Aha – yes. Now, the sharp-witted among you may have realised that one bike does not an expeditionary force make. Indeed, conquering Europe will require two steely steeds. Let me take this opportunity to introduce Della.
The Clicky Bits
Unable to resist the urge to spend £morethanishouldhave, this towny tourer has had some teeth added to it. Eyeing up the Alps with caution, this bike has gone from an 18-speed setup to giving me a full 30 gears with which to play and suffer up the slopes. Shimano Tiagra giving me a triple crankset and a 10 speed rear setup, there should be plenty of options on days when the legs are feeling rather leaden.
The Dynamo
Now, gearing is all good and that, but the modification that really has got my nerd senses tingling is my front wheel.
* checks analytics – watches page views plummet*
Still with me? Good. Now, it’s all a question of power. Not the testosterone pumping sadomasochistic sort, but more, the contained mastery of electrons. Yes, indeed – at the heart of my front wheel sits a Schmidtt Son 28 hub dynamo. This sounds both distinctly German and distinctly dull, but, is actually only one of those things.
OI!
At the centre of this wheel, the hub dynamo uses the wheel’s rotation to produce, via electromagnetic resistance, some voltage! 6 volts are produced with an efficiency of 65% at 15 kilometres an hour, meaning that even at a fairly casual pace, I should be able to create electricity – Huzzah!
Problem is, the electricity that the front hub chucks out is the wrong sort for my needs. The AC or alternating current that the hub generates is the same sort of stuff (though much weaker) as the stuff that powers your fridge.
Whilst a fridge might be nice whilst on tour, I would be the first to admit that white goods in a trailer might dent my chances of summiting Mont Ventoux. Worse still, with the hub only hitting 6 volts, I would be somewhere in the region of 224 volts short of keeping my greek yoghurt from becoming cheese – quel fromage!
No – the devices I’m taking are all portable and run off batteries, which requires a less jumpy-about, more direct form of electricity which is satisfyingly known as direct current “DC”. Providing one steady and constant input, I need to convert AC to DC or face digital desperation on the highway to hell.
Typically, this electrical engineering task has already been confronted and conquered by some lovely German fellas called Busch + Müller. In what I can only assume as an homage to the pre-eminent electro-synth group, they named their little converter the E-Werk. This piece of kit sucks up all that AC voltage and chucks it out at a rate that is comparable when moving at 15 km/h to the time it would take charge a phone using the mains – WOHOO!
Thing is though, there will be days when 15km/h is going to be a tough ask. What if it rains so hard that we wimp out and decide to spend the day eating cheese and bread in the tent? I do not expect that a 40km ascent will see me achieve much above 8km/h – the threshold for charging to begin, and so in such cases, a backup plan is needed.
Scouring the digital aisles of the internet, I chanced upon a battery pack that offered a rather whopping 30,000mAh output. This is still not enough to keep my fridge chilly, but serves the purpose of charging a normal mobile phone up to 7 times, and even a little laptop 2.5 times. As a reservoir or cache battery, if I rig this up to my E-Werk, and rig the E-Werk to the Schmidtt front hub, I should have an efficient and effective means of keeping the bike lights, phones, and camera fully powered.
ENERGY SELF-SUFFICIENCY! AMAZING!
Though a costly way around things, this setup should mean that we significantly reduce time spent syphoning leccy from cafés, bars and campsites, and allow us to go off grid and camp wild.
Keeping me comfy?
Well – if I’m committing to spend 4 months sitting down, it’s best to make sure that I’m nicely perched. With this in mind, I submitted to the online praise in glory to the wonders of the Brooks B17 saddle. With a design that’s unchanged since 1866 and presumably patented under the title “leather bottom hammock”, this saddle is supposed to wear in and provide my bum with a glass-slipper type fit.
Pairing this saddle with a 25mm setback seatpost from Miché, I keep this bike a little more Italian and also smooth out some of the bad vibrations that come up through the seat tube when I plough through a pothole.
Comfort comes through the wrists too, and on this count, I’ve wrapped my bars first with an inner tube and next with Pengilly sourced leather. Homemade and colour matched to the saddle, this bar tape makes for a little classy touch.
So, laden with some clever tech and some reliable parts, it’s only a matter of time to get out on the road and pedal Della towards her ancestral home in Milan…
