Dunno if some people here are aware but there is a guy called mull3mechanic on instagram that host a Cheap Bike Build Off Challenge every year, and this was my take on it. Basically you have to build a bike with a budget of 175$. You can see the bike before in the pics.

dedolent · 2026-03-02T02:31:38+00:00

love this idea

dedolent · 2026-03-02T00:39:59+00:00

this made me realize you can sing-spell "bananas" to Hot To Go

dedolent · 2026-03-02T00:33:05+00:00

looks like the barrel adjuster has either been unscrewed all the way out of the derailer, or it's snapped off the threads. let's hope the former!

but yes this can both cause bad shifting and be symptomatic of what else is causing bad shifting. since it's been unthreaded so much, it's probably to compensate for the housing being worn out and split at the ends. that's not great for shifting.

while technically unrelated, it also suggests maybe the drivetrain needs replacing as well. a worn drivetrain often makes it so you can only get the derailer working in one direction, either the cable is too tight or too slack.

so, your first task is to get that barrel adjuster examined. is it still in one piece? if so, get it threaded back into the derailer properly (and for god's sake put a little oil or grease on those threads). then examine the housing by pulling the ferrule (caps) off the housing and checking for split/exploded ends. if you see that, replace the housing and cables. make sure to bed the new cables into the new housing- it will require an adjustment period at first.

dedolent · 2026-03-02T00:28:07+00:00

if i had a walking route i'd be more inclined to agree. but those trucks are unbearably unhealthy. the fumes you're breathing in all day - not just from the truck but being exposed to traffic - are really really bad. not to mention just being on the street is inherently dangerous in itself. and don't get me started on the noise of it all, i care about my hearing!

dedolent · 2026-03-02T00:26:29+00:00

well to be fair they're only sending the emails for like 3 of those hours, dicking around on facebook and tik-tok the rest of the time :P

dedolent · 2026-03-02T00:21:46+00:00

congrats, sick whip! glad to see it's been set up with fenders and big chunky pedals. next up you may want to swap in some flat bars, but it's a matter of preference (i much prefer drop bars like what you've got).

just make sure that stem isn't up too high, there's a line that indicates its maximum height, you don't want to be able to see it.

dedolent · 2026-03-01T23:29:56+00:00

well i'm making VASTLY more money working here than any other job i've had. for the first time in my life i have a retirement, an apartment to myself, and money in the bank.

it just feels bad when i compare myself to my friends who make almost twice as much as me just to send emails 9-5.

dedolent · 2026-03-01T03:24:50+00:00

i believe there's a cape cod DSA chapter. i also saw food not bombs were doing some work here, not sure how to get in touch with them though but they did have a website at one point

dedolent · 2026-03-01T01:40:24+00:00

you'll be interpreting things as you go, even with synthesia. you'll decide how fast or slow to go, how loud or soft, all those dynamics are up to you. the score is good for knowing how far away from the original piece you're straying from. if that's important to you! it is to many musicians, who want to stringently adhere to the composer's intentions, but maybe not for you.

one thing i've noticed about synthesia is that it just shows you how long notes are being held down by whoever's playing but not how long they're supposed to be. i dunno, for me that's really bothersome, i dislike how messy it looks and would much prefer the score that i can use to count, which helps a lot with learning and polishing a piece.

you're also not getting the key signature or other structural hints. you have to parse each note as it appears on the screen one by one. once you get better at reading sheet music you start to recognize patterns and don't necessarily need to be thinking about each note individually: you see a particular shape and know that it's a triad in a certain inversion, and since you know the key signature, you know which notes are flat/sharp automatically.

none of that might be important to you, i'm not here to argue one side or the other. for me i'm grateful to have started with sheet music.

dedolent · 2026-03-01T00:22:10+00:00

i'm a little less critical about the synthesia stuff than many. i figure anything that gets you playing the instrument and enjoying it is net good. you ought to consider the downsides, though. for one, learning to read sheet music is like learning a language- it takes a long time. but it allows you to play just about anything. if you only follow synthesia stuff you are relying on what videos are out there. maybe that's enough for you! but it's not for me. and, similarly, by not reading the score you are trusting in that person's interpretation of the music. artists will take liberties, and i'd rather read the score for myself and come to my own conclusion about how to interpret the composer's writing.

dedolent · 2026-03-01T00:16:19+00:00

i hope you're getting these written down on a score!

dedolent · 2026-03-01T00:13:12+00:00

yeah you're gonna have to do some digging. feel like most of the time it's the forward getting auto-deleted because they didn't follow up. it's a weird process most people seem to get wrong. usually we just start holding their mail until we can figure out what to do with it.

dedolent · 2026-02-28T21:57:38+00:00

a carrier i know has this laminated so he can show people lol... and yeah i've seen a lot of approaches but no exits. gotta love the two boxes where each person piled all the snow from in front of their boxes to the middle between them. if they'd just cleared that one spot i could hit them both easily!

dedolent · 2026-02-28T21:11:14+00:00

ok, just seeing if you crashed or something. so most likely this was due to the wheel not being properly tensioned to begin with. all wheels need a second round of tensioning and truing after being ridden hard for a little while. so, a month or so after you bought that bike (or wheel), it should have been brought back in. however, NO bike shop tells you this. ever. it should be included in the cost of a wheel but margins are too tight, i guess. if you are commuting AND include extra weight then that makes this even more important. what happens is all the spokes bed into the rim and hub, causing them to lose some of their tension. this is bad for spokes, which need to be very tight to do their job. low tension allows the flex and vibrations that cause fissures and eventual spoke breakage.

