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New Spark Plugs after 166358 Miles

Published August 1, 2013

My 2006 Honda Civic EX was probably a bit overdue for new spark plugs. I’d neglected this maintenance item for a while, but at 166358 miles it was long overdue. This evening I picked up four Autolite plugs on the way home and swapped them out. This was considerably easier than I expected.

I only ran into one small problem, when the rubber-lined spark plug socket would remain stuck to the plug deep inside the engine, popping off the extension as I tried to remove all of it. After unsuccessfully attempting to shim the extension in the socket I wrapped one turn of Gaffer’s tape around the assembly (photo) and this problem resolved. All plugs are installed, torqued to spec, with threads coated with copper-based anti-seize. It may have just been coincidental, but the car seemed to start quicker after replacing the plugs. Maybe it’ll run a bit better now, and if I’m lucky maybe I’ll get better mileage…

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FOX Racing Shox F29 O/C CTD Oil Replacement

Published July 31, 2013

My primary XC bike, a 2013 Salsa El Mariachi Ti, came fitted with what was listed as a Fox F29 CTD, Tapered, 15mm Thru Axle, 100mm fork. I was warned that newer FOX forks need oil replacements fairly frequently, so after long rides this spring I figured I should do some work on it, unlike my F29 RLC which I let go for years. Unlike the F29 RLC which I’d done previously, FOX doesn’t publish oil the replacement procedure on their consumer FOXHelp site, so I had to do a bit of digging to find a process that worked for me.

Having a sealed cartridge damper, and based on the recommendation from a helpful tech that I spoke to at FOX I decided that I’d leave the damper alone and just replace the oil in the lowers. Since it’s sealed there shouldn’t be any contamination, meaning that the oil in here doesn’t need to be changed nearly as often as in the rest of the fork. In the end I basically followed the F29 RLC/RL procedure, but because of the cartridge damper I had to put the oil in the bottom of the fork leg, which was a little tricky, but worked well in the end.

Here’s the rough process I followed which does not change the oil in the damper. By first understanding the F29 RLC/RL steps then looking over the O/C CTD design this becomes pretty obvious, and seems to worked out well. The major variance is steps 20-24, as previously oil would be added to the top of the damper before fitting the top cap and in these steps it is added through the bottom of the leg:

  1. Remove the fork from the bike.
  2. Write down the current fork rebound and pressure settings for easier setup next time.
  3. Remove screw from center of CTD selector. Put the lever in the Trail setting and hold it in place while removing the screw (don’t allow it to press hard against the stops).
  4. Remove the rebound knob from the bottom of the damper leg.
  5. Unscrew the nut from the bottom of the damper leg until it is flush end of the selector, tap with a dead blow hammer until it pops loose.
  6. Unscrew the top damper leg cap, lift the damper out. Drain oil from the leg and stanchion, wipe down outside of damper. Set damper aside.
  7. Unscrew the air chamber fill cap. Put a rag over the Schrader valve to catch spray and let all the air out.
  8. As in Step 4, unscrew the nut from the bottom and tap to free things up.
  9. Remove the top cap from the air chamber leg, remove and set aside.
  10. Pull the uppers and lowers apart.
  11. Push the air spring out of the upper. Wipe down parts, set aside.
  12. Replace wipers and foam rings if desired. For this oil change I did not swap the seals as they looked good, but I did clean and re-oil the foam rings. These can easily be removed with tweezers.
  13. Grease the threads at the top of the air chamber with Slick Honey.
  14. Push the air spring back into the air chamber upper from the top. Ensure that the threaded bit sticks out the bottom.
  15. Put the uppers and lowers back together. Push them together far enough so that the threaded end of the air spring is visible through the hole in the lower, but not seated.
  16. Pour the appropriate amount of oil (see the Oil Volumes chart) for the spring-side oil bath into hole. For the 2013 32 Float 29″ 80-100 (O/C CTD damper) fork this is 30 mL.
  17. Push the air spring in further and compress the fork to push the threaded rod out the hole. Put the crush washer and nut back on the bottom of the fork leg. Torque to 50 in-lb.
  18. Pour 5 mL of Float Fluid (one packet) into the upper part of the air chamber.
  19. Put the air chamber top cap back on, torque to 220 in-lb.
  20. Grease the threads at the top of the damper side and reinstall the damper, torquing to 220 in-lb.
  21. Oil now needs to be added into the hole at the bottom of the damper side, as it was on the spring side. Manually compress the fork slightly to push the rod from the damper in and provide space for the oil to flow.
  22. Pour the appropriate of oil for the damper-side oil bath into the hole. For the 2013 32 Float 29″ 80-100 (O/C CTD damper) fork this is 30 mL.
  23. Manually compress the fork so the threaded rod on the bottom of the damper is sticking out of the hole. Be careful not to spill any oil.
  24. Put the crush washer and nut back on the bottom of the fork leg, torque to 50 in-lb.
  25. Add the appropriate amount of air to the air chamber. Wipe down the fork and check for leaks.
  26. Reinstall the fork and set it back up. You’re done.

