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Race Face Turbine Fatbike Crankset

Published November 20, 2013

My 2012 Salsa Mukluk 2 came stock with an e*thirteen XCX fatbike crankset, and while this has worked well for two years, the variety of other fatbike-compatible cranksets on the market had me wanting to try something different. I also haven’t been particularly fond of the bottom bracket design, particularly after ruining one set of bearings after a bit of a lake ride. Race Face, a stalwart brand in mountain biking, now manufactures a number of their cranks in configurations that support 100mm bottom brackets just for fatbikes.

After finding a surprisingly good deal on one of these cranksets and the chainrings that I prefer I ordered it, and in a bit of time this afternoon between work and a group ride I got it installed. After tonight’s ride I’m quite happy with the purchase. This crankset has a much more traditional bottom bracket with a well-known seal design, and unlike the e*thirteen includes a sleeve connecting the two cups, which should help keep contaminants out of the bearings.

This setup ended up being the following items:

  • Race Face Turbine Crankset for Fatbikes (100mm bottom bracket shell), 175mm arms, for 175mm rear hub spacing.($182.99)
  • Truvativ Trushift Chainring, 22t, Aluminum, 64 BCD ($13.99)
  • Truvativ Trushift Chainring, 32t, Steel, 104 BCD ($20.00)
  • FSA Torx Chainring Bolts, Alloy, Black ($17.50)
  • BBG Bashguard, 104 BCD OVAL, 32t ($26 shipped, but taken off of e*thirteen crankset.)

The total for this was $234.48, and I’m hoping to sell my functional but unwanted e*thirteen crankset to offset a bunch of this cost.

At 951g for this entire crank setup (versus 879g for the e*thirteen) there is a slight weight penalty (72g) for moving to this crankset, but as this is a fatbike I’m not particularly concerned. This amount of weight will be absorbed by extra clothes that I wear or food that I carry. The complete bike, with bottle cage and pedals (but without bike computer) comes in at 32.4 pounds with this crankset, which I think is pretty reasonable for a fatbike where weight isn’t a primary concern.

Tonight’s test ride at River Bends showed that this crankset seems to work as expected. It does what a crankset needs to, was sufficiently easy to set up, and moved the chainline outboard far enough to provide about 5mm of clearance between the chain and tire when in the 22t chainring / 34t cog combination. (Photo) This is the lowest gear that I have on the bike, and while it isn’t a very common combination for most riding, it’s useful in winter or inclement conditions when needing to move slowly and steadily through very difficult conditions. With the e*thirteen crankset there was a bit less clearance, resulting in more gunk being scraped off of the tire by the chain.

I have high hopes for this crankset, but based on what I’ve seen thus far I don’t think I’ll be disappointed.

(Yes, I know the derailleur is mounted high… That’s still the original position compatible with 44t outer rings, but due to the shaping of the derailleur and the slightly more outboard chainline of the Turbine crankset leaving it this way allows me to use almost the entire cassette when in the 22t chainring.)

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This Is How It Gets Done

Published November 17, 2013

A scant 3.5 years ago the MMBA Metro North chapter, now known as CRAMBA-IMBA, finished completion of the first phase of official mountain bike trails at Shelby Township‘s River Bends Park. Today we had another trail work day to give the trail a nice autumn cleanup and the rerouting of a couple problematic spots.

It’s pretty amazing to me how things like this come together. A group of us, who generally all get along and work well with each other, came together and worked to make something that we enjoy even better. Even though the specific mechanics still baffle me, this is how it seems to work: people with a wide variety of skills but a common interest come together, self-organize, then volunteer their time building publicly accessible facilities that the entire community can enjoy.

As a community we essentially have two ways of making new public resources exist: we can either pay for something (via taxes, with all the overhead of getting this to happen), or we can make it happen ourselves doing the work without direct compensation, something generally known as volunteering. Parks typically don’t know what mountain bikers actually want, so for building new bike-accessible trails the best way is for us to get like-minded folks together and work with the parks to make it happen. This is what we did, and just like countless other locales across the country there are now trails that we all enjoy.

The trails at River Bends aren’t particularly challenging, but more people than I can remember have told me about getting started riding these trails. This was the goal, and it makes me, and surely everyone who has worked on these trails, very proud. We do good work.

(The photo above shows, from left to right, a number of people who were out at today’s trail day. In the top row: Mark Johnson, Erik Silvassy, Mark Senyk, Roger Class, Mike White, Rob Wedding, Bob Costello, Jeremy Verbeke (Co-Trail Coordinator at River Bends), Rodney Gullett, and Deanna Velasco. Second row: Aaron Burgess, Steve Vigneau (me, the other Co-Trail Coordinator at River Bends), Art Fleming, and Jeremy Kozak. Down in front is Jude, who is Mike White’s son and a perpetual presence at trail work days. Not pictured are the folks who were had to leave early or were out grabbing food for the rest of us, including Greg Kuhn, Chris Goddard, Erik Silvassy, Kristi Heuvers, Erick Mile, Katie Mile, Nick Shue, Marty Shue, or Pete Kresmery.)

