Flutterby™! : New bike (I hope) 2006-02-28 22:08:20.107436+00

New bike (I hope)

2006-02-28 22:08:20.107436+00 by Dan Lyke 7 comments

If everything goes right, I just bought a 2005 Cannondale Six13 with Dura-Ace shifters and brakes, TruVativ Carbon Roleur cranks and Easton Tempest II wheels off of eBay.

It doesn't include water bottle cages, and since I'm discovering that while the CamelBak is fantastic for hydration I probably need a bottle full of sugar water (maybe even with electrolytes!) to give my body fuel to burn, I'll need to put a cage on the bike. Unfortunately, on a bike like this that means that one of those ridiculous carbon fiber ultra light weight holders would be right at home. I may have just become one of those poser gear weenies that I've scoffed at.

#Comment Re: made: 2006-03-01 00:49:07.205762+00 by: Dan Lyke [edit history]

And because it's the 2005 model rather than the top-end 2006, this one doesn't have the pressure sensors either in the bottom bracket or the cranks that can tell your bike computer just how hard you're pedaling. Because that would just be too over the top.

#Comment Re: made: 2006-03-01 03:21:59.511742+00 by: meuon [edit history]

Poser-Gear-Weenie-Wannabe! - You NEED the pressure sensors! Congrats on the new family member.

Hmmm... I wonder if it's time to build my own bike computer. I'm not sure what sort of transducers I could use (or where I could put 'em) to get pedal pressure information, but...

Hey, wait a minute. I've got some 900MHz transceiver boards (could probably even figure something simpler for transmitting a few feet with low power). I wonder if I could get some piezo materials I could sandwich between the shoe and the cleat, maybe even measure shear as well as pressure. Combine that with standard wheel and crank pickups, maybe toss a GPS unit in for good measure... I know I've got a couple of small single board computers lying about that'd be perfect for this...

Aren't there stick-on strain-guages you could attach to the crank arms? I either remember seeing something like that or had a very geeky dream that I've forgotten was a dream.

How about aggregate data from chain tension on an idler? - But why? Would a GPS/stopwatch not work well enough?

Heck, the odometer/speedometer/average built into the cheapest modern bike computer is loads more than I had when I rode 20 years ago.

However... One of the things I wonder about is how much effort I'm exerting in climbs. Sometimes it feels like there's something happening in my climb that I'm just slacking off, going for too high a cadence, and... well... it'd be the lazy way out to be able to look at numbers.

For more precision, it'd be nice to work on a smoother cadence, including data on the push over the top and the pull across the bottom part of my stroke. There chain tension would probably be the thing to measure. If I had feedback that let me take the jaggies out of a graph of crank pressure...