in which i talk about my bike for a bit

my bike broke down a few weeks ago¹, and for various reasons, i decided to replace the whole bike instead of just the drivetrain. i found an old 3-speed rudge sports for pretty cheap on craigslist, and i've been quite happy with it so far

¹: okay technically it's still rideable by some definition of that word, and also it's been in roughly the same state for a few years now, but a few weeks ago i decided to actually do something about it

that being said, there were two things i wanted to improve: the lights and the brakes

lights

the bike had a working dynamo hub in the front wheel, which i measured as producing ~6v ac at ~2w. this was with spinning the wheel manually, since i didn't bother to hook up the multimeter in a stable enough way to check while riding it. this power went through a switch on the front headlight and into two incandescent (!) bulbs, one in the front and one in the back, wired in parallel

needless to say, this is not very bright. so, i bought some cheap power leds and went over to a friend's house (they have a bunch of tools and stuff), and we

wired together a full-bridge rectifier out of four diodes they had lying around

ran some tests on the leds to try to figure out how much power they could take before they blew. the answer was "far more than the dynamo can provide" (the test led started to overheat at around 6v and 1a, but still worked fine afterward)

hooked the rectifier up between the dynamo and the switch

gave me a headache cause the leds are really bright and the rectifier doesn't produce very good dc at the speed my friend was able to spin the wheel at by hand so it flickered at the worst frequency. we tried adding a capacitor to the circuit going from power to ground, but it didn't work for some reason? idk why. luckily it didn't do this at reasonable biking speeds

spent like far too long trying to come up with clever ways to mount them, then got tired, gave up, and just scotch taped them to the places where the incandescent bulbs used to be. they're still in enclosures, so the worst case scenario is that they fall out and become worse at producing light until i fix them, but i'll probably 3d print something to go in the bulb sockets eventually

i then biked home at like 1am with no other lights, and it worked great! the route between our houses isn't very well lit², so it's probably the worst-case scenario for what this bike will see, and i still felt like it was producing enough light. i couldn't see how well the rear light was doing, but next time i'm biking with someone else at night i'll ask them (update 2024-01-25: yeah it's good)

²: there's a multi-use path that goes pretty much directly from my house to theirs, which is really nice, but also it has almost no lighting, which is less nice

there's something weirdly satisfying about knowing that the light you're using to see is coming directly from you. it's also really nice not to need to worry about charging my lights and bringing them with me when i bike places at night. the lamps themselves also look really nice - the headlight in particular is really big and gives the bike (even more of) a vintage vibe

(this line could be an image link if you poke me and ask for a picture!)

one thing i might do in the future is wire up a usb charging port on my bike. it'd be completely pointless, but i also think it'd be hilarious, and the switch already has three spots so surely it wouldn't be too hard to configure one of them to power the usb port

another thing i'd like to do is take another shot at wiring in a capacitor. this'd help with the flickering at slow speeds, and with a big enough capacitor it can also make the light work for a minute or two when i'm stopped. the law here doesn't require that, and i have two rear reflectors (one built into the bike, and another i screwed onto my rack) so i should still be visible when i'm stopped, but it'd still be nice. plus, i find it really annoying when other bikes have flashing lights (for getting attention or smth ig, not because the person who designed the lights was dealing with a grumpy ac power source and didn't feel like converting it to dc properly) and even though in practice this isn't a problem once i'm up to speed, it still feels a bit rude to flash my light at people as i'm building up that speed

one thing i definitely don't want to do is increase the brightness of the light. modern bike (and car) headlights are way, way too bright for urban use, and i'm routinely blinded whenever they pass by me going the opposite direction. i don't want to be part of that problem

brakes

a few hours after i got the bike, it started raining. nothing particularly heavy, but enough that i realized something when i went out to the hardware store to try to get some stuff: rim brakes on steel rims do Not work in the rain. i probably could've slowed down faster by just holding my coat open to increase air resistance

but apparently, using leather pads negates this. luckily i haven't needed to bike while it was rainy since then, but i installed some fibrax raincheaters last night as i was installing the led lights, and i'll update this post once i've had the opportunity to test them

update 2024-01-25: they're not great tbh. like, definitely much better than the old brakes, but still not ideal, even in the dry. i recently reconnected with an old friend who happens to be into old 3-speeds. he suggested replacing the caliper brakes with center-pull ones, and i might do that asp in the future

one other thing i'd like to do at some point in the future is lubricate or potentially replace the brake cables. it currently takes a nontrivial amount of force to apply the brakes, and it'd be nice if that wasn't the case. i'll probably try lubing them when i get around to relubing the rest of the bike, then look into replacing them if that doesn't work

conclusions

i really like this bike! the upright sitting position is much more comfortable than my old bike⁴, and the shifting experience is much nicer. while i'm sure you can get a derailleur adjusted properly, i've never succeeded. in contrast, despite the hub being slightly out of adjustment when i got the bike, i was able to easily fix it using the owner's manual that the previous owner was kind enough to xerox for me

a manual ocr of the owner's manual in question

⁴: my wrists didn't enjoy having all my weight on them, and i'd often ride with the tips of my fingers barely touching the handlebars in order to be able to sit up straighter, which was also uncomfortable but in a different way

the shifter itself is really satisfying to use, much more than the (admittedly broken) twist-shifters on my old bike, and 3 speeds is plenty for my needs - frankly, it's better than the 21 speeds i had on my old bike, since all the extra gears just made it harder to find the right one

the internal hub gear also feels much more reliable than any derailleur i've used - both (presumably) in terms of maintenance and in terms of how quickly and comfortably shifts happen. my old bike sometimes (especially under heavy load, like when going up a hill or accelerating from a stop) took a few seconds or more to find the gear it was looking for, clicking the whole time and ending with a loud snap! as the chain jumps into place. in contrast, the hub gear has instantly, immediately, and near-silently performed every shift i've asked of it. the one caveat is that it sometimes doesn't succeed at shifting downward when stopped, though i can work around that by spinning the pedals backwards a bit, and it's still leagues better than a derailleur in that context

the bike also has an integrated steering lock, which seems neat. the previous owner didn't have a key, but i might try to reverse engineer one (if you know how locks work and have thoughts on how to do this, lemme know!). i'm not sure i'd necessarily trust it on its own, but it still seems like a neat thing to try to make work. i might also try to see if i can make it lock the front wheel as well, and maybe somehow integrate it with a chain. i currently have a u-lock clipped onto the seatpost, but it makes mounting and dismounting more annoying since i have a step-through frame - it'd be nice to replace it with a lock that's easier to carry around. alternatively, if you have suggestions for how to mount a u-lock on a 1970 rudge sports with a 19.5in ladies frame, lemme know :3

update 2024-01-25: found a better position for the u-lock, with the clip on the seatpost facing out and the lock folded as far back as it can go. it's not ideal, but it's good enough. the right way to get a key requires taking apart a bunch of the front fork, there's a number etched on the lock which can be given to a locksmith in order to get a key cut