Fomas Road king rear bearing issue

FOMAS roadking deluxe quality issues again. this time the problem is again of poor quality build. Since I last wrote about fomas road king quality I have done 4000+km. fairly decent distance for a road bike. Any bike should be able to do 10000km before starting to break down, but roadking did not even last 50% of its life cycle. I had to completely remove the cycle hub and put it back to fix it.

I was on my usual morning ride, the cycle running condition was all normal. after about 20km the rear wheel started to grind. I could feel the read bearings rub. I stopped and check the wheel, there was a play in bearing of about 1mm . That didn't seem a big issue and I continued. After getting back home I checked the wheel again and the play was slightly more. I thought I will fix it over the weekend and left it at that. Tommorow morning I took it out and tried to move it. the rear wheel had locked. After inspection I realised that the rear bearings are jammed and the break wire is stuck in the liner. two whammies at same time.

On the weekend I finally opened the rear cassette and behold, it was full of sludge. It was combination of water grease and mud. Similar to Shrek's bath tub. Finally opened the rear bearings and as expected the entire rear bearings were ruined. It was as if the rear bearings had exploded. The bearings cone was completely warped and the ball bearings had huge pitting formation. Here are some sample pics.

distorted inner cone of bearings

front view of distorted bearings cone, the edges are all broken down

pitting on balls= completely ruined bearing

I know I don't treat my cycle very good, but this kind of damage seems a little too extreme for a cycle which has not even done 5000 km. I don't know the reason for the break down, I am guessing the sealing ring got damaged and broke loose. eventually water and mud played its part and jammed the whole thing. 

After 1.5 hours of meddling with it and running to local bike shop I managed to get a new cone and a set of ball bearings. After cleaning it completely put back all new shiny balls in the hub and applied good amount of grease and put back the rear axle. Now my cycle is back to its old glory. There is only one issue, now it doesn't make the tik tik tik noise when its coasting. cycle is completely silent, like a ninja. Well its not affecting and performance now so will postpone fixing it until it breaks down again. Or maybe I will buy a new cycle. 

Fomas road king deluxe

Since I came back from UK, I wanted to ride bicycle for daily commute. I have been riding my brother's octane for past 3 months and I had wonderful rides. In octane I even did Bangalore to Chennai in 20 hours. After 2000 km octane started to breakdown, the gears started to slip, the frame was creaking. It had never happened before but the frame had started to fall apart. It was time to buy new bike.

In market there is huge variety of bikes to choose from. Road bike, hybrid, mountain........ Many variety and at wide range of price. Considering that near Bangalore there are barely any off road track, mountain bike was absolutely useless. Even if I find a hill and go off road I wouldn't get time to do offroading everyday. Even if I want to go mountain bike, I would rather buy an expensive mountain bike than cheap one. The mountain bikes in the range of Rs.15000 are so bad that if I take it off road it won’t last very long.  Now the choice came to either road or hybrid. Hybrid bikes are great but why stop at hybrid when I can go lot faster in road bike.

The problem of Bangalore roads being horrible during rainy days and picture of me doing cartwheel on a pothole during my school days came to my mind. Well that will be painful with loads of puncher to increase my problems.  For an excess cost of about Rs. 50 a month and some heart ache repairing the punchers, the road bike would beat the mountain bike by large margin. Another problem is, with Hybrid bike my back would be saved. With road bike I will have to have strengthen my back a bit more. After some considerations I decided to get a road bike. The idea of going faster than most motorbike appealed to me than all its negativities put together. On road bike I could save 1 hour every 100km. Finally road bike for the win.

After the choice of bike type, even bigger problem................ which bike to buy. The cost of road bike ranges from Rs 3000 for a mach to over Rs2lakhs for a triathlon bike. My budget was probably at lower end. So low that when I went to some of the well known bike shops they turned me down saying you have to get lot more money before trying for a road bike. My budget was, Drum roll..........My budget was Rs.10000. after doing some research on internet I found that they were quite right. My budget was way too low. My requirements were it has to be a road bike with gears and reasonable weight. Cycles with such requirements and somewhat close to my budget were, BSA cruze, Fomas road king deluxe, firefox road pro and one by hero I forgot the name. All of them are quite bad, but then my budget was quite low, so I had to choose the best among the worse.

Gears, the gears are probably most important moving part on the cycle. The gears on all the bikes I had chosen were all quite bad. Kruze and firefox road pro has brifters, but then it was below the lowest range of shimano. On the ranking board of shimano groupset, it wasn’t even listed. So the gears were not the point of choice for my cycle.

