I apologize for the ignorant post, but while I was on deployment I decided to buy myself a “welcome home” treat – a new BMC TM02 (my dream bike). I was able to get a great deal from a bike store going out of business and liquidating its inventory, unfortunately by the time I get home, the store had officially closed its doors so no one is available to answer my questions. In hindsight, I am frustrated with the store I bought it from; they sent me the wrong version of the Garmin Vector S (luckily Garmin customer service helped me fix that boondoggle), they sent me the wrong charge for the Di2 battery, and I need to make some tweaks to the build to make it fit. Hopefully there are a few TM owners on here who can help me out with the following questions:
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The integrated rear brake doesn’t seem to have a brake release lever (like the front brake does) to open up the calipers and allow removal of the rear wheel while it’s still well-inflated. Is this part of the design or am I not seeing the lever somewhere?
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I have the “external” battery variant of Di2 installed in the electronics component hatch in the rear wheel fairing. Unfortunately, to get the battery out (as you probably know), you have to remove the rear wheel, open the compartment up, and remove the battery. If I bought an INTERNAL DI2 charger, will it work with this battery?
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The seat clamp. Holy shit. Is this actually the design? A bolt under the saddle? How do you access this thing?? Does the seat clamp not give you the option to change seat angle either?
Feeling like I bought too much bike and am now over my head…
There is not a brake release lever, or anything of functional similarity, for the rear brake. Luckily, for me, my HED rim is wider than the tire so I haven’t had to deflate the tire to remove/install the wheel. To set the rear brake pad distance from the rims, you need to first remove the crankset. Then, you will find a collection of spacers of varying width; he size of the spacers between the brake pad and the caliper frame (??) determines the gap between the pad and the wheel.
It’s really annoying to have to go through all that work to adjust the rear brakes, but it is what it is. To me it’s an engineering deficiency, but then I don’t engineer bikes either.
Can’t help with the DI2 question.
The seat post bolt / screw is accessible via a small opening / access panel (?) on the top tube just behind where the seat post goes in. To adjust the seat angle, I believe there are two screws to fiddle with. The rear one (I think) releases the seat frame. The front one (I think) sets the angle. Loosen the back screw, fiddle with the front screw, tighten the back screw, see it the position is acceptable.
If you search, there is a “Official BMC TM01 Thread” thread. There is a LOT of useful information there.
Good luck.
Thanks for the info about the rear brake. That is absurd.
I checked out the TM01 owner’s thread, but I was hoping to get some TM02 specific information. Between the Time Machine user manual and Google, it looks like there are some critical design differences between the TM02 and TM01 (notably the stem, not sure about saddle).
Attached is a picture of what, to my best ability, is the only place to adjust the saddle fore-aft fit as well as the angle. This is the most hard-to-access bolt I’ve ever seen on a bicycle before - I have to use a pair of vice grips to turn the bolt about 1/8 turn at a time. Below that is a picture of the seat HEIGHT bolt that I believe you were talking about – that only seems to control seat height.
All of this stuff is covered in the Time Machine Owners thread. It’s for all Time Machines, not just the 01.
How big of a tire are you using that you can’t get your wheel out? I have a 25 on the rear and it’s a non-issue. Maybe you need to play around with the pad holder spacers/washers a little. The brake arms should be sitting against the posts when not engaged. Getting that figured out would save the trouble of buying more di2 stuff.
The bolt under the saddle works great if you have a 13mm ratchet wrench. You can adjust seat angle and position in seconds. $10-15 at your local hardware store.
Thanks for your service tacetman!