Bob Bending

Author's posts

Our ride through France 2019

Watch an automatic Powerpoint presentation about our 2019 ride from home to Portsmouth then through France to the Mediterranean then on to Toulouse. This was created for a presentation in Germany, so the brief captions are in English and German.

Hase Pino freewheel removal

It’s a few years since I last serviced the freewheel on the Pino, and it felt like it could do with some fresh grease in the bearings: Tools needed are the Park Tool FR-6 and 1″ socket or spanner to fit, a bolt and washers to clamp the tool in place, a vice, hammer and …

Continue reading

Pino update

Adding a second battery The International Tandem Rally in 2022 in the first week in August, was near Tecklenburg, South West of Osnabrück in Germany. We thought it would be good to ride from home, using the Stena Line Ferry from Harwich to the Hook of Holland. Once in the Netherlands the going would be …

Continue reading

A long weekend with the Nutty Tandemers

Late June 2021 we put the Pino in the car and headed for Callander on the edge of the Trossachs National Park. We arrived on Wednesday 23rd and so did Jane and John. Colin and Diane would be joining us Friday evening. Day 1 Thursday was our first ride and Jane and John had bought …

Continue reading

Catch-up Christmas 2021

February 2020 we were in Spain when Covid reared its ugly head and started its advance from China. Initially we had looked at finding some winter sun in Cuba and doing some cycling and painting there, but decided against flying anywhere. So we packed the Pino into the car and spent a few days driving …

Continue reading

Solo e-bike conversion

Fitting a Bafang to a solo ‘should’ be straightforward, but my Qubic steel framed MTB threw up a couple of issues.I bought the motor and battery separately through AliExpress. There are dozens of suppliers, many based in China but a lot of sellers now have the option of buying from a distributor in the UK …

Continue reading

USB outlet for Pino battery

The Hailong battery on the Pino e-bike kit didn’t have a USB outlet and as I use my iPhone for navigating and tracking our rides, an outlet would be useful for keeping the phone charged, as GPS use tends to drain the phone battery pretty quickly. The battery is a 36V 17.5 Ah Hailong. There …

Continue reading

Christmas 2020

The year that never was. We had so many plans for 2020 but only managed the first; our early year trip to Spain in search of some winter sun and pleasant riding on the Pino. It’s something we had been thinking about for a while, and I’d seen a programme on the area around Dénia, …

Continue reading

Artillery vehicle drawings

This is a kind of hobby. I spent six years in the Artillery back in the 70s and we had some impressive kit. At one time I managed a website for ex-members of my unit, as drew up some battle honour crests to put on the website. These generated some interest, so I took it …

Continue reading

Swytch Bike kit

Karon loves her Roberts bike but was rarely riding it, as her health issues made even the gentlest of uphill gradients very difficult for her. We had talked about adding an e-assist kit to the bike for a while, but she didn’t want whatever we chose to change the bike too much, or make it …

Continue reading