Category: acquired things

Wanting to keep my fat bike around for a while longer I’ve been looking at cost effective ways to improve it. Last year this was new tubeless-ready wheels, and recently it’s been a great-value carbon fiber fork: the On-One Carbon Fatty Fork. At about US$250 shipped it’s considerably cheaper than many other options, and it’s geometry just happens to be close enough to that of the Mukluk’s original Enabler  fork. (468mm A-C and 45mm offset on the Enabler vs 470mm A-C and 55mm offset on the Fatty.) There is a 10mm difference in offset, which hopefully will not affect handling too much. Per various online bicycle geometry calculators there should be about 11mm less trail with the Fatty.

Trail calculations, for reference, per yojimg.net Bicycle Trail Calculator w/ 559mm BSD and 95mm tire width:

2012 Mukluk w/ Fatty: 79mm

2012 Mukluk w/ Enabler: 90mm

2015 Mukluk w/ Rigid Fork: 94mm

2015 Beargrease: 94mm

2015 Blackborow: 87mm

2015 Pugsley: 88mm

2015 Moonlander: 88mm

2015 Ice Cream Truck: 102mm

On-One Fatty w/ Carbon Fork: 94mm

2013 El Mariachi w/ Fox F29: 82mm

This ~11mm decrease in trail will likely make the front end feel much twitchier, bringing it just a smidge shortern than my favorite XC bike: the Salsa El Mariachi Ti which has 82mm of trail. If my understanding of trail is correct this’ll make the bike a bit twitchier and quicker to turn. Hopefully this won’t cause problems riding it at higher speeds, or keeping a line at slow speeds in the snow.

This fork is also set up with rear brake spacing — something that’s going away on newer fat bikes — which generally means that no special adapters are needed to get the brake caliper to align with the front hub. I did have to use two 1.5mm washers to space the caliper over for nice alignment with the rotor (photo), but this shouldn’t be a big deal. I’ll likely get some longer IS mounting bolts since the thread engagement isn’t quite enough to make me comfortable. Despite having a straight steerer the fork has a large crown intended to match the On-One Fatty frame. This results in a slightly awkward step below the headset (photo), but with the mostly-black bike I don’t think it looks too bad. I’m also not too keen on the orange logos, but in person I think it goes well enough with the sun-faded anodized red to not be a problem.

The originally intended purpose of this fork — front end weight reduction — seems to be successful. After replacement the weight has gone done 1.08 pounds, to 29.74 pounds (photo). The original steel Enabler fork, with crown race and star nut, was 1134g, while the On-One Carbon Fatty fork is 637g with crown race, compression plug / bung, and the steerer tube cut to length.

Now to wait for the trails to dry and see how it rides…

UPDATE: The decreased trail definitely makes the bike twitchier. It’s now a lot harder to ride no handed, but on single track it feels plenty lively and fun to ride. For now I think this is a good thing, although it’ll be curious to see how this pans out come winter.

For years I’ve advocated for the use of a wheel speed sensor to augment the data of GPS-based bike computers in order to alleviate distance issues caused by aliasing. Up until recently the only good options for this were traditional magnet-and-reed-switch units like the Garmin GSC-10 Speed/Cadence Bike Sensor and the Wahoo Cycling ANT+ Speeed/Cadence Sensor. These sensors work well in general, but I’ve had issues with them on my fatbike.

Because of  snow buildup on the rim (photo) the sensor is positioned closer to the hub (photo) to keep it from scraping in the snow. Withof the further-back position near my heel and the frequency of falling over when when riding in snow, it’s not uncommon for the sensor to get knocked around and tilted slightly inward. This causes the reed switch arm of the sensor to knock against spokes: the usual tick-tick-tick sound. It seems that these repeated, gentle physical impacts break the switch, as I’ve now had two which stop picking up wheel speed after a year or so on my fatbike. The rearward positioning also makes it impossible to use the cadence side, which feels a bit wasteful.

Garmin recently released a new series of speed/cadence sensors which use internal motion sensors instead of magnets (sensor bundle page on Garmin’s site). These were reviewed in great detail over here by DC Rainmaker, and the hub-based speed sensor seemed a perfect fit for my fatbike. This design will stay away from both the snow and my heels, and lacking a reed switch there isn’t that part to fail. The lack of cadence sensing on a fatbike is fine with me, as it is used in such mixed conditions such data isn’t very useful. When cleaning up my fatbike earlier this week I ordered the standalone speed sensor ($39.99 from Amazon) and fitted it last night before heading out for a ride.

My first impressions are very positive. It connected to my Garmin Edge 510 just as I’d expect, and a ride through River Bends parking lot automatically calibrated it to a sane number. A 1.5 hour trail ride near dark went fine with it, and it just seemed to work, similar in function to the GSC-10, but with a technical implementation that is more suited to fatbiking. I’ll stick with the traditional reed switch sensors for my other bikes, as I haven’t had the same kind of difficulty there and I don’t strap-to-crank-arm sensors, but for here on the Mukluk, it seems a good fit.

About a year ago, when getting ready for the Detroit Invitational CX Race (DICX), my friend Joe lent me a worn pair of Clement Crusade PDX tires that he wasn’t using. I used them a few times over the year, for a couple of single track rides and some cyclocross (CX) races, but last week he asked for them back.

