Category: making things

Low-Cost 29+ Stand

Published February 9, 2015

Building on the Low-Cost Fat Bike Stand idea and needing a way to support the forthcoming Jones Plus build I’ve built a 29+ bike stand from PVC pipe. By taking the previous plans, narrowing the main section, and adding length and height I got something which securely holds a 29+ (700c x 3.0″) wheel.

Modifications to the original plan involve narrowing the center pieces by 1″, adding 0.5″ to each support leg, adding 1″ to the pieces between the upright and the back side, lengthening the horizontal pieces for an 11.75″ opening, and increasing the height of the upright for a 25.5″ opening. This results in a stand which allows the wheel to set in, touch the ground, and slightly lean sideways against one of the uprights. The stand can also be placed directly against a wall and approximately 1″ will be left between the tire and the wall.

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Parts for Jones Plus Build

Published January 20, 2015

I’ve had my eye on the Jeff Jones / Jones Bikes venerable Spaceframe for years, but wasn’t interested enough to pick one up. Still, Jeff’s bike designs have intrigued me. This winter everything fell into place for me to build up the newest Jones Bikes design, the Jones Plus. Being built as a single speed it’ll replace my well loved steel Salsa El Mariachi, but it is should easily be convertable to a geared bike, should the desire arise.

After months of thought, collecting parts via group buys, weird corners of the internet, local bike shops, and the Jones Bikes store itself, the parts are now all here and the build has begun. Here’s the collected list of parts going into the bike. Not all have arrived yet (and the list will be updated if needed), but if all goes as planned it’ll be built by the beginning of March:

Frame / Fork: Jones Plus (24″)

Headset: Jones Headset for Truss Fork

Front Hub: Jones 135/142-F Hub

Rear Hub: DT Swiss 350 135mm Disc Brake (Int.Standard) w/ Bontrager 54t Star Ratchet Set (436413)

Front Axle: Jones (Comes w/ Fork)

Rear Skewer: Shimano M770 (Deore XT, 173mm, Y3TG98020)

Rims: Nextie Jungle Fox Carbon Fat MTB 29+ Rim 50mm Width Double Wall Hookless Tubeless Compatible [NXT50JF] w/ 3mm Offset (measured 576.5mm ERD)

Spokes: DT Swiss Supercomp (Black, 276mm, Spoke Calculator Screenshot)

Nipples: DT Swiss standard, aluminum (Silver, 1.8mm, 16mm long)

Tires: Bontrager Chupacabra

Tubeless Valves: Stan’s NoTubes 44mm

Tubeless Sealant: Stan’s NoTubes Tire Sealant

Rim Tape: Stan’s NoTubes Rim Tape 21mm

Brakes: Shimano XT, Levers: BL-M785, Calipers: BR-M785

Brake Rotors: Front Rotor: SM-RT76-M (180mm), Rear Rotor: SM-RT76-S (160mm)

Crankset: SRAM XO1 (GXP, 175mm, Black)

Crank Protectors: Race Face Carbon Crank Boots, (Black)

Bottom Bracket: Truvativ GXP (Silver)

Chainring: North Shore Billet 1 x 10 Direct Mount Chainring (32t, GXP)

Rear Cog: Surly Cassette Cog (18t)

Chain: SRAM PC 991

Single Speed Spacer Kit: Surly Spacer Kit

Pedals: Crankbrothers Eggbeater 3 (Black)

Handlebar: Salsa Bend 2 (23 Degree)

Stem: Thomson Elite X4 : 31.8 Mountain (1-1/8″ x 10° x 90 mm x 31.8 mm, SM-E138 BLACK)

Headset Spacers: Wheels Manufacturing Black Aluminum

Stem Cap: Niner YAWYD

Grips: Ergon GP1 (L)

Saddle: Specialized Phenom (143mm)

Seatpost: Thomson Elite (27.2 dia. x 410 mm, SP-E113 BLACK, Straight)

Collected photos of the parts can be found here.

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Ground Bees and Bench Cutting

Published September 6, 2014

Today I was reminded that bench cutting trail is incompatible with ground bees. After an excellent meeting with the Bald Mountain Recreation Area staff and start/finish planning for the Addison Oaks Fall Classic I headed out to River Bends to do some trail work. We’ve been building Lazy River, a new-ish section of trail designed to repair / replace what was lost when ITC cut a corridor to replace an eroding high tension power line tower.

