VIDEO DESCRIPTION:
Welcome back to Planet Doug for what is probably Phase 3 or 4 of bicycle repairs! 🚲
What was supposed to be an easygoing ride into the mountains of central Malaysia turned into a three-day mechanical struggle. First, my rear tire sidewall exploded from sun damage. Then, while testing my bike, my rear derailleur went straight into my spokes, destroying six of them!
This video is the story of my second rescue mission. I take my half-broken bike on the KTM train to Seremban, find a legendary bike shop called Rahang Cycle Sports, and watch the experts work their magic. From bent derailleur hangers to new brake pads and tires, this is a masterclass in bicycle repair—and a primer in taking your bicycle on a Komuter train in Malaysia.
A huge thank you to the incredible team at Rahang Cycle Sports for saving my tour! 🙏
📌 In this video:
The aftermath of the explosion
The damage: Exploded tire, broken spokes, & bent derailleur
The risky ride to the Rembau train station
Success! Getting the bike on the KTM train
Arriving at Rahang Cycle Sports in Seremban
The expert repair: Derailleur hanger alignment & brake fix
The triumphant test ride & train ride back
The verdict: My bike is roadworthy once more
🔧 Gear Mentioned:
* Wanda 26″ x 1.95″ Tire
* Rahang Cycle Sports (Seremban, Malaysia)
🌏 Next Up:
I have a big surprise coming in the next video (seriously, nobody will guess it!), just in time for the chaotic end-of-Ramadan holidays. Stay tuned!
VIDEO TRANSCRIPT:
Welcome back to Planet Doug at the start of another day kind of at the beginning of a bicycle tour that is supposed to take me all the way to the north of Malaysia through central Malaysia. If you haven’t seen my previous videos, I started off from the city of Port Dickson and I rode my bicycle just for 2 days and that got me to where I am now. This is the city of Rembau. And then I set off from Rembau into those mountains over there. You can see the sun has just come up over the mountains. And I was riding my bicycle up those mountains. And then my rear tire exploded. The sidewall of the tire had been so weakened by UV rays and the sun and just time and heat and humidity that the tube of my tire just exploded out the side of the sidewall. And that basically made my bicycle unridable. So I needed to go into Seremban to buy new bicycle tires. But while I was preparing to do that, the rear derailleur on my bicycle went too far. I was changing gears and I wasn’t paying attention and I pushed the derailleur right into the spokes of the rear wheel while I was riding it around this parking lot just testing out the tires and the derailleur just ripped through the spokes. And yesterday I took the train KTM into Seremban hoping to find a good bicycle shop which I did find and the guys at the bicycle shop were amazing. They took a close look at my rear wheel and they found six spokes that were either broken well there were two that were completely cut in half and then there were four more that were so badly bent and splintered they had to be replaced as well. So yesterday, the great guys at this bicycle shop, they replaced six spokes on my rear wheel and then I came back by train and I put the wheel back on my bike and now I’m bringing my whole bicycle, I hope, on the KTM train all the way back to Seremban. And I’m going to bring my bicycle in because now I need them to fix my derailleur. So there’s the sun rising above the hills. There’s Rembau and Seremban is about 30 km in that direction. And I got to get there as quickly as possible. All right, stage one underway. Going to ride my bicycle carefully and slowly without changing gears on the rear derailleur at all. I have to make sure to stop that muscle memory and ride. It’s about a kilometer and a half to get to the train station. Yeah, this is the spot the Remau Hotel has for people to park their scooters back here. It’s very convenient like an indoor parking area. And I had my bicycle back there as well. So there’s my bike and this is the new tire that I bought yesterday. So that is a it’s from a company called Wanda. Wanda is like a Malaysian company and it is a like 26 in tire 1.95 in wide. And yeah the thing that is being fixed today if you have no idea what a derailleur is is this thing. This complicated piece of mechanical stuff down here. That’s the rear derailleur. And what happened the other day was like the derailleur moves from right to left to move the chain from different sprockets, right? Bigger to smaller. But mine is bent, so it went all the way to the biggest ring and then went beyond the ring right into the spokes like that. And then just basically locked up the rear wheel and then just shattered all of these spokes. So this is what I need them to work on. Could be an easy fix. I hope so. Because they’re going to be working on my bike, I stripped away all of my bags, all of my camera attachment points. My the famous Planet Doug broomstick. I removed it. So, I can’t mount my cameras for the short ride. I’m just going to mount that either I got a neck mount. I can put the GoPro here and I can babble as I ride. The rear wheel right now is completely repaired. So, I don’t have to worry about the rear wheel at all. So, that tire is pumped up. They pumped it up to like 38 PSI, which is well within the range of this rim and tire. My front one is the one that could blow out at any point. And yeah, I think I put like 5 PSI in there just so I can get to the train station.
