AND IT WAS ALL GOING SO WELL.........

Tuesday Feb.1st 2011

Well it was going well until we had cylcled 12 miles to Barossa on Monday morning in the glorious sunshine. We pulled up at a cafe for coffee on the promenade but when we came to start off again my motor wouldn't start. At all. All the lights were on but nothing happened. This has happened before and seemed to relate to a sensor on the brake lever which cuts power to the motor when either brake is applied. If a lever doesn't return to its proper place then the power remains off so I had tightened and adjusted various screws and this seemed to have cured the intermittent failure of the motor to restart after stopping. Until monday morning. Nothing would get it to start so I had to ride back under pedal power and the apparently flat roads suddenly sprouted an astonishing amount of hills. Upward. Heigh-ho so we will be getting fitter.
When we got back to camp I emailed Eddie at The Electric Transport Shop (as they are closed on Mondays) with details and being the kind of guy he is he picked up the email and rang me straight away. He said it would be a faulty brake sensor so told me how to isolate the sensors which I did. Still no power to the motor.Too late to continue so he emailed to say he would ring first thing Tuesday which he.As we have two bikes the same he talked me through swapping connections between them until we could find the problem. Cut long story short, discovered lack of power at a connector bloc-when connected to F's bike my motor worked so not a duff motor. By now, half the campsite is giving advice and listening to Eddie on the phone. Wires were traced with multimeters and it seemed that the connector block itself was not making a connection so it was removed and the wires reconnected with a cable connector block. Switch on....nothing. deads as a dodo. So the only thing left was the heart of the system, a blackbox cpu which all the wires came out of.Making a management decision I undid the 4 screws holding the cover on (hoping I wasn't invalidating the warranty as Eddie had disappeared at this stage) and found a little molten mess of burnt out diodes and transistors.I emailed the shop with details and they rang back to say that they would put a replacement in the post immediately if I gave them the address which was done.But they are concerned as to why it has happened and it may be down to a suspect cable that may have been trapped during assembly in which case it will happen again....and this component has never failed before. So now its Friday and I'm hoping it will arrive today.

Having said that we went out for a bike ride on Wednesday with Paul, Marianne,Tony and Sabena and I was fine so the absence of power is an irritation rather than a disaster.......and it'll make me fitter.

WEdnesday quiz came FIRST with Paul & Marianne with a near perfect score of 48/50. A lot of beer was consumed followed by a vast amount of brandy back at their van and he and I very duntish on Thurs morning........