The following two drawings show the CTD VCT damper, which helps explain how the damper side of the fork is put together. Note that there are two types of the CTD damper which may be found in this fork: the original one and the VCT version. According to FOX the VCT damper can be identified by vent holes around the top, as seen in these images:

The variant of the damper does not matter for the aforementioned procedure, but if the damper oil is to be replaced then this changes the amount of oil needed. The non-VCT damper uses 74 mL while the VCT damper uses 69 mL. I found out about this when I called FOX to ask about the disparity between the damper oil volume on the Oil Volumes chart and the Subassemblies image. I was told that the Oil Volumes chart was likely made off of the original version of the damper and the VCT damper (which is identifiable by the vent holes) volumes are as shown on the drawing.

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Sometimes…

Published July 29, 2013

Sometimes one just needs to go for a bike ride. It’s made even better when one unexpectedly runs into friends and gets to ride with them. Today’s frustrations seem nicely alleviated by four hours and seventy miles of rail trails on the CX bike.

Just after starting out I happened across Mike Remsburg near 24 Mile, and he and I rode together to Richmond and back. Nearly done with that leg we happened across Bill Edgerton, and we all rode together for a bit before Mike and I split off west on 25 Mile back towards his car at Stoney Creek High School. After showing Mike the way I headed up to Lake Orion and back to my car at Onyx. Data for the ride can be seen here on Strava.

With little wind, partly cloudy skies, and 60°-70°F temps it was really great riding weather. It was a bit humid and my glasses kept fogging up after dark, but I was still able to see sufficiently.

Now to shower, eat a bit, and sleep.

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Moving from Ascent to rubiTrack

Published July 28, 2013

Since getting a GPS-based cycling computer and finding that Garmin’s offline analysis software, Training Center, is a bit lacking I’ve been using Ascent to log and aggregate my ride data. Ascent is okay, has some bugs, and seems to work but is otherwise abandoned. It also doesn’t work on the forthcoming OS X Mavericks, which means I need to find some other way to do offline ride analysis.

I enjoy tools such as Strava (and to some degree Garmin Connect), but I don’t like the idea of keeping my ride data on someone else’s system without an easy way to export it. Sure, I could back up the FIT files (raw files from the GPS unit), but that doesn’t include post-ride metadata that I’d add like the a name and general description of the route, or notes about the ride itself.

Stereo from the Reddit /r/bicycling IRC channel pointed me to rubiTrack, whose version 3 seems like it’ll be a good replacement for Ascent. There’s some claims of bugginess, and it’s lacking some features that Ascent had (eg: equipment maintenance log), but it otherwise seems good and is actively being developed. I’ve now switched over to it, so I wanted to give some details as to what it took to move my data over.

