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Thanks for the tips
1 hour ago, BaGearA said:4k os your problem
drop to 2.7k and everything will go smoother and actually work half decent
Thanks
Is there a way to get the 4k stuff downsized to 2.7, or do I need to download to PC?
14 minutes ago, Vye Cycle Kit said:
Just installed it. It won't open the GoPro files. Said the file format it not supported?
Has anyone figured this out yet? I recently bought a gopro for a bike trip to Portugal next month and I'm definitely not intending to take a PC along.
I get the point that the files are large, but with my drone (Mavic Pro) I can easily view and edit the footage on a phone, but GoPro Quick cannot even play the videos (taken in 4K, so not overly large), let alone cut, crop and trim. There's also no way that I can see in the GoPro Quik App to reduce the resolution to be able to do this.
If anyone has some tips & pointers about how I can go about daily edits on my tablet whilst I'm in portugal it would be great. If I'd wait until I'm back to try and edit through hours of video footage, I will likely never get to the point of making a little film about the trip.
Pretty frustrating having paid R12k for a camera with mounts, but your device can't even play the footage back.
Just turned the big Four-O. Seeing some guys my age (Philippe Gilbert, Valverde) still performing pretty damn well, I thought it's time for a serious fitness challenge. I've been pretty active for most of my adult life, but never felt that I really tested the edge of my capabilities.
My 40's challenge is to run 8km @ 4m/km pace, i.e. 32m00s flat or better.
Always more of a cyclist than a runner, my best runs were ~4m25/km over that distance in Jozi. I'm currently closer to 5m15s/km so I have a lot of work to do.
I am also entered for 70.3 in Mosselbay, so looking for a multisport coach, but for this year the focus needs to be on running and losing weight (currently 92 and guess I'd need to drop to 85kg).
Can anyone recommend a coach / training group for someone with these kinds of goals? Most clubs / groups / individuals my age are more focussed on stamina and endurance than speed.
On 8/24/2022 at 6:44 PM, droo said:Also, Loctite. Aluminium fasteners being, as they are, prone to either stripping or galling at torque values high enough to achieve the right tension.
Loctite is an interesting one. Loctite is not a bad product, but its application is very specific to certain types of joints and does not / should not be used as a rule. It does act as a thread lubricant too, which means that using loctite is better than not using anything at all, but using a thread lubricant (grease, nickel slip, copper slip etc.) is still your best bet. All the "prevent fasteners from loosening" technology out there, be it Loctite, Nord-Lock Washers, Spring washers, Nyloc nuts etc. are really just a safety net for when you have not done a good job of fastening the joint in the first place.
I.e., if you use an appropriate thread lubricant and torque any bolt (stainless, aluminium or steel) to the correct torque / tension, the joint will never go loose and any further measures are redundant / unnecessary.
Also, stainless steel and aluminium have a much higher tendency that steel to "cold weld" / seize compared to mid steel, which is why you never see stainless steel bushings. I.e. when not lubricated, these materials cause a lot more galling under the same conditions compared to steel fasteners. I would seriously question re-use of alloy / special fasteners, unless you can verify that everyone previously tightening that bolt has done a really good job of lubricating the threads before every use.
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1 hour ago, MudLark said:Okay Rudi. But my point is simply this. If a nut or bolt has been specced on a dry torque value of X and you lube it and then tighten it to X, the tension is way more than than what the original spec would have resulted in. Arguably then you have overtightened the thing. I suppose it all depends upon exactly how the original torque spec is arrived at. Has the individual creating the spec correctly understood the principles etc? Anyway, I'm hardly an engineer, much less a fastener or materials engineer. Interested to read your further response.
You are correct that you will over-tension a bolt if you apply a dry-torque value to a lubricated bolt. However, virtually all torque tables are based on wet torque values, so you generally do not run a risk of over-tightening when you lubricate threads. Here is an example of a torque table that provides torque values for different friction coefficients. Typically, a lubricated thread has a friction coefficient of ~0.1.
A new and clean dry bolt would typically correspond to a friction coefficient of 0.15, but if it's slightly rusted or galled (damaged after multiple re-use), it can be as high as 0.3. If you google torque tables, a friction coefficient of 0.1 is typically assumed unless otherwise specified.
*Note, steel cap screws used on bikes are typically grade 8.8 fasteners, unless it's a special aluminium / stainless bolt that should have a factory spec. You'd be good to use these values in yellow
On your question about the tension. Its difficult to measure tension in bolts, hence torque is our best bet albeit somewhat crude and indirect. There are ultrasonic tensiometers, but the reading is not an absolute value and some calibration needs to be applied, so it's not practical for 99.9% of joints. This typically is only used for large fasteners on very critical bolted joints such as frame bolts on large Mining crushers etc. Those devices are not small / compact enough for M4/M5/M6 bolts used on bicycles anyway.
