Category: cycling

Wheelpro Truing Stand

Published April 26, 2009

Wheel truing stand based off the design in the Wheelpro Wheelbuilding Book.

Having had some wheel problems lately I’ve been wanting to build a truing stand. Well, tonight I did.

The stand above is based on the one in the Wheelpro Wheel Building Book, except made with 3/4″ plywood and unfinished. I still have to make some alignment tools and get another 1/4-20 machine screw for the base. Here is a photo another Wheelpro stand with some tools, built by a cabinet maker and with a melamine finish, originally from this page.

I think that I probably spent five or six hours building the stand, but as it only cost about $32 and I enjoyed making it, I think it’s worthwhile. An hour and a half or so was spent working the steel for the dropouts, but as I don’t have any real metal working tools it was a bit difficult. I also had a problem with a bit of tear out on the plywood, which is likely because I wasn’t paying attention to the direction of cut versus top layer grain, and had a multi-purpose blade on my saw. I’m also not great at woodworking, and hadn’t done anything with a table saw in at least two years.

It could have been a lot cheaper too, but being a Sunday when I went to purchase parts I ended up buying everything at Lowes. This meant $4.66 for four flat-head machine screws, $7.67 for the steel used for the dropouts, and $6.27 for the 2′ x 2′ piece of birch plywood. There was also the $4.35 countersink that I bought, then stupidly tried to use on steel, completely ruining it, relegating it to the trash can. Yes, I had to buy steel because I did not have any scrap pieces sitting around the house. At least now I do…

It also would have been possible for me to build a simpler stand, but this one seemed to do everything I wanted. The right dropout slides to accommodate different width hubs, it works fine with 26″ or 700c (29er) wheels, and it’s quite sturdy. This week I’ll have to order some replacement nipples for my wheels and find some time to make the alignment tools, then actually figure out how to tension a wheel after undoing it. That is, actually use the stand.

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Mud!

Published April 25, 2009

Very muddy Bianchi D.I.S.S. after a ride through Stony Creek and River Bends. All the mud came from the two-track or paved trails and not single track.

After last night’s ride around Stony Creek and today’s jaunt through River Bends, my bike is nicely muddy. Interestingly, all of the mud on there came from two track flooded paved trails and not any of the single track.

Now that I’m home I just have to sit around a while longer until I stop sweating, shower, and shave. Two bike rides in my legs are a bit filthy, and I’m sure there’s quite a stink coming from my various regions.

Later today should be interesting, because there are straight line wind / tornado-type weather coming. Looks like it’ll be here in about two hours. This could get exciting. Good thing I’ve got a bunch of stuff to do in the house.

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Sunset at Stony Creek

Published April 25, 2009

Last night I met up with some friends at Stony Creek to ride the mountain bike trails there. Since I’m having problems with the rear wheel of one bike I brought my single speed with its new 2:1 gearing. This was a really nice, casual ride around all the single track once, then another run through The Pines for, as Kristi put it, “dessert”.

Surprisingly, I found this to be a really nice gearing for riding there. Because I’m familiar with the trail, hill climbs were difficult but not terrible. Nor did I spin out (get to a point where I can no longer pedal fast enough to keep the freewheel engaged) on flatter parts where I need to build up speed for upcoming hills.

All in all, I think this is a nice gearing for trails that I’m more familiar with. I think that after I finish eating some breakfast I’ll head over to River Bends and ride around a bit there before the forecasted thunderstorms roll in.

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Broken Spoke, Again!

Published April 22, 2009

I’m not happy. Today as I was preparing my bike for a ride tomorrow evening and commute on Friday morning I fitted the Continental TravelContact tires that I prefer for pavement riding. As soon as it was all together I took the bike for a quick ride around the parking lot to check for problems when I started hearing something odd out of the rear wheel. Pulling back into the garage and checking the trueness of the wheel I found that another nipple is broken and my wheel is now rather out of true.