Here’s what I did:

  1. Buy rubiTrack, install the license.
  2. Launch Ascent.
  3. Show each activity as a separate row. (At the top of the Ascent window click the gear button and hold, then select Browser View, All Activities. Alternately, press Option-A / ⌥A.)
  4. Select a range of activities, perhaps a year at a time. Attempting to export too many at once will result in Ascent crashing.
  5. Right click in the Activity Browser (on the highlighted events) and select Export as tcx…. Give the export file an appropriate name.
  6. Repeat selection and export until all activities are exported.
  7. Quit Ascent.
  8. Launch rubiTrack, create a new set of data.
  9. Import each TCX file one at a time. Note that importing takes a while, and the rubiTrack UI doesn’t look like it is doing anything during the first import; be patient. During the subsequent imports an animation will display next to the Latest Import section.
  10. After importing, some of your activities may be listed as something other than Biking. By selecting multiple entries, right-clicking and picking Edit… you can change multiple activities to Biking all at once.
  11. Unfortunately, the TCX exports won’t contain either the name or equipment, so each activity will need to be edited to note these. Instead of a name, rubiTrack supports both a Location and Route, where Route (if present) is a subset of the location. For example, Stony Creek Metropark could have routes such as 6/12 Hour Race, Group Ride + Bonus, etc. Before beginning the renaming, go into Preferences and uncheck the Set similar locations automatically option in the General tab. Setting this automatically renames other activities in the same geographic area, which doesn’t work well if one regularly rides in a given area. Note that the options Import Category as: and Import “Name” as route on the Import tab do not help get names when importing from Ascent-exported TCX files.
  12. In Customize, Activity Types, Manage… delete other activities as needed so that only Biking, Racing, and Trainer exist with colors being Green, Blue, and Red, respectively. Set Biking to the default. Find appropriate icons in …/rubiTrack 3.app/Contents/Resources/ as atb_*.png. (Other people may want to keep these, but I wanted to reduce clutter… I can always add other activities if I decide to track them.)
  13. Define Heart Rate Zones as appropriate. More info on my HR zones can be found in this post, and I colored the zones the same as the LW Coaching chart.
  14. Define equipment via Window, Equipment. This, unfortunately, is not as useful as Ascent’s equipment log in that it can’t serve as a maintenance log. I have one entry for each bike and the trainer, with each bike or bike+trainer used with each activity. I may replace the maintenance log with a spreadsheet.
  15. Edit entries one at a time to have an appropriate location and activity type. Most of my Locations were copied from Ascent’s Title field. Autocomplete and the ability to select multiple entries at once and edit them en masse made this go quickly.
  16. Rides starting from home were tagged From Home and those which are part of certain group rides are tagged CRAMBA-IMBA Group Ride.
  17. After editing entries, the left side bar which groups rides by Location can be used to refine the listed locations. For example, I may have interchangeably used CRPT and Clinton River Park Trails, or RB and River Bends, depending on the ride. With a comprehensive listing of all locations used its easy to refine these for greater consistency.
  18. Play with the Options… on a given ride, in particular the Original device data and Use speed and distance data from device in chart options. Currently, with my Edge 500 and 510 data, this is a bit problematic. With Original device data checked the distance seems to reflect the distance that the unit showed (from the wheel sensor), but the Total Duration and Active Duration match and are short. Without this checked the Total Duration and Active Duration vary appropriately, illustrating the amount of time stopped, but the distance seems to be based on GPS and thus under recorded. This has been reported here and I hope that it’s fixed soon.

Other than the issue mentioned in #18, I’m pretty happy with rubiTrack. I’m particularly fond of its use of OpenStreetMap data, as this means that the trails that I’ve mapped in OSM (eg: Addison Oaks) have their routes right in my preferred analysis software. This is probably going to make me map even more stuff…

It’s also great for viewing things like heart rate data, where stops were made, high elevation points along the way, and also comparing rides. The author seems actively engaged in making it better, it should work with 10.9, is much faster to save, and is much nicer for answering questions like “How many races have I done in X year?” or “How many times did I ride at Stony Creek?”.

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Clement X’Plor USH 120 TPI

Published July 25, 2013

On Joe Seidl’s recommendation I picked up a set of Clement X’Plor USH for the Jamis Nova. While I’d originally intended to get the 60 TPI version, QBP being out of stock and a convenient find (just in time for a planned long ride) resulted in my getting a 120 TPI set. I’m not sure how much the difference matters, but I don’t mind the more supple casing even if it came at a slightly higher price.

