Replacement or Repairing Bakfiets Buckle Straps

The Bakfiets bikes come with two straps for the children’s bench.   Unfortunately the buckles on my second hand bike had worn out and broken which meant they were completely useless.   The buckles are sewn into the straps and you can’t get replacement straps for the Bakfiets.  Luckily there are fantastic side removable buckles … Read more

How Thick Are Bakfiet Rear Wheel Spokes?

I am just having to replace a few of the spokes on the rear tire which have worn out.  Without a set of callipers, I found it quite hard to work out their width.   The spokes on the Bakfeits are 1.55mm diameter.  The nipples are 4.8mm diameter.  The length will vary from bike to bike … Read more

Just Brought A Bakfiet Cargo Bike

I’ve just brought a second hand Bakfiets from a Dutch man in Oxford.  It’s a little different than standard bike.  I’ve found it quite hard to find information about servicing it or even removing the rear wheel… so I’m going to blog the various things that I do to it as I go…

Water In the Drivers Foot Well – Volvo V50

I have a Volvo V50 and started noticing that with heavy rain the drivers side foot well was becoming damp.  It turns out this is caused by a blocked tube that goes from the sun roof to the bonnet.  Sometimes the tube gets blocked or shrinks and therefore doesn’t reach the bonnet.  I took it the … Read more

Volvo V50 Losing Fuel Efficiency – Reduced MPG

I have a Volvo V50 1.6 Eco Drive.  Over the past few months, it has started to lose fuel efficiency dramatically.  It dropped below 52 MPG and ended up around 42 MPG.  It turned out that this is caused by a semi blocked diesel particulate filter.   This was probably blocked because of soot caused by … Read more

Migrating To Digital Ocean

I’ve just migrated this blog to Digital Ocean.  The blog is now located in their New York data centre because most of my visitors are from the US.   Hopefully this should make it faster for the majority of my users.

Apache config error Invalid command ‘php_flag’ Ubuntu 16.04

I have just started to upgrade some servers to Ubuntu 16.04.  It looked good until I rebooted to the server and the Apache2 service didn’t start up properly.  I view the logs in systemd.  Using the command: systemctl status apache2.service ● apache2.service – LSB: Apache2 web server Loaded: loaded (/etc/init.d/apache2; bad; vendor preset: enabled) Drop-In: … Read more