This really disappoints me. The wheel was just taken to Fraser Bicycle and Fitness who supposedly fixed the other nipple and checked the wheel over and trued it. Since that I’ve ridden it only 50 miles or so, none of it being particularly rough offroad.

In order to deal with this I think that my next project after the SDrive NUXX will be to build a wheel truing stand and build myself a set of wheels. Brass nipples, nice spokes, decent rims, and decent hubs will hopefully result in something excellent. Also, this way if anything goes wrong I know that I’m to blame and where things may have gone wrong.

Now, to figure out what to do about the current nipple… I guess I could try sorting that out myself. It’s almost tempting to buy new spokes and nipples then disassemble and rebuild my existing wheels. As long as the rims aren’t trashed (which they shouldn’t be) that’d sort them out nicely. Presuming I do a good job, of course.

Maybe I’ll just ride the single speed in the mean time.

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32:16 (2:1)

Published April 19, 2009

Sixteen-tooth Shimano freewheel (SF-MX30 16T) installed on a Surly hub on the rear end of my Bianchi D.I.S.S. single speed.

Today I finally got around to installing the Shimano SF-MX30 16T freewheel on the Bianchi D.I.S.S., replacing the 18T that was there. This takes the gear ratio from 32:18 (1.778:1) to 32:16 (2:1), which should be nice for flatter single track stuff where I’d end up practically spinning out. Hill climbs may be difficult, but hopefully I’ll still be able to make it. If I can’t I guess I can just go back to the 18T.

Since a threaded rear hub is required to use a freewheel like this, I’m tempted to get a track cog and lockring to try it as a fixed-gear mountain bike. This could go very, very wrong, though.

While fitting the freewheel I ended up cleaning up the drivetrain, washing the chain in solvent and then re-lubricating it. After the winter riding it was pretty grimy and needed a bit of work. After cleaning it up I tried out the Park Tool CC-3 which, as can be seen here, nestles into the chain to show if it is beyond 0.75% or 1% stretched. As the 0.75% side didn’t fit into the chain, it’s just fine to continue using.

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Sore Trapezius

Published April 16, 2009

It seems that the rocky / rooty trails at Island Lake and Maybury which we rode on Monday took a bit of a toll on me. Yesterday morning my back/neck was a little bit sore, and a bit of research showed that it was likely my trapezius muscle on the right side of my body. Since it wasn’t too sore yesterday I headed out for a paved ride on the Macomb Orchard Trail, which ended up being a bit over 20 miles.

Once back at the car I found that I was a good bit more sore, but just wrote it off as a problem from leaning over the bike for a while. However, when I woke up this morning I found that I can’t really turn my head without a good bit of stiffness and soreness.

I think that this point I just need to stay off my bike for a few days and rest up, then maybe do some elevated leg pushups or something else which will build up these muscles a bit. This is a bit disappointing as today and Friday are forecasted to have really nice biking weather, but that’s just how things go. At least I’ve got other things which I can be working on in the mean time.

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Island Lake and Maybury

Published April 13, 2009

Jon and Bob standing outside of Bob's van after a cold (but nice) day riding at Maybury. Prior to this we were at Island Lake.

Having today off (Easter Monday Holiday), I ended up heading out to some mountain bike trails with some friends from the MMBA, Bob and John. Starting quite early this morning we took off towards the west side of the Detroit area, and ended up riding Island Lake and Maybury (both loops of each), with a break to eat lunch at Leo’s Coney Island and stop by Trail’s Edge.

Since I’d never ridden either of those trails it was a nice new experience, and I’ll definitely be visiting them in the future. They are both about the same level of technical difficulty that I’m accustomed to, but much longer in length. I imagine that once the weather is a bit nicer (read: warm enough for shorts) they’ll be a whole bunch of fun.

Today wasn’t so nice, necessitating shorts and a jacket and full finger gloves. Since I only have wind/waterproof full finger gloves Bob loaned me his Fox Digit gloves, which worked out great. If I’m needing to buy some for myself I think I’ll get these.