At 80 PSI on the 622-14 Ritchey Silhouette Comp rims that came with the bike the casing measures 32mm wide and to the outer edge of the knobs it measures just about 35mm. The solid center and file tread sides of this tire really appeals to me, as it looks good for mixed pavement / dirt road / rail trail riding; exactly what I intend the Jamis to be used for.

Using the charts in Frank Bertro’s article All About Tire Inflation (mirror) I put the pressure at 65 PSI and went for a test ride from home up to 51 North in Lake Orion, meeting some friends part way. Since I was early to meeting Erik and Kristi in Rochester I poked around Bloomer for a bit, including riding some low/flat parts of the mountain bike route. This gave me the chance to try these tires out on pavement, smooth crushed limestone, looser gravel, sand, light mud, and some damp clay. On each of these surfaces this tire behaved exactly as it felt like it should, with no surprises, and much nicer than the Serfas Seca did when I tried taking it off road at Island Lake.

Thus far I’m really happy with this tire. It seems to be a great all-around tire for this area, and as long as it keeps performing as it did tonight I’ll be happy. There’s still the question of longevity, but that’ll clearly take some time.

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Bike Fit Tweak Before and After

Published July 19, 2013

Earlier this week I visited Fraser Bicycle and Fitness where Melissa and Chris put me and my bike on a trainer and gave me a bunch of help and advice on basic bike fit issues on the 2007 Jamis Nova that I picked up a couple weeks ago. This is the first drop bar bike I’ve had, so I really wasn’t sure where to start for getting fit right. Thanks to them I’m now in a position on the bike where I’m much more comfortable, something that’ll be pretty important if I ride this bike frequently.

By moving the saddle 5mm forward, switching to a 75mm 11° stem (from a 100mm 6°), and adjusting the bar and lever position they were able to put me in a much better position on the bike. They also gave me suggestions for how to position the levers and bars, including some nifty tricks such as ensuring the axle is obscured by the bar while on the hoods, and nose being over the bar while in the drops. Additional testing on the trainer at home and on a ride around the neighborhood showed that it’s definitely more comfortable, and thus far I don’t notice a difference in steering. (Steering becomes twitchier with a reduction in distance between hands and the steerer tube, but I don’t seem to notice this, likely because I find road/CX bikes to be twitchy anyway compared to my mountain bikes.)

The animated GIF above is intended to show the differing position on the bike before and after fit, and I think it does a decent job, even though I’m probably not as settled into a riding position in the Fixed image as I would be while out on a longer ride. I’m more upright, supporting myself a bit less on my arms, and my forearm-to-hand position is more of a straight line.

While I didn’t get a full bike fit, I was in the room where they do such fittings, and Fraser’s setup is really impressive. They’ve got everything from a full Retül system that allows bar/saddle/pedals to be positioned every which way to a motion capture system to see exactly what is going on when one’s pedaling. It’s a really serious setup. Their full bicycle fits are designed to get everything as ideal as possible.

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Oyster Mushrooms!

Published July 15, 2013

Earlier this year I mentioned that oyster mushrooms were starting to grown on the Cascadia Mushrooms kit that Danielle and I had received. They’ve been growing in weird spurts, with extended periods of nothingness, then some small starts that died off. For some reason they recently started growing nicely again, and I was able to harvest this cluster which I used to make some dinner.

I didn’t cook the mushrooms for long enough, but they still tasted quite nice. Hopefully another cluster like this will grown soon and I can cook them down a bit more properly.

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Heyco 2590 for Bicycle Accessory Holes

Published July 14, 2013

Along with replacing the rim strips and tubes on my fatbike to save weight I decided to see if I could find a suitable hole filler for accessory mount (eg: water bottle, rack, etc – photo) holes on the bike frame. Some digging turned up Heyco Dome Plugs Part No. 2590 (PDF) and they are a perfect fit. Ordered from Mouser (Part # 836-2950 – photo) they cost $0.13/ea ($0.09/ea in 100 piece quantities) and snap snugly into mount holes. Removing them may be a bit of a pain, but a pick or serrated needle nose pliers will likely pull them right out.

