Category: making things

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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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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The Salsa El Mariachi Ti has a headset for a tapered fork, thus when I picked up a rigid fork for it (more on that later) I wanted to be sure to get a tapered one. Lacking a proper setter I decided to make one out of PVC pipe. Schedule 40 PVC pipe, 1.5″, has an average inside diameter of 1.590″, which is perfect for fitting over the 1.5″ bottom of a tapered steerer tube.

Home Depot sells 2′ sections of pipe, so this, plus a cap, were purchased for making the setter. I cut the pipe to 14″ long (same as a Park Tool CRS-1) to ensure a nice, square end then fitted a cap on the other end. After cutting a slight inside bevel on the pipe this worked fairly well for hammering on the Cane Creek 40-CrownRace-52/40-Steel race (really, a bearing seat and seal) which is the matching part for the headset on the bike.

This did not work as easily as setting a traditional 1-1/8″ headset using a metal tool, but after a few false starts it did eventually work. The PVC felt somewhat flexible and I believe was absorbing some of the force from the hammer. The steerer is also has a 33% greater circumference, so on a 1.5″ steerer there’ll be more friction than with a 1-1/8″, so it’ll take more force overall to set the race in place.

That all said, at less than $5 for making one yourself versus ~$70 (online prices) for buying a steel one, and still ending up with an effective tool, this is worth making.

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Sunday’s ¡Ay CRAMBA It’s Cold Out! event is going to feature both a hard and easy route, and to support this I needed to make signs. Here they are, made from white Coroplast (liberated from a roadside) covered with green gaffer tape, and nailed to wooden stacks from the Massive Fallout marking supplies. Marking was done by hand, but seems to have worked out fairly well.

I anticipate it being fairly easy to push these into the snow, allowing the bright green 6″ x 9″ signs to guide people along the routes. They bundle up small enough that I should have no difficulty fitting them all in one backpack, making for an pre-event trail marking session.

(The easy route will cut off the hilliest parts of the trail; a section which many find too frustrating to ride in deep snow.)

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