With my experience from hero octane, I know that frame is something that should last very long. So frame was very important for me. Now the choice of frame also was dominated by roadpro. It has aluminium alloy frame that meant its light. The Kruze also has alloy but not as light as roadpro, but still good. The fomas had steel frame but it was amazingly light. Not as light as roadpro or Kruze but somehow I liked it a lot. It felt better than the other two when I rode.

Rest of the components like brakes, hubs, crank and bearings etc had nearly no point because all of them were equally bad. You won’t know when it will fail, if you are lucky it won’t fail, if you are unlucky then god save you.

Finally after going through all these qualities for nearly 3 months, I finally decided on fomas road king. There were 2 reasons for this choice. first, the cost. It costs Rs.11800 MRP. It was second lowest on my list and it had good components. Also there were many of these available on second hand market. Second reason, the frame was excellent. It suits my height perfectly and the ride was very smooth. Even though the gears are terrible, it isn’t so bad that it will stop working(hopefully). So fomas for the win. I wasn’t so happy with my choice because it was way too expensive for what I was getting. So I decided to buy a second hand. I got mine for Rs.8000 which included a pump btwin 7 count computer lock, couple of tubes, helmet etc. So finally bought fomas that feels OK.

After buying this, I was not a happy man. I have got complaints. To start with, the handle bars. The handle bar is attached to the frame by aluminium stem. The genius who designed has done such a wonderful job that they have used HT bolt to tighten them. The stem is not great quality aluminium either which can take the beating. It is some local aluminium casting shop job. The result of a strong bolt with weak flange results in flange being ripped off. The thread on the stem is like butter, it shears off at lightest pressure. I tried to re-tap the thread to a 7mm bolt, but even that sheared off. So I ended up changing the entire stem to a local steel stem. If you are a designer which one would you design to break first a Rs.5 bolt or Rs.200 stem. I am sure it is not just my bike’s fault. This will be the problem of many fomas owners. Next are the rims. It has good rims, double walled etc etc. But my front rim happen rip off on the side. I don’t know the reason for failure, I am guessing my previous owner had really abused it, but still the rims should not break off like that. So I am not happy with the rims.  After doing about 2000km the rear wheel started to wobble. After examining it, I realised that the inner race of the bearing had come lose. The reason for that is, the there is no lock nut for the rear bearing cone. It is not a big issue, the wheel still works, but there is lot more friction and I have to tighten every time it starts wobbling. Because if this the bearings will not be sealed hence dirt gets into it and poor bearings have to work in harder conditions.  It requires just an extra nut to fix. Its just poor quality construction, It won’t make big difference in cost. Well rest of the parts are working just fine uptill now. To be honest the quality of the bike is absolute crap, but then for 11000 bucks you cannot expect an audi ebike. So for the money I paid I got a nice looking geared road cycle, but I just have to fix a thing or two every now and then.

In all I am happy that I got fomas road king. It is not the best bike, but I can easily keep up with people who ride 10 times more expensive cycle than mine. 

tags: fomas road king deluxe, cheap road bike in india, road bike, cycling, bangalore, cycle, buy, review.

Train to pakistan: by Khushwant Singh

It is a heart wrenching story about Muslim and Hindu refugees who are slaughtered at the time of partition of India.

It is a very small book which can be finished in 5 hours. Those who want to know about partition must read this book. It highlights the mistakes done by people. It shows the mental attitude of people who have lost their near and dear ones. The social structure and hierocracy of people at the time of independence is nauseous. But in the end it creates a feeling of sympathy.

Rating (1-10): it gets 6.

The whole story is weaved around the village Mano Majra. Refugees who are coming to India are killed during their journey. A ghost train containing dead bodies of thousands of refugees arrives at Mano Majra. The same people who livd peacefully before get ready to kill all the Muslims going to Pakistan. Amidst all the violence there is love between a Muslim girl and a Sikh rowdy. The story also shows the inability of a learned man (Iqbal) to take action. The story ends with a little suspense. A life is sacrificed for the sake of good thing. The story resembles the film “Gadar”. In the end the story shows that love is much powerful than hatred.

About author: Khushwant Singh was born in 1915, his very first novel “train to Pakistan” is a major hit.

He was the editor of “New Delhi” magazine and “the Hindustan times”. He was a syndicate columnist. He is famous for critics and controversial views.

Alchemist: by Paulo coelho

It is the best book I have ever read in my entire life. It is the most inspiring and fascinating book ever written.

