Bernie77

Hi, I'm getting ready for a month long or more (SUV supported) tour of the south/southwest gravel roads and trails and wanted to keep track of my trip and overall mileage. I bought the CatEye Velo to put on a Surly Bridge Club. I got it all set up and it no work. In looking at the instructions, the sensor must be within 3/16ths of an inch from the magnet attached to the spokes - that's real close. With the fat fork and fat tire rim, there's no way I can see, short of fabricating some kind of attachment to the fork, to get the sensor that close to the magnet. Plus I have a front rack mounted for panniers which limits attachment points.

Am I missing something? How close to the hub can the magnet be mounted and still register precisely when it passes? I've always put the magnet as close to the rim as possible and the CatEye instructions state that the sensor cannot be more than 27" from the display module, but the farther down the fork I go, the closer to the spokes I can get.

All is not for naught - I can put it on my Surly Pacer road bike (and no, I'm not a big fan of Surly, just coincidence), and I'm not compulsive enough to really need to track my mileage - just gives me something to look at as I pound away.

What kind of modestly priced computer will work with the fat fork?

Thanks for any advice.

John Valuk

For a simple digital cyclocomputer - no GPS, no granular recording of data - with wireless sensors, I like the Bontrager RIDEtime Elite.

It works with ANT+ sensors, so you have lots of options, including speed sensors and cadence sensors that don't involve magnets, and so are very simple to mount. As examples, I'm using the Garmin Speed Sensor 2 and Cadence Sensor 2 with mine. They work fine for me; no drama.

Those sensors also have Bluetooth communication, so I also have the option of "recording the ride" using an app (Cyclemeter in my case) on a phone that stays in my jersey pocket.

pdlamb

Put the magnet lower on the fork, nearer to the hub, where the fork-spoke distance is lower. I've never bothered to measure the bar-magnet distance, but 27" should let you get way down on the fork unless you have some circus bars set up around chest level. Tape the sensor on and see if it registers before you lock it down.

You can also build up the fork under the sensor mount with small pieces of an old inner tube. You'll want some help holding everything in place as you tighten your zip ties, but another 5 mm or so closer to the magnet should be "easy." (In quotes!)

Bernie77

I went and found some more 10mm zip ties of sufficient length - four different stores - rare little boogers - and tried to put the sensor on the Bridge Club. Short of building up the fork end I could not get the sensor and the magnet close enough. Two minutes to put it on the Pacer, five minutes to set the wheel size, time, and km/mph preference and I was on the road. I'll get another type for the Bridge Club. The Pacer has skinny tires and light Campy wheels and it was a lot more responsive than the Bridge Club, which is something of an ox. Anyway, thanks for the info and advice.

Bernie77

In the event anyone else runs into this problem - I bought a Planet Bike Protege 9.0 wireless from my local bike shop for about $50. It is made for fat forks. The sensor can be mounted with the base pointing along the axis of the hub, if needed to get the sensor close enough, and the sensor can pivot 180 degrees on the base to get the proper orientation before being tightened in place. If you look at the reviews, there is some polarization - some think it's a great deal while other give it a low rating for confusing instructions and difficulty in programming. I didn't have any problem programming the computer but the instructions are not very clear and it bears reading everything a couple of times. I took a couple of wrong turns trying to intuit the process but even with that the setup and mounting took about a half hour total. One thing in particular - the magnet attached to the spoke has to be centered on either the shiny line above the battery compartment or the one below it - not in between, as I thought it should be. Once I fixed that, it worked like a charm.

Thanks again for the responses.