1 hour ago, MudLark said:Some threads are not meant to be lubricated. As I have it most torque specs are for a dry unlubricated thread. If that is right, your torque is perhaps as much as 40% off spec.
See the Popular Mechanics article at this link and under the heading "To lubricate or not": https://www.popularmechanics.com/cars/how-to/a6613/torque-wrench-101-how-to-get-the-right-amount-of-force/
Incorrect. You are correct that there is a thing as dry torque values and wet torque values, it's important that you use the correct value. That said, wet torque is ALWAYS better than dry torque and there is not a single joint on a bike where dry torqueing would apply.
The reason is two fold. Firstly, with a dry-torqued joint, almost 90% of the torque applied is to overcome friction, and only 10% converts into tension. Tension is what keeps a joint fastened, not friction, therefore a wet torqued joint always hold better and reduce the risk of over-stressing / stretching your bolt.
Second reason is that threads get damaged on a microscopic level on the surface under dry torque, further increasing the friction coefficient. Thus, especially with bikes where we re-use and re-tighten fasteners many times, dry torqued joints tend to deteriorate over time, where wet torqued joints can be re-fastened 10's of times without any joint integrity loss.
In cases where suppliers / OEM's / technicians advise you differently, it's simply because they don't understand bolting theory and do as they've been told. Even really reputable OEM's like CAT / Komatsu etc. incorrectly specify dry torque on some of their components. We challenge them on this and after review they always revert to wet torque.
Didn't read through all the messages, but effectively bike maintenance comes down to tightening bolts. There are a handful non-bolting tasks exist such as bleeding disc brakes, putting sealant in tyres and greasing a pivot, but the rest is literally all just about wielding an allen key.
The ONLY way to tighten a bolt properly, is with a torque wrench. Anything else is guessing and second best. That's why it boggles my mind that not a single bike shop that i've ever been to uses a torque wrench to fasten bolts.
It's simple. If you use a torque wrench and the appropriate torque sequence for every joint, there WILL NOT be any creaks, rattles or **** coming loose.
So if you have a squeak or a creak. Loosen the joint and re-fasten properly by lubricating the treads and using a torque wrench. It will change your world.
On 6/24/2022 at 2:32 PM, madmarc said:10% bar oil with 90% engine oil - More or less - I use an old lube bottle to mix it - sometimes I add a bit too much bar oil and get strands coming off the chain when i spin it - Then i add some more engine oil, i still get a few strands initailly, but i spin the cranks a few times and then wipe the excess off the chainstay - I also lightly rub off the inside of the chain after lubing. The trick is not to overlube the chain 1 drop per roller is more than enough.
Apply the same as you would any other lube
I don't want to throw a spanner in the works here, but there are cheap automotive gear oils straight out of the box that will work as good or better than the "mix" that you propose. So unless you happen to have engine oil and bar oil to mix, I would just buy a small bottle of diff oil. That said, bicycle chains do not require a sophisticated lubricant by any stretch, so whichever concoction that you might use will generally be okay. Chain damage does not happen as much because of incorrect lube or dirty drivetrains, but rather the lack of lube. This is also the case for the dry-lube/wax VS wet lube debate.
On 2/4/2022 at 1:52 PM, rudi-h said:Please don't buy a Garmin. I used to love the brand, but Garmin SA just makes it a liability to own one of their devices. Useless aftermarket service combined with substandard product quality.
So I started another thread to deal with this. It took 2 weeks, many emails and 3 in-person visits, but I did get my issue resolved. The experience was far from perfect and started off much worse than it ended, hence I would like to retract the comment of "useless aftermarket service". In summary, my watch "failed" / stopped working due to a software upgrade and I was told that the only solution is replacement of the unit at a hefty fee. After a lot of arguing and dialogue, in-person visits and emails I can now confirm that they loaded some beta software patch and it is now working and the software re-load / diagnostics was not charged back to me.
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Latest (and likely final) update
I received an email yesterday saying that they tested the watch and it's working just fine... I almost fell of my chair. After claiming that no repairs are possible and 2 weeks of emails, calls and drama it's just working again? I thought they were joking, so I just drove there earlier today to pick it up and truesbob, it's working just like the day I bought it... (still need to test battery life, but all good on face value)
How did they fix it? - Apparently they installed some beta software upgrade/downgrade, which confirms that this whole failure was purely caused by buggy software... That begs the question that if buggy software is such a big issue, why don't they just do their software reinstall magic before sending a R4k quote for replacement? What would have happened if I didn't bitch and moan? - I would have no doubt pi$$ed R4k down the drain to replace something that was never broken.
