Category: acquired things

On Friday I found myself in a tough spot. I had a brand new bike, but a bit of measuring and maths had shown that there was 30mm more reach than on my other bikes. I was about to head out on a 3 hour ride, and I had a 5.5 hour ride scheduled for Sunday. The bike might be fine this way, but it also might be terribly uncomfortable at the end of those three hours. The best solution for this was to get a 70mm long 0° degree stem, as this would move the bars rearward about 30mm, and would then match the other bikes. But, how do I get a stem of that sizing before Sunday, when I’ve already got a busy Friday evening and Saturday, can’t make it to many shops, and most shops won’t stock stems of this size? If I’m sore after Friday’s 3 hour ride, what do I do?

After thinking it over I ended up just ordering a Thomson (my preferred stem brand) from Amazon and having it shipped overnight. This commanded a bit of a premium, but I decided it’d be worth it to be sure I’d have a stem that would make the fit match existing bikes and also be one one I’d want to keep. (Zach over at Rochester Bike Shop had let me borrow a 75mm x 7.5° for testing, but I wasn’t sure if I’d be able to make that one fit as nicely, and it definitely wasn’t a permanent fix, so I’d still have to order a Thomson eventually…)

Friday’s ride went quite well, and I found that the extra 30mm of reach may not be too much, and had quite a great time riding around Stony with some friends. I’m not sure if it was new tires, tubeless, the Fox fork, or being a bit further forward, but I was really liking how the bike held on to the trail. Post-ride I had a bit of newfound upper back soreness, but as it wasn’t anything terrible I was on the fence about switching to the shorter stem that was to arrive on Saturday. Maybe I just needed to adapt to it… Still, the stem arrived and I was happy to have options.

This evening I measured the bike a bunch of different ways, comparing it to my others, and decided that for Monday’s 5.5 hour ride† I should try the new shorter stem. That’s when I ran into a problem. When taking the faceplate off of the new stem I couldn’t get a tool to fit in one of the screws, as the head of one screw hadn’t been manufactured properly and 3mm hex tool wouldn’t slide in. I also found the screws to be questionable, as every other Thomson stem I can remember uses 4mm-fastener cap head screws and not the 3mm dome ones that this stem came with. Amazon (direct/Prime) is usually a pretty reputable seller, but I can’t help but wonder if something is up with this stem.

As can be seen above (or in either of these photos: 1, 2) the head of the screw on the right is just… not right. For those who are familiar with Thomson X4 stems you may find these to look a bit… different. I can’t help but wonder if this is a counterfit stem, although I imagine it may simply be one from an early production run. I’ve emailed Thomson asking if they can address this or if they’d like me to take it up with Amazon, so hopefully they’ll get back to me soon.

In the mean time I’ll just keep riding with the 100mm stem. I’m really liking the bike thus far and am really glad that Mike (and Aaron and Dan and Paul…) at Trail’s Edge were able to get this bike for me. They seem to be quite hard to come by, and I’m really liking how it feels. I just want to be sure I’ve got the fit spot on before I do too long of rides and end up either really uncomfortable or injure myself. Getting this stem may just sort that out.

UPDATE: Thomson replied to my email this morning indicating that it is a legit stem, that they changed style last year, and that they’ll send me some replacement screws.

† I was able to arrange things with work where I put in half a day and got a bunch of scripting done from home on a rainy Sunday. This should let me work half a day on Monday and hopefully get out for a nice ride.

IKEA, purveyors of useful (and usually) imported items has one item that I think will be of particular use to those interested in the mechanical side of cycling: FIXA Tape Measure (item 402.375.57), a metric and standard tape measure which retails for $1.29 in US stores.

Bicycle measurements, especially frame dimensions, seem to be randomly specified in metric or standard units. To accommodate this and support measuring tire circumferences I bought a Stanley metric tape measure via eBay from Canada, but I thought it’ll be really nice to have this dual-unit one. Now I do, and it’s cheap enough that I don’t mind throwing it in a tool bag with other items, leaving it there to get scratched and nicked up, nor loaning it to someone and potentially losing it.

To make non-bike-shoe riding easier I picked up a pair of Windwood Decksters a couple of years ago, but I never really used them because my primary use for flat shoes on clipless pedals was doing trail work and the Decksters were prone to popping off when twisting one’s foot, like when riding on trails. Instead when taking my bike out for trail work I’d just deal with riding in boots on Eggbeaters or wear bike shoes.

With a recent successfully-funded Kickstarter campaign Pub Pedals — a slip-on platform for Crank Brothers Eggbeaters — came to be. Nick had purchased a pair from the original campaign and after they arrived I saw how high quality they were and that they’d meet a need of mine, so I ordered a pair. Today they arrived, and after some basic testing I’m quite happy with them. I still have to actually try them out for basic riding on trails, but I expect them to work quite well.

I first tried them on some older Eggbeater SL pedals that are on my Mukluk 2 and they installed pretty easily, but weren’t loose enough to come off easily. I then tried them on the newer Eggbeater 3s that are on most of my bikes and they were sufficiently difficult to install that I sent a note to Nick asking if his fit. They did, so I tried mine again and was able to cajole them in place by wearing gloves and spreading the cages a bit with my hands. Eventually they fit in place, snugly enough that I see almost no chance of them coming off during even fairly aggressive trail riding. (I’d probably slip off the pedals before I could apply enough force that they’d push off of the pedals.)

Come next time I’m out doing trail work, provided there’s no need to carry long tools, I strongly suspect I’ll be giving these a go. Or, maybe I’ll slip them on next time I’m looking at taking a ride up to Sherwood for some dinner and beer… After all, they are Pub Pedals.

My friend Jeremy lost his Garmin cadence sensor magnet so he replaced it with a simple neodymium magnet. After hearing about how well that worked for him I picked up some similarly sized ones from eBay and put one on the crankset for my new bike. I opted for a 8mm thick (10mm diameter) magnet where he’d gone with the 6mm thick version. I picked this based on how far out from the crank arm the normal Garmin sensor sits, although with the additional strength of the larger magnet this may not have been necessary.

The magnet sticks solidly to the end of the pedal spindle, nestled inside of the 10mm hole in the Race Face Crank Boot. It’s a bit difficult to pry off with my finger, but easy enough to remove I can’t help but wonder if I should have opted for a thinner version instead, so I just purchased some 3mm thick magnets on eBay and will give those a go as well. Whichever I end up using it’s a very elegant solution that I expect to work out quite well, as long as it doesn’t come out and become stuck in my drivetrain or something terrible. It also looks much nicer (and is much easier to fit) than the normal Garmin magnet, as it doesn’t use adhesive nor require a cable tie around the crank arm.

In preparation for building up a new bike that I have on order I purchased QBP #FS1330, the Salsa Alternator Dropout Set 12×142 w/Maxle. This is a set of swing plates for Alternator dropouts which allows a 142mm x 12mm rear axle to be used instead of the standard 10mm quick release. While the wheel set coming with the bike won’t work with this, I hope to eventually get a through axle rear wheel so I wanted to order the plates and axle before I needed them.

I was not able to find photos of this item online before I ordered it, so now that I have the set I wanted to post some photos for others. So, here they are: FS1330 – Salsa Alternator Dropout Set 12×142 w/Maxle

Looking at this in person I can see why it’s so much more expensive than the normal replacement swing plates. Beyond the inclusion of the Rock Shox-branded Maxle these are machined instead of cast, with lots of small details. These probably aren’t produced in nearly the quantity that the normal swing plates are.