One portion of this trail segment is a flowing, switchbacky downhill followed by a short, but slightly punchy climb. To make this roll nicely it needs to be bench cut, and with last night’s rain I figured it would be a great time. Despite being hot and mosquito-y, everything was going great… until I hit the bee nest. Suddenly the bees began flowing out of the ground and I got stung while running away. A few run-by passes to collect my tools and I decided the day’s work was done.

This unfortunately means that about 12′ in the middle of the trail has been left unbenched with some nicely churned soil right in the middle of the nice line. Hopefully I’ll be able to get back to it another day soon, armed with something to handle the bees.

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Wide Wheels for Salsa El Mariachi Ti

Published July 11, 2014

Ever since building some 30mm wide Salsa Semi rims for my single speed I’ve been enamored with wider (but not quite fatbike width) rims on normal mountain bikes. I feel that so long as the tire remains ~20% wider than the rim itself the benefits are great: more sidewall support, less tire roll when cornering, and higher volume of air all while rolling resistance seems the same. I recently played with building up a Velocity Dually-based front wheel for the El Mariachi Ti. At 45mm wide it made a 2.4″ Schwalbe Racing Ralph about 63mm wide and felt great to ride, but the heavy rim was noticeable. For me the holy grail would have been a wide wheelset that isn’t any heavier than a more-typical XC set, like the Shimano XT / Stan’s NoTubes Arch EX set that came with the El Mariachi Ti.

With the recent XT freehub failure I got to thinking seriously about new wheels, and after a few months of trawling eBay I found myself with all the parts needed to build up just what I wanted at a sane price: 35mm wide carbon fiber rims from China, high-quality hubs from Switzerland, tires from Germany, and spokes from… wherever spokes come from.

At the same time I was able to switch to a 142×12 rear through axle, which is something I’d been wanting to do for a while, since I’m quite fond of the positive engagement and installed-straight-or-not-installed-at-all nature of a through axle. They can’t become skewed like a traditional quick releases which can be a bit skewed.

In the end they came out great, and even though I only have an hour and a half of riding on them, I’m quite content. Read more about the build below the fold…

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Cutting Coroplast on a Table Saw

Published May 12, 2014

Some of the local mountain bike trails that I work on are in need of more signage, so a few months back I picked up a few sheets of Coroplast and a fellow CRAMBA-IMBA board member printed up some vinyl bicycle decals and directional arrows. This evening I finally got around to cutting the Coroplast, and after trying a few different methods I settled on using a table saw. While I only had a wood cutting blade I found that by using a fence and feeding at just the right speed I was able to make quick cuts and short work of producing 6″ x 4.5″ signs.

Now that this part is done I just have to get the decals applied distribute them as appropriate.

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Ideas… Ideas…

Published April 22, 2014

Today is one of those days where I find myself with lots of ideas for things to do swirling around in my head. I just have to parse through them and figure out which ones are feasible, and when I can do them…

So, what am I thinking would be good to do? Here…

Take a half-day on Thursday and go ride Poto on a single speed before the Waterloo public meeting with the DNR.
Take a half-day on Friday to hike PLRA and gather more GIS data for mapping.
Order some wide, hookless carbon fiber rims from Light-Bicycle to build a new set for the El Mariachi Ti. Then sell the existing Arch EX wheels…
Hike River Bends and clean up any lingering deadfall. Maybe Saturday?
Attend the Stony Creek Trail Day.
Write up a new description for Massive Fallout.
Write up a document trying to convince more people involved in volunteering to work on MTB trail stuff.

Now, to find the time…

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High Volume Tire for Rigid Fork

Published April 4, 2014

With Dually rims acquired I started looking around for parts to build up a high volume front wheel for the El Mariachi Ti when it is sporting its new rigid fork. Within a few days of poking around on eBay I had everything needed, some nice spokes, a Shimano XT hub (same as on the OE El Mariachi Ti wheels), and some generic (but nice) blue nipples.

On Wednesday evening I laced the wheel, and thinking everything had gone great I tensioned it on Thursday night, finding myself very happy with how it came out. Tension was very even, it was true to within 0.5mm, and dished to less than that. All was good until I started looking it over and found that I’d made a very amateurish mistake, something I haven’t done on any of the other wheels I’ve built: I put the valve stem hole in the wrong spot: photo.

If I’d made this mistake on a normal rim I could have easily shuffled the spokes one hole over and all would be good. Not so on the Dually with its offset drilling. This required me to completely unlace and rebuild the wheel to get it right. This morning I found myself awake particularly early (a combination of Danielle’s alarm and my consuming too much caffeine the day before), so I headed down to the basement and relaced the wheel before going to work.