Oh, look at that. Muscle memory. I was just about to change the gears on the rear wheel. It’s just such an ingrained habit, you know? I got to slap my right hand, you know, bad hand. Don’t change gears. But I can change gears on the front derailleur if I want to go faster.
But I don’t need to go faster. It’s 20 to 9 right now and the train is at 9:22. So I’ve got 40 minutes to get to the train station. And the real trick here has nothing really to do with the bicycle. The real trick is totally out of my control, and that’s whether or not the staff at the train station are going to be happy to see me with a bicycle and let me take it onto the platform. I might be worrying too much about that, but the normal time to do that is like starting maybe at 9:30 in the morning. That’s when they allow bicycles on a weekday. And my train leaves at 9:22, just before 9:30. So, I mean, come on. I should be able to do it, but I don’t have a lot of confidence that the world will do logical things.
At least riding my bicycle to the train station. Sure, a lot easier than walking there.
And since I did all of this one time yesterday already, I know the score. I know exactly how to get where I need to go. And so far, my front tire hasn’t exploded yet. It’s gotten me this far.
I have to do a little bit of a circle to get there.
In order to reach the train station, I actually have to go forward and then come around in a circle. This is the access road to the train station that goes underneath the highway.
I am now the expert when it comes to going to the Rembau train station.
It’s funny how hard it is to keep focused. I know perfectly well that right now my bike is only half functional. I know I can’t change gears on the rear wheel. The brakes are disconnected on the rear wheel and my front tire has almost no air in it. So, I can’t change gears and I should not go fast cuz I can only use the front brakes and I definitely can’t take a corner at any kind of speed because of the way the front tire is. And yet when I came down that hill, I just ended up going a little bit fast and then I started going around the corner too fast and I could feel my front tire kind of buckling because it doesn’t have any air in it. Anyway, so hard to keep focus.
And here we are at the train station.
I’m not sure if a bicycle can fit into their elevator or not, but let’s find out.
Yeah, there’s lots of room.
Oops.
So this morning I’m going to go on the principle that it’s better to ask for forgiveness than permission. So I’m not going to ask. I’m just going to assume I can take in my bicycle. and they can let me go or not. So the power of touch and go.
There we go.
So far so good. Nobody shouted at me.
So this is the platform I want. Platform 1 and two. Seremban KL Central Batu Caves. I wonder if there is an elevator to go down to this platform.
That would be kind of handy if there was. Yeah, there is an elevator. Is it working? Yep. See, it’s making noise. So far so good. The world is being nice to me.
And here we are. And in order to take a bicycle, you have to go down to the first or last car, of course, to stay out of everybody’s way. But when I took the train yesterday, it was completely empty. I think my entire car, I was the only person in the car. So,
okay. So far so good. Here I am with my bicycle down on the platform. Here comes the train. Right on time. 9:21 to Seremban. Yeah. I think this train is empty. So it should be okay. Yeah. With the bicycle. Yeah.
KTM commuter.
Okay. Thank you.
Yeah, a train station employee just came up to chat with me, make sure I’m okay, and he wanted to know like, do you know what train you’re getting on? He says, “Yeah.” So anyway, my train is here
and
we go all the way to the back.
So that’s where my bike is. Nice and secure. Pro tip, it’s always nice to have a kind of a Velcro strap with you like this. So, I have this strapped to the bar, but with this strap on there, yeah, this bike it’s not going anywhere. I could sit down if I wanted to. And here I am with a almost completely empty train car.
Okay, we arrived in Seremban. No issues at all with that stage of the journey.
So, this is going to be a slightly more challenging exit than my entrance was because Yeah, I don’t think there’s any kind of elevator here. Oh, am I completely wrong about that? Huh? I had no idea there was one here. And it seems to be working well. The stars are aligning.
All right. Turn the bike around. Going up.
Thank you. You’re welcome.
I already just took the train. Yeah. So, just going to Seremban. My bicycle is broken, so I need to fix it at a bicycle shop. Yeah.
There we go. The power of touch and go.
Oh, okay. This might be I was just going to ride my bicycle to the bike shop, but it’s one of these giant one-way streets. Maybe I’ll just walk my bike along the side of the road. Pretend I’m a pedestrian with a bicycle. Yeah, that was surprisingly smooth. Nobody even batted an eyelid that I was on the train with a bicycle.
