bloooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooog

This week’s puttering is not computer-related! I’d like this to be a general DIY type of section.

I have a bike. It’s called “Bike’s SE”, and it’s a Chinese Brompton clone. I think it’s specifically branded for the Russian market, and it’s sold through shops here. It’s far from the best CN Brompton in terms of price–quality ratios, but I only understood that after riding it for half a season.

I had to replace v-brake pads almost immediately (some clones come with discs; I don’t know if those fit well on the 16” wheels and allow proper folding, but I like the idea of having brakes with actual stopping power). The derailleur looks like what you can find if you search for “Brompton 6-speed derailleur” on your favorite Chinese marketplace, and it’s mostly plastic. The finest British engineering is faithfully reproduced in the chain tensioner, so the chain is always dirty.

The shifter was a pain, has “Bike’s” written on it, and is not good at all. In its final weeks, shifting up always shifted all the way up, to the sixth gear.

This is the least-searchable cycling brand possible, so it’s difficult to find component compatibility information. As it turns out, the shifter pulls 3.2 mm of cable for each gear, which matches the Shimano Tourney 6-speed shifter (EF-41). This component spreadsheet is ✨amazing✨. I used calipers to measure the cable pull on the old shifter to the best of my ability. Luckily, it all works, and I can now shift any way I want.

I went from 104 to 98 kg over this cycling season, with no other sports and very limited diet change. And I love riding this thing.