ride before 9am, but it was already about 30 deg C. Usually I could ride up to Eagle Park and do a few laps before being hammered, but today I struggled to even get up there. After a few rests in the shade Nick had motivated me to finish the one lap of the park before continuing our journey South from Adelaide. We only got to the point we got to last time, but had to head back as we were out of fluids, and I was exhausted.

I was also very disappointed about my bike which wasn’t performing too well. I got a “full service” which involved the store replacing the chain, cassette, and re-aligning a bent derailleur hanger. I don’t know why, but although it seems to work beautifully on my work-stand at home, it rides like crap when you’re actually applying pedal force. The bottom half of the chain (closest to the ground) shakes madly up and down when pedalling, which means either the derailleur isn’t aligned (i.e. the derailleur hanger wasn’t realigned correctly) or the front chain-rings are too worn for the new chain. I reinstalled my new derailleur hanger when I got back from the ride, degreased that cheap grease crap that comes with new chains to apply decent lube, and took a bit of slack out of the rear derailleur shifting cable. It seemed to make the shifting work well again but the chain still shakes madly up and down. I think I might have to take it back to the store when I get back from my holiday. The chain fell off the front small chain ring twice during my ride today whilst shifting down from middle ring, which stuffed up a couple hill climb sprints. I was changing from the second easiest gear at the back to the easiest, and then the chain slipped right off the cassette down toward the derailleur. I think I’ve resolved these problems by using the decent chain lube and adjusting the rear derailleur cable tension, but I definitely think the chain shaking is from the chain being too new for the chain-rings.

Something else I was annoyed at, which I blame the bike store for, was that when I got my bike home from being serviced, I put the front wheel on only to find the disc pads were rubbing pretty badly. What I realised, is that when I took the bike in I just popped the wheels on but didn’t worry about doing them up tight because it was about to be serviced. When they put my bike on the stand they noticed the disc pads rubbing, so they “fixed it” without checking that the wheel was tightened correctly in the fork drop-outs. So the first thing I did when I got my bike home from the store was to readjust these brake pads. Also, I noticed that they cleaned the bike frame, cleaned the rims and tyres, cleaned the suspension fork outers, crown, and stanchion tubes, but didn’t clean the seals around the stanchion tubes! So they wasted time cleaning stuff that doesn’t matter, and left dirt on my suspension fork seals. Bizarre. And overall, my bike worked better before I got it serviced! I’m positive that they’ll sort out my chain shake when I take it back in and explain the situation (even if it does mean replacing the chain rings) but it’s just annoying that it doesn’t seem to have been taken for a test ride.