Just had the one train station employee come up to talk to me on the platform in Rembau, but he was just double-checking to make sure that I was okay.
And I told him that I was going to Seremban.
And we’ve arrived. You see these bicycles all tied to the pole painted white. That is the sign that you are at the Rahang Cycle Sports.
They’ve already got a couple of customers.
Good morning. How are you? Here is the beast. Yeah, this kickstand is terrible. Oh, yeah. It doesn’t really work very well. So, here’s the inside of this bike shop. Yeah, they’ve got some interesting bikes here. This is the new style, which I find fascinating. You see this all the time where they have a tiny sprocket on the front and then on the back, a whole range of them from very small to extremely large. So with this design, you need a rear derailleur, but you don’t even need a front derailleur at all. But if you have a setup like that, it’s very specific. Like only this derailleur will fit the wide range that’s necessary here. It’s a very specialized rear derailleur. But yeah, you see a lot of bikes like that now. This one has the same style. And I believe this one up here as well. Yeah, same thing. Very tiny on the front. And then a whole range. So, just to give you an idea of what this shop is all about, they’ve got these folding bikes here as well. I don’t know the brand TRS and Yeah. Okay. TRS. So, there’s a whole bunch of folding bikes here, some sort of high-end road bikes here,
and then in terms of accessories, yeah, they’ve got some sunglasses, cycling shoes, the tape for your handlebars, and then mechanical things.
brake pads, disc brake pads, other brake pads,
some cassettes, crank sets,
and then some accessories like universal multi-tools, you know, a couple of little bags. And then these are all the headlamps that I was talking about. I’m just hesitant to buy one again like another cat eye 100 ringgit and they probably won’t last. This one’s 200 ringgit and they’ll probably break in no time. None of these have ever lasted for me. But yeah, they’ve got pedals and then even bottom brackets. So yeah, they can do some technical repairs here. Helmets, water bottles.
So he’s checking over the derailleur right now
and just dialing it in. Did it seem bent to you or just out of alignment? A bit bent. Oh, you use that. Oh, okay.
adjust the alignment. I see. Okay.
So, this is a special tool for derailleurs. Oh, I’ve never seen one before. So, look at that. If I had this in my bag, I could do it myself. But I can’t carry that. That’s too heavy. So, you had to bend it already? Yeah. I decided to stand. I see.
And now, yeah, it’s got a couple of set screws here. You can adjust how far it goes this way, that way. And I’m such a dummy that every time I try to adjust these, I get confused.
I can do this for 2 hours and I still can’t figure it out. But it’s easier if you have the stand, right? Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. You need some kind of a stand. And it’s amazing to watch an expert at work. It looks so easy. When I do it, it’s so difficult.
Yeah. You can see how close the derailleur is. Or that’s called the hanger, right? Yeah. Yeah. This is hanger. Oh, this is the hanger. This thing. Oh, that’s the hanger. This one is yours. His body is still one piece. Okay. Normally those other mountain bike, those other medium bikes, they will come in separate parts. I see. I see.
And you can see the part that goes down, how close it gets to the spokes.
Makes me wonder why there isn’t some kind of a barrier, but there’s not much room there to put a barrier between them. Yes, you would have only depends this screw limit screw, right? The limit screw
if you didn’t fall this didn’t out of alignment then it won’t go in. Right. Okay. The bike fall then this whole thing bend then you will chance to drop inside. Yeah. It’s the first time it ever happened to me in my life. Never did that before.
Yeah, I learned something new. I thought this part was the hanger, but it’s this part right here. That’s the hanger. And that’s the part that bent right here. Very small piece of steel. And you had to put this bend it back into shape.
And I was hoping while it was here, you could also check the brakes to see if it needs to be replaced. I have extra brake pads. So, I’m not sure if these go if they’re designed front and back, but I have these.
I don’t know I bought them at the same time as the brake as the bike. They should match. I hope so anyway. If not. Yeah. So, there you go. My bike is being worked on. That’s amazing. They’ve got all the right chemicals for cleaning everything.