By replacing 13 of the cap head stainless steel screws on my fatbike I cut 45g off of the bike’s mass. (The screws were 46g, and 15 of the dome plugs registered as 1g on my scale.)

While I’m not particularly concerned about such a small savings on the fatbike, I’m glad to find a cost effective item which can be used to fill accessory mount holes and prevent extra snow and water and such from getting in. I think they also look a bit nicer than simply leaving the holes empty, and don’t have the add-lots-of-shiny-stuff look (photo) that filling the holes with screws gives.

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Bye Bye, Rockhopper

Published July 11, 2013

My first real mountain bike, purchased at the very end of 2007 and heavily modified since, was sold this evening. After purchasing the Jamis Nova from Ryan I realized it was a better solution to every need that I kept the Specialized around for, so it was time to sell it. A posting to Craigslist on Monday returned a few hits, and this evening I met up with someone at River Bends who is really excited to get back into mountain bike riding, fit nicely on the bike, and purchased it from me. This Specialized Rockhopper is a very nice bike that saw me through a lot of learning, but I no longer had a need for it. Due to the memory-based object attachment which most of us are familiar with I didn’t want to part with it, but it was for the best.

The person who purchased the bike lives very close to River Bends, and as he and I were talking I learned that he’s regularly out on the trails at River Bends, hasn’t had a mountain bike in a couple years, and is planning on regularly riding it there. When passing through one short, dry section of trail (it’s pretty muddy out there in general) I got the feeling that he really, really missed riding on dirt. It’s some of these very same trails that first made me realize that I liked riding bicycles on single track; exploring the casually-created segments that were eventually incorporated into an official mountain bike route.

In the midst of the project to build trails at River Bends I never imagined their draw would foster the sale of the bike which first got me interested in trails themselves, but it’s really nice to see things come full circle. It feels very complete.

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2007 Jamis Nova

Published July 10, 2013

This past weekend I picked up a cyclocross bike from my friend Ryan. He’d had this bike for a while, but it was a bit small for him and he’d been wanting to sell it. He heard that I’d been looking for a road-ish bike, and one thing led to another and we met at the Tree Farm for a ride and I went home with a new-to-me bike, an almost stock 2007 Jamis Nova.

That afternoon I picked up a TIMBUK2 Bike Seat Pack XT to hold tools, a Topeak Road MasterBlaster frame pump, added a Garmin mount, fitted my preferred saddle and pedals, and set out for a ride on the Macomb Orchard Trail. It was this ride that really sold me on the bike. Before this I had very little experience with drop bars and bikes with smooth tires, but 23 miles of pavement showed me that this kind of riding can be quite a bit of fun and that I’m extremely glad Ryan sold me this bike.

Over the following two evenings I set about getting familiar with the bike, and ended up giving it a very detailed cleaning, replacing the derailleur housing and cables, and getting everything set up for me. I’ve still got some playing (and a lot of reading) to do with the bar position, but for now I think I’ve got it somewhere that’s comfortable.

As mentioned before, this bike is almost completely stock, with the exception of the tires and front shift/brake lever. At one point the front lever broke, and the shop gave the option of either waiting for a new 105-level component (to match the rest of the bike) to come in, or having it immediately replaced with a Tiagra-level part. The Tiagra part was chosen, so the levers don’t match. The feel for the two is very similar with the hoods being practically identical, and being the front shifter any potential difficulties with a lower-level part don’t concern me.

I’m planning on swapping tires to some Clement X’Plor USH tires that Joe Seidl recommended to me, and whose 35mm width, solid center and file tread sides look quite appealing. While I opted for the cheaper 60 TPI version, I hope (and based on reviews suspect) that these’ll do nicely for mixed pavement and gravel road riding.

Everything is now set up as I want it for a longer ride on the bike, so I’m hoping to get out on a 30-50 mile ride before the weekend is out. If things go as planned, I may try to fit this in Friday evening along with picking up the tires from Trail’s Edge. It looks like I’ll be able to ride from downtown Milford out to Island Lake by way of Kensington Metropark. This might be worth doing, should time permit…

If you’d like to see more photos of this new bike, they can be found here: Jamis Nova.

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