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Road Bike Disc Brakes, Oh My!

Published November 23, 2013

My dislike of the Avid BB5 design is already prompting me to look for different disc brakes for the Salsa Vaya 2. While I’ve only briefly ridden it, the typical BB5 problem is already rearing its head: the pads on these brakes are separated by a single spring in the middle of the pad. When sitting retracted the pad will pivot around this spring, resulting in one side or the other falling against the rotor and rubbing. See the results for avid bb5 pad at Google Image Search to see how it looks.

This can be briefly reconciled by squeezing the brakes and letting them retract, but its so common that simply moving the bike around the house will make the problem happen. The vibration of actually riding makes it  happen pretty frequently. Avid BB7 mechanical disc brakes (and Shimanos, and I presume others) don’t have this problem because they use a box shaped spring that holds the pads apart from the ends. It’s quite an irritation without a good solution and something which coupled with the smaller size pads bothers me enough to do something about.

That leaves the question of what to get. There are a number of mechanical disc brake options out there, but most of them are variants (usually weight reductions) on these four, with my personal pros/cons of each:

Avid BB7 Road:

+ Known quantity, very familiar with the mountain version of this brake.

+ Same pads as the Mukluk.

+ Can easily be found on eBay, sometimes as just calipers. I have two new compatible rotors already.

– Some reviews claim they aren’t as nice as the mountain version.

– Except for some OE versions the silver color doesn’t quite match the Vaya unless a high end version is selected.

TRP Spyre:

+ Uses Shimano pads which are easy to get, but not the same as the Shimano BR-CX77.

+ Actuates both pads at once, unlike most other mechanical designs.

– No experience, not many reviews.

Shimano BR-CX77 (PDF):

+ Shimano stuff tends to be well engineered.

+ Same pads as XT brakes on El Mariachi Ti.

– No experience, difficult to find reviews, but are the replacement for the recalled BR-CX75 and supposedly feel the same.

Hayes CX Expert (CX-5)

+ Spec’d by a few manufactures, including All City on the Macho Man Disc.

– No experience with these; do not known anyone who has them.

At this point I think the best / most cost effective option may be to simply find some BB7 road calipers for a reasonable price and use the rotors that I already have. This’d use up some spare parts, likely cost less, and allow me to use spare pads that I already have…

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Used 2012 Salsa Vaya 2

Published November 23, 2013

Online wandering a week or so ago looking for an orange 54cm Salsa Vaya frame led me to this blog post from Colonel’s Bicycles in Fort Worth, Texas showing exactly the frame I was interested in, but posted 2.5 years ago. These are generally a bit hard to come by, and I’m not particularly fond of the current frame-only colors, so I didn’t want to get a new one, so on a whim I emailed asking if they still had any. The reply that I received surprised me: they had a used, but complete and in good shape 54cm bike in stock, and it was available for $900.

After some email back and forth where I had some pictures to look at (1, 2) and with the shop confirming that the fork recall (photo) didn’t apply to this one, I decided to go for it. Total after shipping was $1004, which strikes me as a good deal seeing as these bikes regularly go for $1300+ shipped via eBay. While the bike is definitely used and needed a drivetrain cleaning, the frame is in immaculate shape with only some slight cable rub along the head tube (which I’ll be covering with protective tape anyway), and slight marks on the rear brake mount from being bumped by the rotor during wheel insertion. All of this is typical wear that any bike would pick up in its first couple of months.

(The guy at the shop said the original owner was very good about caring for his bikes and this one likely has less than 2500 miles on it, and has never been crashed. If it has that many, those were definitely gentle miles…)

Dust in crevices of the frame and slight marks around the rack mounts indicated that it’d been used for touring / gravel road stuff, but it’s in otherwise great shape. The build seems to be pretty close to the original spec, but with different chainrings, a chain that’s in great shape, a like-new cassette, and an absolutely terrible saddle. The steerer has a lot of extra space on it, which is great for adjusting fit. The saddle is just a placeholder that’ll likely be given away (almost anyone buying a bike like this immediately replaced the saddle with one that they prefer), but I’m pretty impressed at how bad the molded plastic/rubber thing that came on the bike is. It’s even got an air vent hole on the bottom to let air with a whoosh out as its compressed. (Photos: 1, 2). Yes, that’s the stock seatpost.

The bike is now extremely clean and ridable, with a bunch of measuring and trainer / parking lot fit checks done to get it ready for me, and the initial feel is really promising. The saddle was replaced with the Specialized Avatar fromt the Jamis, fitted to the Salsa Pro Moto 3 seatpost originally from the Mukluk 2 (Photo). There’s likely some more fiddling needed and I have to cut a couple inches off of the steerer and finish fitting some accessories, but this far I’m really happy with it. Now to find a good day to ride it.

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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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