Amazing. Yeah. There you got right to work on the on my bike and everything is going along smoothly. So, as he said, my rear derailleur, it was the hanger part was bent and he had to use a special tool in order to line it up. And they were worried the other day, they said that if my derailleur was really old, the metal can get brittle and it might break. But apparently that doesn’t seem to have been a problem. And I chatted with him a little bit. So he’s now going to check over the brakes, see if the brake pads need to be replaced. I have extra brake pads that I have with me. And he said, “Yeah, the front ones definitely need replacing.” I knew that you could probably get more life out of them, but since I’m here in the middle of doing a tuneup, might as well go all the way. And he’s going to clean the chain. check the bike over. He’s going to do all the things that I should have done already. Basically, to prevent myself from hovering over the poor guy while he’s working, I’m giving him the space. And I just walk down the street. I noticed there was a gas station here. You know, I’m all everywhere I go, I’m walking, I’m cycling, whatever I’m doing. I’m a little bit like George Costanza in many ways in my life. It’s like I have a part of my brain is always looking for bathrooms. It’s like a radar just like, you know, every time I see a place that might have a bathroom, I log it into my memory and there was this gas station, a Petron gas station. There it is. And I walked by it and I figured, oh, they must have a bathroom. So, I made a mental note and then I popped inside and got myself a Wanda original iced coffee drink. I can hang out here a little bit, watch everybody working on their cars, and yeah, use the bathroom, maybe walk around a bit more in this neighborhood, and then go back. There is a train at 11:37, but yeah, I’m not going to make that one, of course. So, I have my eye on the 2:32 this afternoon. So, that’s plenty of time. Again, I can never get over the fact the difference between doing something yourself, which is exponentially more difficult than having an expert do it when they have all the right tools. He’s got the bike stand. He knows what he’s doing. And it’s just everything looks so easy. He just puts the bike up on the stand. Boop boop boop boop boop. There we are. you’re all set to go. If I were doing it, it would take me all day, take me all day tomorrow. I don’t have the right tools. I would do it all wrong. I mean, I can stumble through repairs, but again, I’m just stumbling. So, it’s always amazing to see an expert at work.
Yeah. Okay.
Beautiful. Yeah, that looks like how that’s how it’s supposed to work.
Oh, that’s amazing. Thank you so much. So, yeah, the work is all done. The derailleurs working normally again. Chain is nice and clean. Everything is clean. The rear brakes, new pads put in, but they’re perfectly centered. Front brakes, yeah, perfectly centered. He was telling me this is probably not really responding as well as it should. There’s some sort of issue with the spring or the rubber or something in there. New tire on the front. New tire on the back. And there’s the magician who did it all.
Looks amazing. Thank you so much.
Really appreciate it that you did it right away. Yeah. No problem. Now I can take it back to Rembau on the train. By train No, I’m going to take the train back. All of my gear is back in Rembau. Anywhere that looks good. Maybe this will be covered up all the time by water bottles. So maybe up here. So we’ve have a sticker for this shop. These are rusted. Yeah, cover up the rust.
the official stamp of approval. Rahang Cycle Sports. Beautiful. That’s great. Thank you very much. I didn’t even know that was there. I forgot about that. I usually have a bag here covering this part up there. Anyway, thanks again. And yeah, thank you. You too. Really nice to meet you. And my first test ride just going back to the train station. Oh, yeah. All right. Have a good day, guys. Thanks again.
All right, as you can see, I’m back on the road. Just left from Rahang Cycle Sports. I put a sticker on my bike as a souvenir. That’s great. And everything is ship shape. New tires, new spokes, retrued the wheel, new brake pads, clean the chain, clean the sprocket, clean the derailleur, fixed the derailleur, and centered the brakes properly.
My brakes are so responsive now. I’m not used to that. So that’s it. I have a hour and a half until my train. So, I’m going to go grab a seat at nearby 7-Eleven near the train station. Grab myself a cold drink or a hot coffee, something like that, and wait for the train. Those guys did such a great job, and they were so helpful and friendly. It feels inadequate just to pay them for the service. and then thank them and ride away. It feels like I have to do so much more for them. I want to express my thanks much more strongly. But yeah, it’s really nothing else I could do. Just had to say thank you very much.
And hopefully they can actually see themselves in the YouTube video when I post it.
The power of a touch and go.
That was the one thing I was worried about for today was getting back into this train station with my bicycle. But as long as you’re going middle of the day when bicycles are allowed, Yeah. just roll it through. You just have to go through the bigger, wider gate so that your bicycle fits through. And nobody gave me a hard time.
And I was pleasantly surprised this morning to find out that way back here at the back there was an elevator.
You guys go ahead.
To be honest, it’s probably easier just to pick my bike up, walk down the stairs. Done this a million times.
When there’s other people with suitcases, I just don’t want to get in their way.
