A few months ago I broke my Sigma 1600 computer when it (and the rest of the bike) unexpectedly met a stream bank. The computer still worked, but one of the mounting ears was missing. Initially I just used a pair of zip-ties to hold the computer to the mount, but the zip-ties moved around a bit, I wasn’t confident that the zip-ties would hold on rough trails, and it wasn’t easy to remove the computer from the mount.
As many of you know, inner tubes are very useful for a number of purposes other than holding air in your tires. My new mount uses a standard 26 x 2″ mountain tube (I’m guessing it is a 2″ tube, I found it on the trail), and that is it. I just cut a length of tube, cut a window for the computer display, and then another hole to fit around the mount base. Normally I’d give a procedure or some simple instructions, but since all you have to do is cut two holes in an inner tube I’ll just post some photos:
Broken Mounting Tab
The cut tube prior to installation on the mount
Inner tube mount installed
Computer Mounted (with the buttons still easily accessible)
I finally got in a decent ride on the Gunnar. This morning (Sunday) I rode from Glenelg to West Beach and then up the River Torrens to the Zoo, which is a little north of the Adelaide central business district. The 43km ride was mostly on paved trails with some road, dirt and gravel and took about one hour forty-five minutes. The weather was cool, around 10°c with light rain. In my opinion, this is great riding because it cuts down of traffic and washes the mud off of my helmet and shoes, which I also use off road and on recently muddy trails.
Speaking of which, I took the Eriksen out to Eagle Park again on Saturday afternoon. This time I took a lot of video both on the bike and off. I have several videos I’m working on now, but this one should be done soon. The ride at Eagle was better than previous rides, mostly because of greater familiarity with the trails, I found some good climbs, and I didn’t break my chain.
If this is all too boring for you, here is an article from the Museum of Mountain Bike Art & Technology (MOMBAT) on The History of Manitou.
These videos were taken at Eagle Park on August 1, 2009 with the ATC3K camera. Being Australia, this is winter and temperature was a nice 13-15°c. I’m going to experiment with different on-bike and off-bike camera mounting and angles, but until then these bike-mounted angles will have to do.
This video has a pretty good sampling of the terrain at Eagle Park. The trails in the video include “Top Deck”, “Jammin”, “Sunset Blvd”, “Tunnel Vision”, “The Mixer”, “Overlocker” and “Hawkeye”, but not necessarily in that order. Trail difficulty ranges from green/easy to blue/intermediate and black/difficult. The trails are mostly clay and rock singletrack with some sandy sections.
This shorter video is uncut beginning from near the parking lot, down the green/easy “Top Deck” trail, then onto the black/difficult “Jammin” trail, and ends when I broke my chain.
