Modern Conveniences on the bike?

[darrylri]

1) Will there be any problems with adding some bicycle tail lights to my bike?

2) How about adding a bicycle "computer" (the one I have has the time, temperature, speed, odometer, trip meter, elapsed time). This is of particular importance to me because I assume that all the route speeds and distances will be in MPH, but my BMW has a KPH speedometer and odometer. I am aware that GPSes weren't allowed last time, but this has no GPS mapping or routing capabilities.

Thanks!

[FatDog Racing]

Nope, no problems, and I would say that you would have a hard time doing it safely and accurately without either. I spent some time really calibrating mine, and that paid off!

[jurassic]

this is the unit we are recommending. kris thompson turned me on to the trail tech vapor. he used one in 2010 with great success. its got everything you should need. speedometer, odometer, and time display. its also got some other great features like a temp gauge and tach. and a stop watch. all this is mandatory equipment for a time, speed, distance competition. and they are only about 100 bucks. check the website here. http://trailtech.net/vapor.html
the best place to find them though is ebay. about a thousand of them get listed every week, with alot of the available accessories . you will need a 12V battery to power this unit ,but i have found some very nice small sealed 12V batteries on ebay as well.

[Jeff Alperin]

(01-18-2012 07:07 PM)FatDog Racing Wrote:  I spent some time really calibrating mine, and that paid off!

How did you do that Mr. Dog?

[FatDog Racing]

My unit was real similar to the one Lonnie posted. They come with pre-sets for various wheel sizes. On my practice runs I found that over a long day, (over 100 miles) mine was off. There is a feature to re-program to adjust to wheel sizes. You need to measure the runout in mm's and reprogram. I found it was still a bit off and also changed as my tires wore. Our couse master had extremely accurate mileage totals that were cumulative in nature, so I adjusted each day, shaving off or adding a few mm's until I got within around 1/10th of a mile on a 200 mile day. John's directions gave the mileage point down to 1/100 of a mile! I never had a route holder.. I always thought I could just hook onto someone with one, and follow them! That lasted until I saw the first course instuctions! I ended up screwing a clipboard to my tank top with a bungee cord around the sheets! (note to riders....GET A ROUTE HOLDER! Ha!)