After arriving home at 6:30ish I showered, picked up some fish and chips from Chicken Shack, then watched a bunch of Season 3 of The Office. Now, bed. I’ve got lots of work waiting for me in the morning.

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Flat Tire

Published April 9, 2009

Somehow my bike front tire went flat between when I arrived at work and when I returned from lunch. This is disappointing.

When I went to get in the car after lunch (to drive to another building) I found that my front bike tire is flat. While I’d found my front tire flat last night, I changed the tube and thought I’d fixed it as it held air all last night and while on the car en route to work. Now I need to investigate further, which likely means a stop at home en route to meeting up with the group I’m riding with. Darn.

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Winwood Decksters

Published April 6, 2009

One of the biggest difficulties I had with going to clipless pedals on my bike last year was that the requirement for bike shoes made it difficult to use my bike for a short trips, such as those up to the store. It’s not hard to slip my bike shoes on, but they aren’t exactly comfortable for walking around in. While it would be possible to buy something like Keen’s Commuter cycling sandels / hiking shoes, that would be expensive and overkill.

Thanks to I’ve been checking out Alfred E. Bike‘s Daily Deal section, and late last week they had a set of Winwood Decksters for right around US$20, shipped. These devices are aluminum platform pedals, but with SPD-type cleat mounts (like most cycling shoes) on the bottom. Mated to a pair of cleats, they can turn any pedal back into a platform, perfect for quick rides to the store, picking up pizza, etc. Having recently switched to Crank Brothers Eggbeater pedals I had a spare set of cleats, perfect for use on these pedals.

When my set of Decksters arrived today, I decided to fit them with the cleats and deal with the cold / wet weather and give them a try. Installation of the cleats was very simply, and after being torqued to ~44 inch-pounds, I snapped them on the pedals and took a couple quick rides around the basement. Due to the plastic blocks on the bottom of the pedals (mandatory for using the Decksters with TIME or Eggbeater pedals) the Decksters fit very snugly on the pedals, and didn’t move.

While I could pop them off by twisting them with my hands, during a test ride around the neighborhood, intentionally rotating my feet on them, they didn’t seem to move. They also felt nicely solid, like a good pair of reasonably sized platforms. Initially I thought that pins or sharp points on them would make them a bit better, but I think this would lead to them popping off more easily, and may encourage their use in situations where they just don’t belong (BMX, DJ, FR, etc.).

If you’d like to see more photos of these pedals, here is my album of the Winwood Decksters platform pedal adapters, and here are the photos which can be found in there:

· Boxed Winwood Decksters, as received from Alfred E. Bike.
· The Winwood Deckster platforms themselves, along with nuts and screws for mounting the cleats.
· Pair of Crank Brothers Eggbeater cleats, ready to mount on the bottom of the Winwood Decksters.
· Yes, I made sure to torque the screws to the recommended ~44 inch-pounds.
· Bottom of the Winwood Decksters pedal with Crank Brothers Eggbeater cleat attached.
· Winwood Decksters platform pedal clipped into the Crank Brothers Eggbeater C pedal on my multi-speed bike. This feels very stable for riding around the neighborhood and to the store.
· Detail of the underside of the Winwood Deckster pedal, clipped to an Eggbeater C pedal. Note that the plastic blocks rest against the pedal and ensure that it doesn’t move.

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Race Face Deus XC Crankset

Published April 5, 2009

Last week I purchased a barely used Race Face Deus XC crankset, with brand new bottom bracket for a really good price. After a bunch of thinking about building a new bike I ended up using it on my currently multi-speed bike.

As they can be a bit fiddly, I had Rochester Bike Shop mount the external bottom bracket, then I took it home and finished putting everything else together. With just a little bit of front derailleur adjustment everything was nicely in place, and a test ride today (before that photo was taken) shows that the new rings really are working better, as everything just worked.

There’s still a bit of seal drag because the BB is brand new, but that should clear itself up after a bit more riding. If only it wasn’t going to rain and snow tonight and tomorrow I might be able to get out this week on trails. Ah well, maybe next weekend…

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