The good news is that today was sunny and warm, no one was sick, there was no rain or other city events that pre-empted the Alcatel-Lucent Sunday Bikeday on the Colonel By Drive. No excuses, so we finally got out there. I had actually done a "dry run" last Sunday on my bicycle as Ruth had been under the weather and unable to get out cycling.
So we left home at 0830 and made it to the start of the Colonel By Drive exactly at 0900, which is when it closes to motor vehicles. Traffic was light, with just a few cyclists and roller bladers up that early. The new Schwalbe Big Apple tires performed really well and we could quite easily notice the difference in speed with these slicks over the factory-supplied knobby Cheng Shins we had before.
So the sun was shining, winds were calm and the Rideau Canal looked like a mill pond. Even Dow's Lake had not a ripple on it. We made good time and Ruth decided that she wanted to go to the Second Cup on Rideau Street for coffee. So we cut up through the University of Ottawa campus and made our way over to the coffee shop. We had covered the 15 km in about an hour, which is pretty good speed. We even found a parking spot right in front! That was about the last thing that went right for the day.
The first problem was that Second Cup was closed, even though we were there at 0930 and the place opens at 0700. It seems that they had a programmed power outage for some upgrades and they were not opening until 1000. We decided not to wait and instead headed back. So we wound our way back through U of O and onto the Colonel By Drive once again. Immediately I had a problem - loose pedal. We drove up onto the grass and had a look, the driver's left hand pedal was quickly coming off. This was repeat of a previous problem that I thought I had solved last Hallowe'en by using some Permatex Blue (formerly Locktite) thread-locker to secure the pedal. Apparently the thread-locker broke and the problem was back and we were 15 km from home.
The good news is that I carry every tool in our bin that could possibly be of use in fixing the Rhoades Car. So I got out a wrench and torqued the pedal back into place. With some misgivings that it would stay in place we started out.
The misgivings were well-founded as after about 300 m the pedal was falling off again. This was now a problem that we couldn't fix where we were. What would it take to keep this damn pedal from falling off? Drill and pin it? Weld it? There was no solution out there on the Colonel By Drive.
The passenger's side pedals were working fine and so Ruth powered us along for a couple of kilometres, but she wasn't doing well on the up-slopes. So we pulled the quadracycle off the road, switched the seats around and re-retorqued the pedal again. I took the passenger side and Ruth did the steering, with an admonition not to pedal unless it was an emergency.
We did make it home in about an hour and a half, but it was very hard work pedalling the two of us up the hills between there and home. I certainly got enough exercise for the whole week.
So what to do? I decided that the Permatex Blue, which is designed to be removable with hand-tools was the problem, assuming that it was just not strong enough. So a walk up to Home Depot resulted in a tube of Permatex Red. The Red is designed to be permanent, which is what I want. So, back home, I removed the pedal, cleaned the threads thoroughly with de-greaser and then put on a liberal dose of Red, torqued it back into place and left it to dry.
Hopefully this will fix this problem.
Of note, the remaining three pedals all seem fine, with their lock washers on them. It is only the pedal I had previously removed for maintenance that has been the problem. My advice - never, ever remove the pedals for any reason. You will never get them on again tight enough to prevent them falling off.Total quadracycling for 2009 so far - 89 km
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