More bike maintenance

First of all, my new trainers arrived. It's odd, though, I ordered two pair, and only one pair arrived, plus a free SportsDirect mug (hurrah, I like those!).  I suppose the other pair will be a separate delivery? I'm wearing the ones that arrived now, and they fit just fine. So, it looks like it isn't a silly idea to buy footwear over the internet.

I decided to fit a longer power cord to the bike, so that as well as being able to put the bike battery on top of the bike rack in the bag supplied, I also have the option of putting it a lot lower, in the saddlebags. This will make things more stable, of course.

Taking the bike for test runs, I'm finding that it will run at full power, but if I try to use full power to accelerate from start or from a slow speed, the battery cuts out (I'm guessing there's a safety cutout that thinks I'm pulling too much current) and I have to power-cycle the battery to get things working again. That's not a killer problem, especially as I have a switch in a convenient place to control power, but it could get annoying. So I'm looking into ordering a battery from the same Chinese place the wheel came from; I can get a 20 amp-hour battery for about the same price that I'd pay in the UK for half the capacity. And hopefully, it won't suffer from the cut-out problem. And I can ask them to send it airmail, for a small extra cost.

Back to bike.2, the one I'm currently using. I put new batteries in the speedometer, and while I was doing that, I noticed that the front tire was almost totally flat. I took the inner tube out, and, as I expected, the place where I had repaired the puncture (which I caused by putting the tire back on badly) is leaking.

The hell with this; I don't want a problem when I'm in the middle of nowhere, or even when I arrive at the start of my circuit and get the bike out. So rather than try to patch it again, I decided to put in a new inner tube, it's not like they're a lot of money (about £9 for the thorn resistant ones I like to use). I opened up a Kendra tube package, only to find that I'd used it to store two ordinary (i.e., not thornproof) inner tubes. Oops. Never mind, I have one in the car, and I fitted that, and this time I put the tire back on using my thumbs, not the tire levers which had caused the previous puncture. So then I went to order a couple of thorn-resistant inner tubes (because I like to have a couple of spares) only to find that my supplier only had one available. So I bought that, and asked him to tell me when he gets more in stock.

I also changed the rear brake pads; the front ones look OK. That's probably because I mostly use the rear brakes for slowing down, and I only use the front ones when I need to stop in a hurry, which doesn't happen often, or when I need to come to a complete halt. So they get a lot less wear.

Tomorrow, I'm planning a bike ride round Southampton, my first outing since the 17 mile circuit I did last week.