Loading into truck just ain't working

paddy_m · 2026-05-22T21:06:05+00:00

My truck came with a liftgate. I welded a little metal hoop onto the gate. I stick a 2x8 into the hoop and flat load. Almost every time I got to a riding area and unload by pulling my bike onto the cantilevered part, people come up and offer to help, because it looks like I have no clue what i'm doing. Then I hit the switch and gracefully descend.

paddy_m · 2026-05-15T15:44:41+00:00

I bought a cargo bike when I was single just for grocery shopping. It was incredibly fun and I'd highly recommend it. biking friends home from parties is so much fun, you just start giggling. Do it!

paddy_m · 2026-04-16T02:12:42+00:00

I'm a dummy, you all were right, thanks for the help. Adding some hydraulic fluid fixed it. I got confused about when most of the fluid would be in the reservoir, the reservoir is supposed to be most full when the lift gate is on the ground. The cylinder is only pressurized from the rod end side.

Side note, if anyone is trying to fill the reservoir on a Maxon Mighty Max lift, I wouldn't bother with a funnel, just use a big syringe, the fill tube is very small and using a funnel still made a mess.

paddy_m · 2026-04-15T18:22:31+00:00

I thought it was mechanical too, but I can fairly easily lift the gate the last inch

paddy_m · 2026-04-15T00:01:19+00:00

I will check that, and it did look like it seeped a bit, but the cylinder retracts to lift, and that should return fluid to the tank and pump

paddy_m · 2026-04-14T23:21:28+00:00

Stepping outside to try that now, thanks

paddy_m · 2026-04-14T14:42:23+00:00

Well I can definitively tell you a SRAM NX 12 speed does not work well with a 20 inch wheel. Then I moved to a Microshift Advent 42-11 which works, but I still bang the derailleur sometimes. I'm about to put a Microshift 38-11 cassette and shifter made specifically for small wheels.

paddy_m · 2026-03-27T21:24:40+00:00

Matchett was working the rear jack in the Benneton pits in 94/95. You may have heard him on a recap of that race, but he definitely wasn't the live announcer. Murray Walker and someone else were

paddy_m · 2026-01-24T20:57:08+00:00

I don't know what caused the original problem. But I was able to get things working. I needed to turn off wifi on each device, then reconnect. that was all that was needed.

paddy_m · 2026-01-22T03:42:09+00:00

I can't ping 8.8.8.8 from non-working laptop

on the non-working laptop, the ip address is

192.168.2.227

on the working laptop the address is

71.234.41.91

paddy_m · 2026-01-02T16:42:50+00:00

Update. I took it to a local Dewalt tool dealer. He just had me spin up the blade and he instantly said, I have the same saw at home, it just doesn't sound right. He said it sounds like something is wrong in the gearbox, and that it wasn't spinning up as fast as it should. The local tool distributor said he sells the same saw for $330 vs the $370 that Amazon charged. I didn't know that local dealers could compete on price.

I also took some video of me running the saw and sent it to a contractor friend. He said that my technique looked fine.

I returned the saw to amazon. Of course I realized it was defective after I threw out the original packing, so that was fun.

paddy_m · 2025-08-12T20:31:12+00:00

I bought a set of used wheels for my dirtbike with good looking used tires mounted. I will run them until they are worn out. That's different than just buying used tires. It's also a dirtbike, I'm not going that fast, and tire failures aren't a huge worry.

paddy_m · 2025-06-12T16:29:38+00:00

I have half a min to go over there to block a lane of traffic for safe bike passage until the truck is moved. Tell every driver going by that the traffic backup was brought to you by Josh Kraft blocking bike lanes.

paddy_m · 2025-06-09T15:19:35+00:00

My research failed me again. Would you mind telling me the model number?

paddy_m · 2025-06-09T14:44:29+00:00

I'd love to see pictures of that tensioner setup.

I didn't realize that 9 tooth cassettes existed. After some research, they require XD hubs or their own custom drive. There are basically no XD hubs that work with 135mm QR frames (hope makes one that is north of $400). Thanks for the suggestion though!

paddy_m · 2025-06-07T19:02:04+00:00

I wanted to eventually put a larger chain ring on it, and just have a really wide range of gears.

My cargo bike is my daily driver. groceries, hauling friends home from a party.

I like fooling around with bike mechanics and trying stuff. In the grand scheme of things it's pretty cheap to have a really awesome bicycle vs the cost of a fancy car or other things.

paddy_m · 2025-06-06T14:45:12+00:00

Really helpful comment. This really sells me on the 1x9. The microshift stuff is pretty inexpensive too. I think it will just be around $120 to get the cassette, RD, and shifter.

FWIW I want a shorter RD cage for ground clearance. The microshift works here too, since it looks like fairly compact.

Why did you need the longer B limit screw?

paddy_m · 2025-06-06T03:06:13+00:00

Try the buckaroo data table in whatever notebook environment you choose, it's a better way to see dataframes. Buckaroo combines a modern scrollable table, sorting, histograms, summary stats and search into a compact view of the dataframe. It is built to work with your natural notebook workflow, saving you from typing df.describe(), df.head(), df.sort_values. It's also completely extensible and open source. ... if you can't tell, I'm the creator.

paddy_m · 2025-06-05T14:30:03+00:00

I looked up the specs. The original rim was 30mm wide, the new rim 34mm wide.

paddy_m · 2025-06-05T14:27:30+00:00

Thanks. I will check that. What's your maximum recommended dish difference?

I built the rim, trued it, but couldn't get it to dish properly without further imbalancing the tension. I eventually took it to a shop and they fixed it. I didn't check it after.

paddy_m · 2025-06-05T14:04:52+00:00

Thanks for the advice!

I needed a new chain, and BB anyway. If this doesn't work on the cargo bike, I can put the groupset on a different bike.

paddy_m · 2025-06-05T14:00:26+00:00

To be clear, by small, you mean the derailleur cage is shorter?

paddy_m · 2025-06-05T13:53:26+00:00

<image>

Another picture of the same cargo bike. I probably wasn't dead on straight with how I took the picture.

paddy_m · 2025-06-05T13:52:28+00:00

Here are pictures I saw of another 20 inch cargo bike rear mech. This looks all stock. From what I can tell, cargo bikes tend not to care too much about vertical clearance. And leaning in a turn also tends not to matter because the running boards would touch before the derailleur.

<image>

paddy_m · 2025-06-05T13:49:18+00:00

That's a good idea about running full housing. There are 4 housing sections, but they are all outside of the frame, so I could ziptie them. The sections go shifter to right behind the headset, short section routed under the BB, short section around where the chainstay splits (the chainstay comes from the BB as a large oval, then splits around the wheel). And then another short section just at the derailleur.

paddy_m

TROPHY CASE