There must be an ETS train coming through soon. I can’t imagine that these people are here for the commuter, but you never know. A lot of people.
I just scanned the platform QR code and there is an ETS coming in 7 minutes. That’s what most people here are probably waiting for. And then 21 minutes away is my commuter train number 2031. So far it’s listed as on time.
The ETS is arriving and pretty sure we’ll see most of these people get on the train heading to KL. I think this one is a reserve seating. So, everybody has to go to the right car and find their seat, their assigned seat. Here comes a train. Should be mine. I hope it’s mine. KTM commuter.
Tampin. Yeah, there you go. Just a couple of minutes late, but in my world that’s completely on time.
Get that nice and tight.
There we go. Not going anywhere.
There’s the scenery between Seremban and Rembau, the beginnings, the foothills of the Titiwangsa mountain range. Been blessed with absolutely gorgeous weather the last few days, which has been a nice silver lining. Yeah. Oil palm, of course. Heat. Heat.
So, here we are on Rembau station. Looking back at my seat, make sure I didn’t leave anything behind. I think I’m okay.
Nothing could have been more convenient, faster, more pleasant than this particular set of bicycle repairs. I don’t think I’ve done bicycle repairs so smoothly anywhere in the world at any time.
Riding away from the train station, just exiting the gates. And now we can do a little bit more serious testing. You’ll hear some clicks. And the clicks will mean that I’m changing gears. There we go. Nice and smooth.
Oh, beautiful.
That was the rear derailleur in the front. Just as smooth. That’s the highest ring on the front crank set. Now, let’s go down one. Go down one more. Nice. Back to the middle. And now, let’s start climbing up on the rear derailleur. Perfectly smooth. Brakes really responsive. The brakes are much better than they were before, that’s for sure.
My old brake pads were getting a bit thin and were not quite lined up properly.
Not quite. The rim wasn’t quite centered perfectly between the brake pads.
And now I don’t have to worry about going too slowly.
Actually, now that I think about it, I never did check the skewers to make sure that the quick release was tightened properly. I’m sure they did tighten it, but I should double check. The last thing you want is to go over a bump and have your front wheel fall off. That’s a classic YouTube fail video that always looks particularly painful.
Front wheel’s just fine. There we go. Locked and loaded.
I’m back at the strip mall where my hotel is located. I’ve been out here in the middle lane for quite a long time waiting for a break in the traffic. Everybody’s trying to turn right here, but the traffic flow is so steady. It’s crazy. Just never comes to an end. Just goes and goes and goes. Oh. Oh. Oh. Oh. Oh. Oh, no.
Could lie down and take a nap out here.
Not quite sure where this red car is going. She’s got the wrong turn signal on. She must be turning left, but she’s signaling right. There we go. Oh, one car made it.
And I’m just going to go early. There we go.
These tiny towns, man, like Port Dickson, Rembau, you think you’re in a tiny town, but it’s got big city traffic.
And here we are, home sweet home. I think I’m going to bring my bicycle back up to my room because I have a lot of alterations to do. I got to put all my bags back on. I got to reinstall my patented broomstick for mounting my GoPros.
And I’m back in the home sweet home. Got I carried my bike up to my room here. I’m going to take a shower. You can probably see even the short ride from the train station back here and then coming up the stairs, I just burst out into a horrible sweat. It is hot out there, let me tell you. But yeah, very happy the bike is back in ridable shape again. The guys at the bicycle shop did an amazing job. They really did. I was so pleased. Yeah, highly recommend it. I’d go back there in a heartbeat. So, that is it. Shutting down. If you’ve watched this video all the way to the end, you know what that means. that makes you a member, an official member of the Planet Doug Crunch Club. Put CC in the comments to let me know you made it all the way to the end. And there are updates, posts, photos, little stories going up on the Planet Doug Patreon and YouTube post page. You can sort of keep up with me there. And if you want to support what I’m doing here on the channel, I guess the next big challenge is coming up this weekend because it’s the end of Ramadan holidays, a 4-day long weekend where everybody hits the road and goes home to spend time with their families. So there’s going to be a lot of traffic out there. Hotels are going to be full. So those four days ought to be quite interesting. But tomorrow I have a surprise. A big surprise. Something completely unexpected. Something completely out of left field. So, tune in for the next video to find out what that is. I’m willing to bet nobody out there will be able to guess. Well, maybe two people will be able to guess, but nobody else. Check out the next Planet Doug video to find out what this big surprise is. So, shutting down and as always, I’ll see you in the next video.