So some advice should your own Garmin fail:
- Ask them to do a software upgrade / downgrade
- Don't just accept the first quote, it might be worth digging deeper
- Garmin initially seemed like a faceless organization. Via phone and email I could not get past the call centre who frankly were not really interested in anything other than offering me the R4k replacement deal. Only after my insistence to speak to a senior service consultant in person did I get through to a team of people who are qualified and capable to resolve these issues. These people do exist and I must acknowledge that they were helpful and supportive.
Not sure if this leaves me as a happy customer, because I do feel that I had to "fight" in order not to get shafted. Similarly, it would be unfair to claim that the outcome was not satisfactory and that Garmin SA did not offer support. I'll go edit my posts on the other thread to align with this sentiment.
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3 hours ago, TDFN said:Unfortunately a warranty is a warranty, not a guarantee. With most warranties the labour would be excluded. So they could quite easily tell you that they will replace the part (I.e. the whole inner workings of the device as there are no individual components) and charge you the same fee as they now need to have a clean-room and extra qualified staff etc.
Bottom line is nothing lasts forever, and as far as I am concerned they also have a design life. Know this and accept it , then move on.
Nothing lasts forever, but as you state, all goods have a design life / expected life. I can assure you that 2 years is nowhere close to the design life for a top end sportswatch marketed primarily on the basis of its rugged design and durability. Not by my standards, probably not by yours and by their own admission (quoting a senior technician at Garmin SA) also not by Garmin's executives and shareholders.
So if nobody seems to think this situation/outcome is acceptable, (except for some die-hard fanboys on LeHub), why should I or any other vulnerable consumer carry brunt of cost for manufacturing/quality defects that are no fault of our own?
I work as a reliability engineer in the mining industry. Representing a global mining company with major accounts, we certainly don't get pushed around by suppliers and OEM's to bully us when defects / quality issues are identified, so why should ordinary consumers? Just because we don't have massive accounts in our individual capacities? Mining companies routinely claim out-of-warranty replacements (amounting to many ten's of millons of $ per year) on the basis that we prove manufacturing defects during post-failure investigations. I don't see why the same process cannot/should not apply to a consumer electronics company. Assuming they are serious about improving quality and durability, they should also have reliability engineering teams and failure analysts / diagnosticians who can inspect and test failed units and identify the root cause of failure by looking deeper into special / irregular product failures as and when reported... If the construction of the batteries are really so specialized hat failures are inevitable and they expect a certain % of premature-but-out-of-warranty failures (the statistics for this is kind of modelling is really well known, it should hardly come as a surprise), surely they can budget / plan for this and be prepared to replace this certain % of watches when such rare failures do occur...
As for the arguments of needing to build clean rooms and employ skilled staff for repairs... Garmin published $4.2 Billion earnings in 2020 (quoting google) and reporting double digit year on year growth, so the argument of not being able to provide better after-sales service on the basis of resources / skills / facilities are pretty weak. There are local companies literally 10000 times smaller that have such facilities and provide specialized repairs (e.g. diesel injector suppliers etc.)
As for options... If they really value my broken watch at R8k as some of you suggest and have a deep desire to compensate their longstanding and faithful customers for the sub-par product they sold at a healthy margin, then at least give me the option to refund my R8k and then they can keep the broken unit. Don't bully me into paying another R4k to get a product back that was still supposed to be working.
Time for an update. Even though I'm still seemingly far from a resolution, I have had some engagements that I'd like to acknowledge.
A Service Administrator wrote me back, willing to look into this a bit deeper. He said the reason for the delay (from the day I expressed dissatisfaction with the replacement option until they finally agreed to look into this) was due to him being on leave. Had they acknowledged the complaint and told me that they will look into this on 7 Feb when their guy is back, I would probably not have started the thread.
I still don't have an answer or an alternative, but at least there is a conversation. Based on the tone of their email, an attempt to sort this out.
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40 minutes ago, BigDL said:So, are they offering you a replacement at 4k instead of 12k? If so, then the broken watch doesn’t have zero value, they are valuing it at 8k, which is 66% of its original price, which is not bad for a 2 year old electronic watch
It is only worth R8k if I give them another R4k. It has zero value otherwise ok any market.