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Remarking the Seasonal Loop at River Bends

Published November 11, 2013

River Bends is going to have a bit of remarking at the CRAMBA-IMBA trail day this weekend, and in preparation I removed most of the the wrong-way signs from the segment formerly known as the Seasonal Loops. A number of these signs were no longer necessary, and a handful of them had been shot with airsoft pellets to the extent that they weren’t very readable from a distance.

At some point in the next year or so I hope we are able to replace many of these with more permanent Carsonite-type fiberglass markers (such as this one at Bloomer), but for now it’ll be more of the same corrugated plastic and vinyl markers, color coordinated with the map.

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A Clean Drivetrain is a Happy Drivetrain

Published November 11, 2013

Since the El Mariachi Ti was caked with wet sand from Iceman I decided to give it a thorough drivetrain cleaning before riding any more. Everything is now shiny and clean, although I seem to have let the chain go a bit too long. After ~1800 miles it was stretched enough that I immediately replaced it, and as a result the small (26t) ring on the crankset is looking a bit hooked. I dropped a new chain on, and with replacements rings costing only $20 or so (much less than a chain!) I’m going to replace the ring as well before taking it out.

With winter coming, contrary to my normal practice of stripping off the factory lube and applying ProGold Xtreme, I left the original SRAM lube on the chain. I’m normally not too fond of this thick, greasy lube because it’s all over the outer plates and thus collects a bunch of gunk. I figure that with the potential for wet/sloppy riding I may as well leave it in place, as it’ll protect the chain from gunk penetration and be harder to wash out. With this lube the chain is notably stiffer than normal and it’ll likely pick up a bunch more gunk, but with all the other inefficiencies and sloppyness of autumn / winter riding I don’t anticipate it being much of a problem. I’ll just strip the factory lube off when I do the next drivetrain cleaning.

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Iceman 2013: Wet Sand and Fun

Published November 9, 2013

I was going to write a somewhat lengthy post about this year’s Iceman Cometh Challenge race and put together some bullet points about the race for things that I wanted to cover, but I can’t bring myself to flesh it out into a complete post. Instead I’ll just post the bullet points themselves, expanded a bit to be solid on their own. It was a very fun race, a nice day, but not eventful in any way that makes me want to write a lot. I simply enjoyed myself, saw lots of friends, and had a great weekend with Danielle:

Here’s those bullet points:

  • Wet sand.
  • Large, infrequent mud puddles.
  • Raining as we left Traverse City, but stopped on the way to Kalkaska.
  • Really friendly people: no problems with passes either way.
  • I thought my HR monitor was reading high, but it was either consistently off by a few tens of percent (never seen this before) or I was able to ride harder than expected for extended periods of time.
  • My official result: 14 1374 Steve Vigneau Shelby Townshi MI 9:59:35 10:48:13 2:19:11
  • Four minutes faster (would have been doable) and I’d have been in the top 10. Oh well.
  • Started in Wave 9, almost missed my start as I was using the toilet when everyone was lining up. Took longer than expected when I got done 9 was moving up to the start area.
  • Chain drop behind cassette on a steep climb when downshifting somewhere after Anita’s Hill. Unsure why: sand? Can’t reproduce.
  • Not spent at end, could have pushed more.
  • YouTube video of my finish: link.
  • Strava data: link.
  • Congrats to people who won things: Joe Seidl, Brad Lako, Alex Gonzalez, John Osgood
  • Person who died: http://kolotc.wordpress.com/2013/11/04/bigger-than-a-race-for-ken/
  • Someone got hit by a car riding away from the finish area on the road. No word on their condition.
  • Foods consumed: ~2 hours of Infinit (from a 3 hour bottle), ~40oz bottles of water in pack, caffeinated gel before hand.
  • Clothing: Pearl Izumi boots, tall wool socks, plain black thermal knickers, Under Armor thermal base layer, summer jersey, Pearl Izumi AmFib gloves, cycling cap, helmet, glasses.
  • Photos of me: MarathonFOTO.com.

The photo above? That’s just of some random sand still on my bike a week after the race. There’s so much wet sand and grit on my bike that it really needs a drivetrain cleaning before I ride it again. It was okay during the race, but as I’d switch to a less-used gear combo there’d be a few minutes of scraping sounds as the sand worked its way off the cogs.

