The Empire has fallen: again! #cycling #bicycling #hacks #failure #cyclinglife #aliexpress

5MV-102 – The Empire has fallen: again!
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https://www.buymeacoffee.com/fiveminutevelo
I experienced the failure of one of my Sensah Empire rear gear changers. One of the pivot pins on the parallelogram fell out causing the chain to be mis-guided and break the gear changer.
In order to get home I had to convert the bike to a single speed (https://youtube.com/shorts/yfa7Img7TJQ?feature=share) where I examined the failure and changed the gear changer for a new one. Do I still trust the Sensah components?

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About the 5MV channel
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My name is Terry and I love cycling. I have named my channel “Five Minute Velo” (5MV). I have called it 5MV because the videos I upload will (mostly) last no longer than five minutes. Each video will cover just one subject that is described in the title. Although the channel is mainly about cycling on the road, I will also cover some light (gravel) off road riding and cycle touring from time to time. No matter what, much of the advice will be pertinent to many branches of the sport/pastime.

I am new to posting videos on YouTube (May 2020) and I have much to learn, particularly in terms of presentation style and production quality. As such I welcome constructive comments that will help me improve the videos that I produce and upload.

There may be some dry humor in some of the videos, so dry it may not always be obvious :-).

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My strava profile can be found here:
https://www.strava.com/athletes/7723982

Cambridge Cycling Club website:
http://www.cambridge-cycling-club.org.uk/

Instagram
https://www.instagram.com/fiveminutevelo/

Photos of 2019 Tour of low countries:
https://photos.app.goo.gl/3ierczDfurM1gTGi7

Random cycling photos (will be updated from time to time):
https://photos.app.goo.gl/VZBhCWcQZtynsJF1A

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Terry

some time ago I bought this sensor Empire group set it was about time for me to do a long-term review however that all changed today I must admit I’ve been a bit of a fanboy regarding these sensor Empire group sets this set which is a carbon fiber version I’ve done about 10,000 km on and I’ve liked them because they’re relatively cheap to buy they’ve worked very well and until today they’ve been reliable while riding along going up a small hill all of a sudden my gears went crunchy and when I looked down the rear gear changer was a bit of a mess and the chain was twisted all over the place and uh it broke the carbon fiber tension arm on the rear gear changer and it’s also broken this jockey wheel in order to get myself home I turned the bike into a single speed I have made a short about that so all I’ve got to do now is go home and replace this gear changer I’ve taken the gear changer off the bike so we can take a look at it and what you can see here is that this lower parallelogram has become disconnected from the rest of the gear change body that’s because there was a pivot pin in here in fact there are pivot pins in the other holes and it seems to have fallen out so that’s what caused the problem that I had from a design perspective there’s a bit of an error here that if I look at the top side of that lower parallelogram just in here there is no sign of the pin in fact on this end there’s no sign either so these holes are blind Unfortunately they put the Blind Side on the top or or upmost Surface if they had put it on this lower surface gravity wouldn’t have pulled this um pivot pin out so a small design change that might prevent this problem occurring or at least occurring quite so badly is that if they put the blind hole on this side that is the lower side where gravity is acting then that may help prevent that problem occurring having looked at the rest of these pivot pins they all seem to be very secure and there doesn’t seem to be a problem with them they’re not loose at all this is the old gear changer that broke and this is the one I’m replacing it with the only difference between the two is that on the one that broke it had a carbon fiber jockey wheel cage on it whereas this one has an aluminium alloy cug if I look closely at these pivot pins in fact I’ve inspected them with a loop I can’t see any problem with these that suggests to me that perhaps that pin falling out was a bit of an anomaly therefore not representative so has this gear changer failure caused me to re-evaluate my sensor Empire Fanboy status the answer is yes I no longer have full confidence in the system and no because I’ve convinced myself the failure was a bit of an anomaly also one rear gear changer two front gear Changers and two sets of brifters have worked flawlessly perhaps there’s a quality control issue despite this and because of that failure I must admit I now have some ambivalence towards the brand I should recognize that it’s not a one-way Street after all I’ve had some major brand component failures too I must admit as an engineer I enjoy the challenges that these sorts of failures present me with and I enjoy finding Solutions too although I accept not everybody does this attitude will influence the way that I proceed because of the points I’ve just raised I’ll continue to use these sensar components I’ll just use them more cautiously for instance I’ll be checking the components more regularly and more thoroughly having said that where component reliability is more critical for instance on Long rides or multi-day tours I’ll probably revert to using mainstream components just to be safe