If this were a R120k Breitling, would you accept that it just broke down and the only way to fix it is to pay the same shop another R40k with no option to only replace only the bit that failed? Now the conversation is suddenly different? You guys are welcome to suck up to the said supplier and accept unfavourable proposals, but I certainly think that holding you hostage with an unfavourable repair/replace option, (I e. Pay us R4k or lose it all) is not right. At least give me an option just to pay for a repair, or tell me what I could/should have done differently to get reasonable life from their product.
Answer this:
1) Should it last more than 2 years
2) was there anything that I could to to prevent it from failing
If yes to 1 and no to 2, why is this my problem and financial liability. That's at least how I see it.
The point of this wasn't to argue with you guys, I asked how to take on a large companies that bullies its customers into submission.
1 hour ago, Jehosefat said:Just because you expect something to last for a certain amount of time does not mean that it will. Everything will fail at some point and even the same items will not fail at the same time, some will fail early and others will last for ages.
If any of your appliances/gadgets etc. fail outside of the warrantee period the manufacturer is very unlikely to replace or repair it for free. So why are you picking on Garmin specifically here? Never had any other item that you bought fail?
you guys either have a lot of spare cash lying around, or you just simply don't expect much from suppliers.
there is a major difference between a garmin and any other product out there, which is that a garmin watch is allegedly completely irreparable. This means 2 things. Firstly that my "broken" watch has zero value. secondly, there are no repair options offered. The ONLY option for me to get a working watch is therefore to take the R4k deal from garmin and failing to pay that, have no watch at all after spending R12k 2 years ago for a top end sportswatch. This doesn't sound very competitive to me? I also never asked for a new watch and would have been willing to pay towards a battery replacement given that this would/should give me 2 more years worth of life on the watch. The issue is that there is no option B.
the final point is that the cause of failure is not use related. I.e. there's nothing that I could or should have done different to preserve or extend the watch's life. The defect has its roots in poor product quality / factory defect.
On 2/4/2022 at 4:22 PM, shaper said:With reference to you quality claim, considering they sell millions of units. one could expect a small percentage to have issue. Nothing is perfect.
That is why they need to own up to factory faults and not push the responsibility to consumers
On a personal note, had the following
Edge 500, was a workhorse for more years than I can remember. Eventually had a software glitch, was replaced with an Edge 520 for a vastly reduced replacement cost.
Edge 520 still going strong after many years.
Forerunner 910XT, worked for many years, eventually barometer went was replaced with a Fenix 3 for a nominal replacement cost much cheaper than a new F3
Sold the F3 after a few years and got an Fenix 5
Sold the Fenix 5 after 2yrs and got the Forerunner 945 which I have had for over 2yrs without issue.
My experience with garmin and their products has been great including the replacement policy.
When I buy one of their products I know it has a 12 month warranty, same as my Samsung phone, which is also not cheap product. It is not an unknown consideration and am happy with the t&c's. A warranty term is not the only piece of the puzzle that makes up a supplier's quality commitment. Most things we own are outside of warranty, and it is not unreasonable for us to expect that cars, appliances, tech gadgets etc. should last well beyond 12 months. Warranty is only a part of the quality equation supposed to deal with obvious infant mortality and does not remove responsibility for quality related issues that manifest later.
Alas you bought the watch and by doing so agreed to the warranty conditions.
So R4k for a replacement out of warranty is to me is still a good deal on a new replacement Fenix. The alternative is to use your R4k and try to pick up a cheap replacement from the classifieds.
I guess it's a matter affordability to you, for me it is the principle. Perhaps R4k is affordable to some, and getting a new watch may seem nice enough to justify it. Lets scale it 100 times. What if this were a R1.2 million car that wouldn't start one morning (due to assembly error), and the only option is to replace with new at a cost of R400k? Would it still be a good deal once it's not that affordable anymore?
23 hours ago, RobertWhitehead said:I know this may be a dumb statement but I am going to say it in any way: you can catch more flies with honey than with vinegar 😁.
At the end of the day you're dealing with a human on the other end and by working with him / her you'll be able to get the issue resolved but by trying to take them on you may end up causing yourself more ball-ache and frustration. Just my 2 cents 😜.
I like to think I'm generally pretty polite and easy to get on with, so i doubt that my attitude and demeanor going into this was unreasonable. The problem is twofold. Firstly, they did not respond to my complaint on email nor calls, so I had to drive there in person. Secondly, the human on the other end is seemingly constrained by unjust corporate policy.
