The Annals of Bike Maintenance, part 5,286; Mouse Madness

[rebeccmeister]

About a week ago, I noticed that the cable housing for my rear derailleur was wearing out at the connection point to the derailleur. Yesterday I had the presence of mind to dig out an extra shift cable and housing to bring in to work, but I couldn't find the cable cutters anywhere!

...it turns out I left the cable cutters at work, in order to work on one of the bikes for the Bicycling course.

Anyway. The work day wound up being hectic all day yesterday, because I have students getting ready to turn in full drafts of their First Full Scientific Paper, and they are busily working to resolve all kinds of issues with all the different bits and pieces that go into a full manuscript. By the time I could catch my breath, it was 6:15, so I thought to myself, "Well, not a problem, this cable housing replacement should only take a couple of minutes."

...If you do any of your own bike maintenance, this storyline is already predictable.

The offending part, before replacement:


Do you see that bit of split metal surrounding the black cable housing? That is an aluminum cable housing ferrule. When trying to remove the cable housing, I discovered that it had chemically welded itself to the rear derailleur.

I don't have a drill in my lab, but I do have a Dremel, so I eventually wound up Dremeling out the derailleur as best I could with an undersize Dremel drill bit. By then, 30 minutes had already elapsed, and I was more than ready for dinner. So I eventually got things to enough of a "good enough" point that I could limp home.



This is the second connection point that I've had to Dremel or drill out on this bike so far. The winter salt has not been kind. I should just take up the local bike shop on their winter bike cleaning special just to ensure that SOMEONE takes the whole thing apart, cleans it, greases the threads, and reassembles it, because I can never seem to make the time to do it myself, and the end result takes more time and is an even bigger and more expensive headache for me to deal with.

Oh well.

It is only now that I can see that shifting had gotten ludicrously sluggish; it isn't perfect now but it is so much more crisp and responsive again. So that's something.

--

Right now it's Mouse Season around here. Prior to this year, I've gotten lucky and none of the mice found my office. I have not been so lucky this year.

Apparently the bodies of roadkill monarch butterflies are delicious, but the wings are not:



Apparently succulents are also delicious:





To my dismay, the mouse saw right through my efforts to protect the Lithiops, and it is no more:



The mouse also determined that height is but a small impediment and saw fit to eat the entire jade plant, which used to look like this:



I feel like a mouse that eats my succulents deserves some special form of punishment, but I'm loathe to set out snap traps.

Comments

[shalpacafarm]

Literally days after we drove the cats to Chicago our house in Bkln was mouse Disneyland. It’s kind of easy to see how people who like cats might out-reproduce people who hate cats.

[altamira16]

Apparently the bodies of roadkill monarch butterflies are delicious, but the wings are not:

I learn so many things on the internet.

[rebeccmeister]

Hahahahaha, so true!

I mean, the wings are all hairy and whatnot, and I think they might also be toxic? Can't remember for sure.

[jameswatriss]

I read that, and thought “Of course they don’t. Who would want to eat the feathers?”

I need more coffee, clearly.

[twoeleven]

["T]his cable housing replacement should only take a couple of minutes."

...If you do any of your own bike maintenance, this storyline is already predictable.
There's an old law -- apparently called Westheimer's Rule -- that states: "To estimate the time it takes to do a task, estimate the time you think it should take, multiply by two, and change the unit of measure to the next highest unit. Thus, we allocate two days for a one-hour task."

It is an iron law in all fields, even though I first learned about it WRT programming. The same Westheimer also coined the immutable law about time in the library and time in the laboratory. :)


As to Mr. Mousey, do you have a spare snake handy? ;>

[moodyduck]

I am going to print that law out for my office once I'm allowed back in.

[jameswatriss]

That is a brilliant law. Hand in hand with Parkinson’s law that a task will expand to fill all available space.

Which always made sense to me… when I have absolutely nothing to do, it can take all day to get it done.

[scrottie]

"chemically welded itself" -- sounds like galvanic corrosion. There's probably a stray current between the seat post and peddles.

Argh. Stupid mouse. Plenty of live capture traps at home. And also a mouse there as well. And snap traps too. If the mouse is that hungry, that helps with baiting traps.

[jameswatriss]

Well, steel cable, aluminum ferrule. The softer metal always takes a hit. (Aluminum was probably socketed into steel, too.)

Speaking of winter salt, that was one of the driving factors behind the full housing runs I used on the Jolly Roger: fewer places for crud to get pulled into the system by moving cables, when the housing is unbroken. It always worked really smoothly.