This evening I tensioned it, fit the tire, and set it up as tubeless. During tubeless setup I was a bit concerned that I didn’t have tape wide enough to cover the spoke holes, but as this photo shows, Velocity’s 24mm Velotape is more than wide enough to cover the spoke holes. All went good, and now I’m looking forward to dry trails so I can try the wheel. I may also try it in the suspension fork, as it fits very nicely: photo.

The assembled wheel came out to be 1821g with tire and lockring, but without rotor. This is heavy, but it was expected, as the Dually is 215g heavier than the Arch EX normally used on the front of the bike. Being rotating weight this is likely to be noticeable, even with the ~400g saving of the rigid fork. Measuring 63mm wide (7mm more than the 2.25″ tire on the Arch EX) I’m expecting the extra volume to make it worthwhile. If not, it was a fun experiment and the wheel can likely be sold for what I’ve put into it. Total cost was $137.16, not counting the tire which I’ve had sitting on the shelf since late 2012. (I believe the tire was around $40 via Chainlove.)

Here’s the build specifics:

Rim: Velocity Dually 29″ (45mm wide)

Tire: Schwalbe Racing Ralph 2.4″ (Old Tread Pattern, Tubeless Ready)

Spokes: Ritchey-branded DT Swiss Competition 2.0 (296mm)

Nipples: Generic Blue-anodized Aluminum

Hub: Shimano HB-M788 (15mm TA, Centerlock)

Rim Tape: Velocity Velotape (24mm wide)

Valve Stem: Stan’s NoTubes 35mm

Spoke Tension: ~120 kgF on the higher side.

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2006 Honda Civic EX Valve Cover Gasket Replacement

Published April 3, 2014

Some time in mid-2013 I noticed that my car’s engine was getting a bit oily, with all of it appearing from just below the valve cover. This meant was time for a new valve cover gasket. While I’m not much of a car guy, I figured this should be a relatively easy DIY repair, and it was. By following both Chilton directions (thanks, MeL!) and some of this YouTube Video I had no issue with this repair. Following a test drive last night and today’s trip to work no new oil is visible on the engine, and it seems to be running properly. Out of pocket cost was $31.25 (for the gasket set and some RTV silicone), and I suspect I saved $100 – $200 in labor costs while learning something.

With new tires fitted yesterday, there’s only one active issue left with my car: a rattling/resonating when load is applied to a cold engine when the RPMs are low. I suspect it’s a tensioner or pump that’s sticking a bit. Hopefully within the next couple of days I’ll get some time to diagnose this one as well.

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A Project Unfinished

Published March 24, 2014

Thirteen years ago, back when I moved into my apartment, I started building what was to be a solid oak mission style queen size bed. I got a fair ways into the project, finishing the posts and horizontal pieces for the head and foot boards, but I never went any further because mid-way through the project I bought the condo where Danielle and I now live. Most of my time was directed into fixing the place up, and then after that I found different hobbies; from beer brewing to electronics, traveling to cycling.

Finishing this bed is one of those projects I’ve kept meaning to do, but at this point Danielle and I are looking to purchase a king size mattress, which wouldn’t fit into this bed, rendering it somewhat useless. This is something I never got around to finishing, and found myself at the point where it was time to abandon it.

Last week I offered the wood to my dad as a project that he could finish up and today he picked it up. I’m really glad to that he wants to work on it, and thus I hope it’ll serve as an enjoyable project and end up as something my parents can use.

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Four Fresh Kegs

Published February 12, 2014

Since the beginning of the year I’ve been brewing a batch of beer roughly once per week. This evening I kegged all four and now the beers are sitting in the garage chilling before I begin force carbonating them. I’m still trying to decide if I should purchase the ~$25 of extra fittings required to inject CO₂ via the outlet tube — something which will likely decrease carbonation time — or just go with the previous method of pressurizing the head of the keg and waiting. The former should have the beer soundly ready to go within a week, the latter has taken 2-3 without occasional shaking.

The four beers shown here are an Double IPA and Dunkelweizen, both Brewer’s Best kits, a Chocolate Stout (a Cap ‘N’ Cork kit), and Hopeful Pale Ale, a slightly smokey and citrus-y idea that I put together with the help of one of the folks up at Cap ‘N’ Cork. After tasting them during kegging I’m pretty happy, and I’m particularly looking forward to trying the Hopeful IPA because it seems to have been a success.

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