After driving there to resolve this in person (very politely by the way), the customer relations manager and senior technician discussed this with me. After some initial pushback, they did violently agree that it's not fair nor acceptable towards any customer for their flagship product to fail after only 2 years Yet they still claim to be unable to provide an alternative proposal.
The argument is that these units are non-repairable, thus there is no option to only replace a battery due to some quality testing protocol they claim cannot be done. The thing is that I have no interest in a new watch, I am happy with the one I had and paid for. So no matter how much relative discount is offered on a replacement unit, paying R4k for something that I already own and that should still be working, is simply not a good deal. If I were to spend more money towards sports watch, it would be for an upgrade in future out of choice, not necessity.
Perhaps unfair to call the local agents useless, because after ignoring the initial email complaint, the in-person experience was better. Still no resolution, but at least they agreed to log this with Garmin USA. (which IMO should not require a personal visit to initiate)
I own a Garmin Fenix watch that experienced a catastrophic malfunction (faulty battery it seems) a few days ago. The watch is ~2 years old which is outside of the Warranty period (which is only a measly 12 months), but well within the expected life of a smartwatch (any brand). Note that the battery doesn't just run flat faster than it used to, the watch completely stopped working. Also, the watch was not subjected to any external damage or misuse.
Garmin SA quotes me R4k to repair the unit (you heard right, R4k to REPAIR) and the warranty on the workmanship of the repairs is only 90 days. By virtue of the catastrophic nature of the battery failure, they are clearly selling sub-standard products. The issue that I have is that even if I would be silly enough to pay the R4k to fix a factory / quality fault that should have never become my responsibility, the workmanship on any repaired unit is only warranted for another 90 days. What recourse do I have if I go down the path or repairing and the watch keeps failing every time just outside of warranty?
This is blatant bullying by a large corporate. Surely there has to be something from a consumer protection perspective that one can do to come to a reasonable conclusion? Any lawyers on here that can provide some assistance? I'd much rather spend R4k on professional advice than pouring it into a bottomless pit of a company that has no regard for product quality and customer service.
Garmin SA has 14 pages of one-star ratings on HelloPeter, so clearly I'm not the first person to run into a brick wall.
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On 7/23/2018 at 4:04 PM, Grease_Monkey said:My tabs on the back of the Edge 520 (that allows it to grab hold of the mount) broke earlier this year. I sent it back to EvoBikes (bought it there), who sent it in to Garmin SA. They replaced it no questions asked in less than a week even though it was out of warranty - won me over as a client for life.
Send it in via the shop you bought it from - I think you'll be pleasantly surprised.
If only they were consistent... I have a fenix 6 pro that failed literally overnight through no fault of my own.
Roughly a week ago the battery experienced a sudden malfunction, i.e. it was working perfectly until one morning where it just stopped reading wrist heart-rate. When I started pushing buttons, there was a massive delay on any menu option and the GPS wouldn't work either. Took it to Garmin SA and they claim its out of warranty and it will cost R4k (you heard right, I'm still not completely upright after opening the quote) to repair.
So they replace one person's unit who damaged it, while for another customer who's unit actually failed due to poor quality / reliability, they just throw you to the lions with a repair bill amounting to 40% of a new unit... So much for winning over clients.
On 8/25/2021 at 6:20 PM, Jewbacca said:What is your V02 Max as per Garmin?
I've been trying to figure out who the Garmin algorithms are aimed at.
I do a brutal 15km trail run with 1000m of elevation and go hard, broken at the end. Get a 150 score and told I need 12 hours recovery. I do a 55km pre work morning ride, go nowhere near as hard, get a 300 plus score and get told I need 79 hours to recover.
The recovery times are also ridiculous and every time I do more work and play less and my 7 day score drops below 1000 I'm suddenly 'Peaking'.....
My V02 Max has been the same since forever.
I would love to actually follow the prompts and suggestions they throw out and see what happens to my fitness. I just feel I will need to find a new hobby while I spend 6 days recovering from a Saturday Morning hundy
The company that does Garmin's physiology analytics is called Firstbeat. They publish the basis of the algorithms and the physiological parameters that they use to determine these on the website below. It's a great read
https://www.firstbeat.com/en/science-and-physiology/white-papers-and-publications/
I find that even though the Garmin data might be off initially, it does "learn" how to interpret your body signals after some time to the point where it becomes really useful and accurate. It helps if you wear a Garmin with a PulseOx sensor 24/7 for some time and use a HR belt for exercise. I'd be surprised if it gets your recovery so blatantly wrong in the long run.
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I have the whole thing on Strava. If you send me your email or other contact details via DM, I can share my Strava profile, routes etc.