(As opposed to running bare cable across places like the top tube…)

I think I also heard of people carrying water bottles (carefully marked) with ammonia solutions, to dissolve ice and so forth, so derailleurs could start shifting again. If that’s helpful…

(I definitely had to yank on iced up cables a few times, until I Dremeled the housing stops and ran full housing.)

[scrottie]

Yeah. I could tell other stories about galvanic corrosion, but since you mention it, the Jolly Roger's seat post became seized at one point. The bike shop tried to cut it out with a hacksaw blade, without luck. I ran a spade bit straight down the seat tube and bored it out. Worked like a charm. R quite likely mentioned that in some form.

Also been threatening to put some combination of a bakfiets adapter and trike adapter on the Jolly Roger:

https://argobikes.com/

https://www.amazon.com/Conversion-Kit-Use-Hollow-Black/dp/B00JTITDU2/ref=asc_df_B00JTITDU2/

Heavy? I'll show you heavy. The trike kit could actually have some merit for winter.

[jameswatriss]

Wait… is the Jolly Roger still in operation? I thought it had been decommissioned… That bakfiets thing looks amazing. I’ve seen similar cargo bike adaptors to add on to the tail end of a bike frame, but nothing for the front.

I’m mostly familiar with galvanic corrosion as a protective measure offshore… huge blocks of zinc, mounted to steel structures. But the equipment I was working with was aluminum framed, so we had to use blocks of magnesium to protect the aluminum. It’s all fun and games until you realize that not everyone in the shop knows that it’s flammable.

“Hey, get that away from the bench grinder!!”

“What? I just need to grind these sharp edges off…”

“It’s flammable?"

(Guy looks at me as if I’d suggested Chocolate pudding could be used to repair jet engines.)

“Yeah, right…”

Oh, Texas.

[scrottie]

I think R used the extended seatpost fiasco (the bike shop had it for a long time and it was a while before she gave up on getting that free herself) partly as rationalization for Frodo. In the mean time, she was strapping enormously heavy panniers and riding through the brine on her expensive and light weight Rodriguez. I think the Jolly Roger may have been pulled out once or twice while Frodo was awaiting some service or another. Frodo has the generator hub/lights and hand picked everything and the Roger never got that complete makeover. The rear rack wasn't sturdy enough to keep R's absurdly heavy panniers from pushing the fender in to the wheel. Second hand observation here, but it seems like by the time she changed everything, she changed everything. Mind that was probably after multiple rear racks and fenders and lights and peddles and deraileurs etc etc. So, some mix of decommissioned and still basically functional thanks to a spade bit.

As part of this saga, she absolutely refused to borrow my GT Avalanche (1.0) citing terrible ergonomics for her (it's a really aggressive mountain bike) and chronically unmaintained shifting. A rear rack eyelet soon rusted off taking the rack with it.

"mostly familiar with galvanic corrosion as a protective measure offshore" -- yeah, that's what I was originally alluding to. I need to do a bit of aluminium welding here, after I learn how to. I think Texans creating fires in industrial environments is a whole youtube genre. I have more than a few videos of just that saved. I think Texans only learn things by playing awful pranks on each other when they aren't learning the hard way. So, should give them some sodium metal anodes.

[jameswatriss]

Awful pranks is an understatement… and a whole other genre.

But compared to the Louisiana native who regaled me with stories of growing up and playing shotgun tag with his cousins, (“What? It was only bird shot…”) maybe Texas isn’t so…

Well, no. It’s still crazy. Just not Louisiana crazy.

[bluepapercup]

That jade plant is the saddest and also funniest thing I've seen in a while. It reminds me of nothing so much as when the deer ate all the leaves, then the twigs, then the bark off one of my parents' ornamental trees. Just the most glum, naked stick.

[scrottie]

Once rescued a ficus tree from by a dumpster. Few days later, came home, and one of the dogs had chewed it clean off, leaving a stump. So much for "rescued". This was not for want of chew toys.

[rebeccmeister]

Oh gosh, yeah, this is the exact same sort of situation!

I bought a couple of little spiky cacti to replace the soft and tender succulents, and I think I might also set some things up as a terrarium in the future. So it will all be okay. Just annoying to show up to my office and go, "What NOW, little micey?!?!" :^)

[cmcmck]

If you want to set tilt traps just to catch the little buggers and release them, they adore peanut butter...........

[rebeccmeister]

Good thought. Thank you! With mice showing up both at home and at work, I should probably order some more so I have enough for both spots. I think I did 3 or 4 releases from mice caught at home last year!