I’m not much of a racer and only have a need for the tires a dozen or so times a year, but I wanted want to have something other than my usual set of gravel road / pavement tires for these times. Particularly as the CX races that I do tend to be some of the more fun events I went ahead and ordered my own set.

These are generally considered quite knobby when it comes to CX tires, something that the more serious people would reserve for muddy conditions, but I found them to be sufficient for my amateur needs on all off road surfaces. During a test ride at River Bends last year I was shocked with just how well they cornered, and at DICX and Barnyard CX (a friend’s private race on Labor Day) they did a great job of grabbing into grass and the soft surfaces usually associated to more-casual races.

The tires have now been fitted to the Jamis Nova, my CX/trainer bike, and if things work out as I hope tomorrow I’ll get to use them during some sunset-time race practice at Bloomer Park and a couple of races this autumn.

Ever since building wide carbon fiber wheels for my El Mariachi Ti I’ve had quirky issues with the rear wheel holding air. The front, with a Schwalbe Racing Ralph, has been fine, but the rear with a Continental Race King (Protection, 29″ x 2.2″) would be unexpectedly flat. After two rapid-succession low pressure events at Stony Creek yesterday and an attempt at fixing the tire last night, it was still leaking. Today I decided to try a new rear tire; a Specialized Fast Track Control 2.2″. The new tire seated up quickly without soap, and some Orange Seal tire sealant has it holding air nicely. Unlike the Continental Race King…

From my second ride on the Race King I’ve had issues with the tire losing air, to the point where I would find it dead flat after sitting overnight. After adding more sealant helped, but I noticed a clear liquid (the carrier for Stan’s sealant?) leaking out of the tire along the edge of the rim as it sat, making the bead constantly appear wet. I’d put more Stan’s sealant in it a few days ago, then during yesterday’s ride at Stony Creek I was barely able to go five miles without the tire being so soft that I could hit the rim on flat ground. Reinflating the tire and shaking would seal it up, but then it’d begin leaking again.

Last night I pulled the tire apart to replace the tape and sealant, this time with Orange Seal, and the tire seemed sealed until this morning, when I found a small pool of clear orange liquid beneath the tire (photo). After picking up a new tire today I washed everything off to take a serious look at what was going on. This showed a slice-like mark along part of the bead on the drive side of the tire, with the most heavily cut part being where the tire was leaking most heavily. When first installing the tire I noticed that this part looked a bit threadbare, but I didn’t think it was actually going to be a problem. Apparently it was. The cut can be seen above (or here) and has a corresponding ridge of latex built up on the inside of the tire as sealant permeated through this area (photo).

Because this line directly matches the edge of the rim, I suspect that some of the damage is from riding the tire at low pressures, which may explain why the problem seemed to compound: more low pressure events resulted in more inadvertent hitting the rim, resulting in more places to leak. Since the bead was wetted from my second ride, I believe this started with the threadbare area that I’d initially noticed and compounded from there.

As with the Schwalbe Racing Ralph on the front wheel, the Specialized Fast Trak that I installed today seems to have a good deal more rubber on the bead area than this tire did, so I hope it fares the same as the Schwalbe and just works. I’m getting tired of having a bike whose rear wheel isn’t reliable…

(The biggest downside thus far to the new tire is that it’s 4mm narrower than the Race King. I really liked the Race King’s generally smooth triangle pattern and huge volume, so going to something else is a bit displeasing. The Race King has loads of traction, grabbed nicely on pretty much every surface I’ve ridden, but was still super smooth when on dirt roads or the occasional paved routes. The Fast Trak seems to roll smoothly in the basement and the tread pattern looks promising, so I’m willing to give it a go. This review from 2012 is quite favorable as well. Maybe there’ll be a little more side knob traction than on the Race King as well…)

In late June I received the carbon fiber rims from Light-Bicycle that were the basis for the 35mm wide wheels that I built for the Salsa El Mariachi Ti. Today I received another package from Light-Bicycle, this time containing a small wire bicycle and a thank-you note for purchasing stuff from them. This was surprising, but pretty nifty.

I’m really liking the new 35mm wide wheels that I built for the El Mariachi Ti, and I wasn’t looking to upgrade them until I came across someone on the MMBA Forum selling a set of wheels which included both the 36 point star ratchets and the original 18 point items. I emailed him asking if he’d be willing to sell me just the ratchets separately, and he agreed, sending me both the barely-used ratchets (one race) and the special DT Swiss grease for $60, shipped.

For a while I’ve been interested in high-end-high-engagement hubs, but with the normal retail price for these ratchets at around $89 (without the grease) I wasn’t really willing to pay for it. At this price I was willing to give them a chance. Installation was super easy, as DT Swiss freehubs can be disassembled without tools, or really without even removing the cassette. A bit of cleaning to remove the old grease, some of the, pink Hugi grease was applied, and it was all put back together. Spinning the rear wheel makes a much smoother buzzing sound, the higher engagement is obvious on the work stand, and I’m really looking forward to getting out and trying them on trails.

Now I just hope they don’t spoil me…