Re: New Bikkel Bike - Teething Problems

Thank you so much for this wonderfully complete step-by-step diagnosis, which
I have printed out and will investigate closely over the weekend. For the
moment, I am still missing the keys necessary to fiddle the seat position and
the handlbar height, and Saturday is the soonest I will be able to get to a
hardware shop.

My LBS man (not the dealer who sold me this bike) has already moved the seat
as far forward as it will go; with my elbow on the nose of the seat, my
middle fingertip just rests on the top tube, on the little rubber stopper
that covers the adjustment screw.  You say my finger should come "roughly on
a line in between the handgrips" but I'm not sure I understand what you mean.
The handlebars curve back a lot (swan style?) and my fingers fall on line
about 60mm front of the very ends of the grips, more or less at the inner end
where the grips fit over the bars. The current height of the handgrips is
easily about 130mm above the seat, by your recommendation about twice as high
as they should be, and the angle of the handlbar stem is at 30 degrees
according to the little marks that have so thoughtfully been inscribed on the
rotation axis. However, I found on my previous bike that a lower position for
handlbars increased my wrist pains and had me riding the whole time on my
hands. If I lower the stem and at the same time increase its angle it may
compromise out better, though.

As for the tire pressure, my old bike does indeed have Schrader type-valves,
so the tube end on the pump will need modification.

I will need to fiddle the adjustments as much as I can before returning to
the dealer, since that is a project that requires a whole day off (16th
arrondissement from my house = 1 hour of train + 1 hour of cycling across
Paris, and the train can only be taken within very limited time frames). One
of the reason for the urgency of this purchase was that I had taken a 2-week
holiday to get it sorted out and finally bought it on the last Friday. The
shop is open on Saturday but I was afraid the congestion in the streets for
getting it home would be even worse.

Thanks again,

EFR