We have been doing a fair amount of quadracycling recently, especially since the weather improved about two weeks ago and it has mostly stopped raining! We are now up to 424 km for the year, which is still well short of Ruth's goal of 1000 km for the year.
Achieving Ruth's goal just suffered another setback today. I was checking the rear SunRace dérailleurs, as I have done regularly since they cracked and broke in June and we replaced them. Today I discovered that the new ones are cracked!
The driver's side dérailleur has a large crack in it that starts right where the previous cracks started, at the corner of the casting just near the attachment point and goes right round the part 180 degrees.
The passenger's side dérailleur has two smaller cracks in the very early stages of starting.
I have lost faith in the SunRace dérailleurs. The parts that keep cracking are castings. The front dérailleurs are Shimano units and they are mounted on forgings instead of castings. We haven't seen any problems with these at all.
I removed them both dérailleurs once again - I am getting good at this now - and sent photos and a description to Beth at Rhoades Car. Today is a holiday in the USA and in Canada (Labour Day), so hopefully I will hear back from Beth tomorrow on this and we can get on with solving it.
Our 4W2PCP is still under warranty, as it is just a year and a half old. The new dérailleurs cracked with a total of 267.9 km on them. These kilometers were put on the cycle since the new dérailleurs were installed on 20 June 2008. The quadracycle has not been off asphalt roads in that time and has not been used in any unusual manner, it hasn't even carried any loads. I am confident that this is just a problem with the flawed SunRace dérailleurs and that replacing them with something more durable will solve the problem.
Of course the next week is going to be one of the warmest and brightest of the year and we will be unable to quadracycle until we get this solved. Hopefully it will happen quickly. Our quadracycle is our only vehicle, except for our bicycles and we need it to get around.
Price of gas locally today $1.267
Total quadracycling for 2008 so far - 423.8 km
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