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Home-Made Chili Powder

Published November 9, 2013

This past week I removed all the furnatire from the porch, cut down the past year’s dying flowers, and brought the perennials in the house. One of the plants to trim was a chili (of which type both Danielle and I forget), which grew very mild, nice fruits. Since there were some chilis left on the plant I cut them off, tossed them in the food dehydrator, and this evening after they were sufficiently dry ground them into chili powder.

The photo above shows the tops and seeds that I cut off them poured out before putting them in the spice grinder, something I did because I didn’t want seed-heavy spicy powder. The result is a very gentle, almost buttery tasting paprika-like powder that’ll go wonderfully on eggs and other light-tasting food. I think it also might do nice things on popcorn.

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Specialized Avatar Comp Gel

Published November 9, 2013

I’ve really been enjoying riding the Jamis Nova, but as mentioned earlier I picked up a Specialized Avatar Comp Gel to try instead of the Specialized Phenom that’s been giving me issues. Today I headed out for a gravel road ride with Carlos and Lee and gave it a proper outdoor ride, and I’m quite happy with it. I spent 3-4 miles getting comfortable on it, but once I found a nice spot things were good.

We rode ~66.1 miles (Strava) of mixed pavement, gravel/dirt roads, and rail trail and I never really felt a need to stand up and stretch my butt muscles. The Avatar also felt a bit more conducive to being leaned over further, something that’s generally better for the drop bar bike geometry.

I did have one new problem with my index finger on my right hand being half-numb after the ride, a fair sign of nerve injury. This hadn’t happened to me before, so I suspect the new saddle has me positioned so I grip the bars differently than before. I think this means I need to work on the bar positioning a bit more…

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Refilling ProGold Chain Lube Bottles

Published October 31, 2013

My preferred bicycle chain lube is ProGold Xtreme (formerly known as Voyager), but I prefer to purchase the larger 16oz. bottle to refill the smaller drip bottles. Pouring chain lube is not something you want to screw up, as it’d be really frustrating to clean up.

To avoid problems I used a T-pin and punched holes in the foil safety cap on the large bottle as seen above. The large hole for pouring is about 3mm x 1mm and the smaller vent is just a simple pinhole. With this setup I can easily pour lube from the large bottle into the smaller ones with little risk of pouring too fast and splashing.

With this setup I’ve even been able to easily refill the ProGold eyedrop-size sample bottles with Xtreme, which is nice because I like to carry one with me when riding.

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2013-2014 Trainer Season Setup

Published October 29, 2013

Thanks to a friendly person from the MMBA Forum I was able to pick up a low cost Dimension (QBP #WE8677) rear wheel for use with the Jamis Nova when it is fitted to the trainer. Combined with an CycleOps Fluid 2 Trainer that I picked up a couple of years ago, a CycleOps-branded Trainer Tire (Kenda manufactured), and a barely used cassette from eBay†, and a Continental tube (recommended by Ron at Fraser Bicycle and Fitness for trainer use due to high heat tolerance) this should allow me to swap the bike on and off trainer quickly. Unlike my previous setup I won’t have to swap tires, which should make this bike more useful overall.

When on longer rides I’d been not-quite-happy with the Specialized Phenom saddle that I love for mountain biking, so I also picked up a Specialized Avatar Comp Gel to try out. After a bit of fiddling it seems like it’ll be okay, but I think an extended session on the trainer and a proper ride outside will be needed before I decide if it’ll work or not. With the time change this weekend I can only hope that there’s a good time for another long dirt road ride soon…

I’m not really looking forward to trainer season, but sometimes I need a bit of exercise, don’t want to venture outside, and thus find the trainer worthwhile. When used in conjunction with TrainerRoad and something decent on the TV it’s really not too bad, and I feel good when I’m done.

† The trainer wheel has the original Shimano CS-5600 cassette that came with the Jamis Nova on it; the normal wheel will get the nearly-new one from eBay.

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Stony Creek Lake is Low

Published October 12, 2013

 

Much of the water has been let out of Stony Creek Lake at Stony Creek Metropark so repairs can be made to the dams, and this means that the shore is far wider than normal. Stony Creek Lake is a man-made lake, so once the dams are opened the level goes down dramatically, exposing the typical clay soil of the area. As much of this has dried out it’s possible to ride much of it on a fatbike with the tires aired down.

This isn’t quite the same (or as exciting) as proper beach riding but it’s still something different and fun.

Yesterday I was in a poor mood and headed out to Stony Creek for a nice, slow, exploratory ride before Danielle and I met friends for dinner out in Ann Arbor. This ride helped clear my head and let me enjoy the nice autumn evening. The weather has been perfect this time of the year, and I really didn’t want to miss out on it.

Data from the ride can be seen here in Strava.

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