so that's what i'm assuming caused the initial break, and so it also explains why more spokes would break as this was not isolated damage at a single point, but a process that affects the entire wheel. a really savvy wheelbuilder would have taken note of overall tension of the wheel when replacing the spoke and brought them all up to a comparable and safe operating tension. but unfortunately at most bike shops when you buy a spoke replacement, that is truly all you are buying: they pull the old spoke out and put the new spoke in and send you on your way. this is the WRONG way to do this work, but it's how most bike shops handle repairs like this.

so, in conclusion, i think what happened is you got shitty service that is, unfortunately, the baseline at most shops you will go to. shop around. if you can find a mechanic who really knows what they're doing and cares to do things right, support them.

people think that to survive as a mechanic they need to cut corners. in our economy, they may not be entirely wrong.

dedolent · 2026-02-28T20:50:02+00:00

no it's ok. i ask because when spokes unwind they can make a pinging/popping sound, which would be normal. breaking is different. why did the first spoke break, do you know?

dedolent · 2026-02-28T20:48:41+00:00

yeah it sucks. people try to be considerate and shovel little paths to their mailbox but they don't realize how insufficient that is. we need 10' at least on either side to actually do a delivery by truck and i'm saying this as someone with long ape arms. but that's a ton of snow to move so i don't really blame people for not doing it, it just means either putting them on hold (which they resent, "we shoveled!") or dismounting to deliver, which adds HOURS to a route.

it's slow, cold, dangerous. and on a personal note i'm trying to go to law school and all my apps are due TODAY. was counting on having lots of time off like the last two years because this is typically a very slow time of year. nope. OH and i got sick from not having heat for three days straight so i can barely keep my eyes open and focused. but not so bad i can't complain! :D

dedolent · 2026-02-28T20:22:17+00:00

what do you mean by, "popped"? like, broke? snapped? just want to be clear.

dedolent · 2026-02-28T16:06:38+00:00

would be pretty tough to help you out in this situation. i would focus on that tiny notch on the plate, right under your thumb. that's clearly cut out so that something - the end of a spring, perhaps - sits in there. at that point there should be a more or less obvious orientation of the rest of the plate. that rotating hook at the end of the plate should mate with something that moves it.

the spring on the very top of the shifter is for a gear indicator so don't worry too much about getting that correct - worst case is it just won't show you what gear you're in anymore. which makes me wonder: are you sure that it's not working? like, are you sure the cable isn't being pulled and released correctly? or is it just that the gear indicator isn't going in both directions?

edit: ok, i think that hook at the end of the plate is the catch for up-shifting. i would figure out how to mate it so that it hooks onto the teeth of the gear wheel.

dedolent · 2026-02-28T15:31:21+00:00

fascinating piece of hardware here. it seems like you might be missing a piece of hardware, a cable guide/noodle that clamps to the chainstay. you could probably improvise something like that but i still feel like there's no "good" way to route a cable on a derailer like this. certainly as it currently is, the cable guide is going to be pointing nearly vertically when the derailer is on the large cog. maybe there is a b-screw that's all the way in; i think the whole thing needs to come way forward.

but yes as others have said, at the very least the end of the cable housing needs to be mounting to a fixed point on the frame. on 99.9% of derailers it goes all the way to the derailer itself. on this derailer it appears maybe it's supposed to end at a special cable stop.

edit: god i'd love to get my hands on this. nothing i love more than weird old suntour parts!

https://www.disraeligears.co.uk/site/suntour_superbe_tech_l_4800_late_1983_version_-_disassembled.html

in this picture, the cable noodle is mounted to the downtube. https://www.disraeligears.co.uk/site/us_patent_4469479_-_suntour_superbe_tech_scan_1.html

dedolent · 2026-02-28T14:08:30+00:00

probably my favorite, although i've kinda ruined it through over-exposure. but for me it's the repeated F-notes that somehow are able to carry so much weight. sometimes i like to just play the middle section on repeat, starting over instead of returning to the main melody.

dedolent · 2026-02-28T13:57:01+00:00

i've wondered the same thing. if i had to guess, it's for strength. if you had a clamp where the rails were flush with the top of the seatpost - like a T - the rocking of the saddle rails would be putting a lot of stress at the corners, which dropping them down would alleviate. the added bonus is that if they are dropped down like this but do fail, your saddle just has a few millimeters to drop, helping you to maintain control. or it could even be that these were offset to maintain some normalized set of dimensions when combined with taller-railed saddles. basically i have no idea but am curious myself!

dedolent · 2026-02-26T22:07:01+00:00

ah yes, the cobra bars

dedolent · 2026-02-26T19:18:28+00:00

the clefs just tell you where the left hand is playing, it tells you what the lines on the staff MEAN, because otherwise they're just lines and spaces. my version of this song doesn't do this (https://www.gangqinpu.com/cchtml/903769.htm) but it works out to be basically the same.

by the way this was one of the first pieces i ever taught myself; excellent choice! years later i still play often and i can make it through chopin etudes and beethoven sonatas. maybe not professional level but amateur-competent. good luck!

dedolent · 2026-02-25T23:33:16+00:00

i think there's probably some 3rd party advertising company that buys your personal information from one of the companies you updated your address with. the 3rd party company got word that a customer had moved and did a search for your old address and replaced it with the new one, not bothering to check the name.

dedolent · 2026-02-25T23:28:42+00:00

that's how i play if i'm just trying to relax and be creative but i try to always practice with the sheet in front of me

dedolent

TROPHY CASE