It may take maximum of 6 hours to completely read the book. I consider it as number one book all over the world. There is not a single point in the book which is boring. It is a book which can be appreciated only by reading it. It creates an urge to do something in life. It is a great source of inspiration for depressed people. Those who have not read the book are ignorant fools. People of all age, religion and sex can read this book. It shows that one must not give up, no matter how difficult the goal is. The main of the story is “one should follow his dream”. It will surely inspire you if you care to read it. You can get a soft copy (e-book) here .

Rating (1-10): it gets 9.

It is book about a boy named Santiago who dreams of finding a treasure. He is a shepherd who lives on day to day basis. After hearing to old man’s words he starts his journey to find his treasure. He learns to recognize omens (good or bad). His journey gets stalled shortly after start. With hard work and persistence he gets back on track. He crosses Sahara desert to reach Egypt. On the way he meets alchemist, learns about love. He finally becomes an alchemist himself. He gives up his love to find destiny. He reaches pyramid in Egypt where his treasure is buried. To know whether he finds his treasure or not you should read the book. In all it is a extremely beautiful story.

About author: The Brazilian author PAULO COELHO was born in 1947 in the city of Rio de Janeiro. Before dedicating his life completely to literature, he worked as theatre director and actor, lyricist and journalist.

In 1982 Coelho published his first book, Hell Archives, which failed to make any kind of impact. In 1985 he contributed to the Practical Manual of Vampirism, although he later tried to take it off the shelves, since he considered it “of bad quality”. In 1986, PAULO COELHO did the pilgrimage to Saint James of Compostella, an experience later to be documented in his book The Pilgrimage.

In the following year, COELHO published The Alchemist. Slow initial sales convinced his first publisher to drop the novel, but it went on to become one of the best selling Brazilian books of all time.

Other titles include Brida (1990), The Valkyries (1992), By the river Piedra I sat Down and Wept (1994), the collection of his best columns published in the Brazilian newspaper Folha de São Paulo entitle Maktub (1994), the compilation of texts Phrases (1995), The Fifth Mountain (1996), Manual of a Warrior of Light (1997), Veronika decides to die (1998), The Devil and Miss Prym (2000), the compilation of traditional tales in Stories for parents, children and grandchildren (2001), Eleven Minutes (2003), The Zahir (2005).

To date, Coelho has sold a total of 75 million copies and, according to the magazine Publishing Trends; he was the most sold author in the world in 2003 with his book Eleven Minutes – even though at the time it hadn’t been released in the United States, Japan or 10 other countries!

Also according to Publishing Trends, The Alchemist was to be found in the 6th place of world sales in 2003. Eleven Minutes topped all lists in the world, except for England, where it was in second place. The Zahir, published in 2005, was in third place of bestsellers according to Publishing Trends, after Dan Brown’s The Da Vinci Code and Angels & Demons.

The book has been praised by different personalities ranging from the Nobel Prize Kenzaburo Oe to the singer Madonna, who considers it one of her favourite books. It has equally inspired many projects – such as a musical in Japan, theatre plays in France, Belgium, USA, Turkey, Italy, Switzerland. It is also the theme of two symphonies (Italy and USA) and had its text illustrated by the famous French artist Moebius (author of the sceneries for he Fifth Element and Alien).

His work has been translated in 62 languages, and edited in more than 150 countries.

Shantaram: By Gregory David Roberts

I basically started this blog to write book reviews. I have read some books and I am going to write my thoughts about them.

Shantaram is written by Gregory David Roberts. it is a real life story. It is a good story with some funny incidents. It has both love and blood. The explanation is very very good but sometimes lengthy. Those who liked Papillion will like this book. Standard of English is good. It does not have much of suspense but it will keep you reading. It is being made as a movie with Johnny Depp and Shah Rukh Khan staring in it. I guess it will be a good movie. A sequel of this book is being made too. All questions of this book will be solved.

Rating: if i was to rate (1-10) this book then it gets 6

It is a life story of a gangster; he escapes from Australia prison and lands at Mumbai. He lives in famous Mumbai slum. He falls in love with a girl named karla. He makes powerful friends and enemies. He gets arrested and tortured in a Indian jail. He ultimately joins Mujahideen in Afghanistan to fight Russia (it is a 1980’s story so Afghans were against Russia at that time, USA was helping Afghans example Rambo movie) the situation during starvation is explained beautifully. When he comes back to Mumbai, a gang war starts. He joins a side and blood is spilled and he survives.

About author: Gregory David Roberts was born in Melbourne in 1952. After surviving the events dealt with in Shantaram. He was captured in Germany in 1990 and eventually extradited to Australia. On completing his prison sentence, he established a small multi-media company and is now a full time writer. He lives in Melbourne.