What the heck industry!?

Okay I have a bone to pick with the latest batch of cycling magazines I have been browsing. I have read in multiple locations "save up your money and just buy a new bike because we all know the bike companies get a huge discount when they buy components by the truckload"

Wtf. These writers and editors apearantly have never bought a used bike? Why would I save up $2000 (cheapest HT stumpjumper at Erika's today) rather than spend $400 on a fork for my $150 Hardrock? That seems to go against the most basic rule of cycling, IMHO: go out and ride.

I am tired of the blatant commercialism of all the publications I used to read regularly. Whether it be bike mags, car mags, audio, you name it they all have shitty commercialism creating huge market changing trends.

What is wrong with a 26" bike wheel? Nothing. What is a + size tire? Why not just call it wide? Who cares about carbon, if you aren't made of money you better not!

*rabble rabble rabble*

Sales

Well, since I am writing bike blog posts I will update on the squad.

Leann's old Specialized Hardrock Ultra is sold. Since I bought her the Cirrus I knew she would not be riding it any longer, and the geometry I never cared for so I was not planning on riding it much. $60 to some craigslist random.

The BMW R1100S is sold! I will miss this bike as it was incredible the few times I got to ride it. Unfortunately I recognized that it was simply taking up space and being a resource sucker. I sent it on to the next, hopefully, happy owner. A younger guy from St. Cloud that is into bikes and had other projects. $2000 in the pocket. Time to find a nice DH bike... :D

happy pedaling!

Fun with chainlines and building trials bikes

More old draft posts that I am coming back to so that I have more content! yay.

So as readers will know, I ditched the rear wheel that came on my $180 Trials bike in favor of some new trials oriented parts. I kept the Alex DX32 rim but threw out the crappy hub and spokes.

I purchased a used Echo 135mm trials hub and some DT spokes from pricepoint.com and dove into my first adventure with wheel building. Lacing is easy I figured out. I followed the Sheldon Brown article about wheel building and had no real problems.

Where I ran into problems was trueing and tensioning. I now own a Park Tool TM-1, and am looking for a second had dish gauge or might build my own soon. Ultimately I corrected the dish of my rear wheel just using the frame as a guide and it has not given me any problems. At least not in terms of the wheel construction! :)

I also put a FFW crankset on the bike at the same time to facilitate the rear wheel. This gave me heartache because I had purchased the wrong bottom bracket and thought all my chainline spacings were messed up. As it turns out I simply put things together wrong.

I was trying to use an Echo 18t bashring under my Echo Freewheel on a set of Brethe bike cranks. The problem I did not notice the first time around is that the crankarm and bash ring were interfering with each other causing everything to bind up and look crooked. I put the bashring in the mill and shaved a channel into it and everything fits fine! The bashing was on $20 used of of OTN, for the record.

Thats all for tonight. happy pedaling!

2009 Specialized Cirrus

Well, again I started this post a while back when we picked up the bike but had not had a good chance to update it and finish typing.

So I bought Leann a road bike. She has long complained about how much she wants a road bike so that she can go on rides form the house. I see no problem in hoping on a MTB and adding some air for a nice recreational pedal around the park, but women think differently.

So I did a little craigslist browsing and VIOLA! or something.

a very nice condition Specialized Cirrus in 54cm size. nice metallic white in largely original condition.

First things first: get rid of the crappy changes that previous owner had done and make it more suitable for biking 150 miles. Remove and discard old MTB seat and install Leann's body geometry seat. remove crappy walmart plastic flat pedals and install simple VP clip-ins. Remove and discard squishy grips and install some decent modern clamp-on grips.

I also did some easy maintenance. Popped the pedals and bottom bracket out to clean and regrease threads. a few squirts of lube into the brake and shifter cables. Clean and lube of the chain.

And that is it. so far Leann has got one flat on the front after we went for a ride, luckily Pricepoint.com had recently had a sale and I stocked up on 700 tubes!

And that is it so far. Leann seems to enjoy it and we go out for rides. happy pedaling!

Bike MS150!

Hey everybody!
It is that time of year again, just like on NPR, where I come out and ask for a few of your hard-earned dollars to support what I believe is a good cause. This is the second year that I am riding for a cause and I hope that readers will at least consider making a contribution: Even if it is not to me! Be grateful for what you have and generous with the resources you are blessed with. Whether it is a monetary donation to a campaign like mine or helping an elderly neighbor with their yard-work; be a better person this summer.

thank you,
Gabe Johnston

Zoo Pitbull Picture

This is what a partially built trials bike looks like! yay!
I finally received my wheelset from Britain yesterday so i of course had to take some pictures. Sadly I have not ordered tires yet along with lots of other parts that are in process still.

enjoy!

Fun with Trials hardware

Ah yes, the ever present call of being frugal.

Here I am, working on bicycles, and I am trying to cut corners and be a tight-ass(read- cheap!). Mind you I am not talking about a $10,000 carbon framed triathlon machine here: I am talking about a $180, 8 year old, Norco Evolution Trials bike! These bikes use off-the-shelf mountain bike parts for the most part so even "high-end" parts for these things are not expensive.

So the background for this particular adventure in cheapness is as follows: I bought a different Trials frame and started buying parts to put it together. In the process I got a bunch of used parts that were cosmetically worse than I had hoped for so I thought to myself, "Self, why dont you try your hand at customizing the Norco and maybe make a better trials bike out of that at the same time?"

Now my friend Bryan, who is the whole fault I got into bike trials thought this was a bad idea...but thats okay. You need to live dangerously sometimes.

Some of the parts I ended up buying were; a Hope Mono Trials front brake, which needed a caliper rebuild. An Echo TR rear 135mm hub with a sprocket still threaded on. A set of ZETA 170mm FFW crankarms.

The Hope brake was cosmetically poor, but looked to be complete. I ordered up a seal kit and piston cap tool from across the pond. These went together very well thanks to the fact that the brake setup was a vintage piece so it did not require some foolishy complex system to bleed the brake lines.

Next were the crankarms. For the most part these were okay arms but the removal threads on the right side were a bit buggered up. solution? Take the tool steel crank remover tool and put a 1/2" impact on it, run it in. TADA!: new threads.

The rear hub was now in the crosshairs. The problem was that the cog/sprocket was still threaded on to the hub so that I could not lace a wheel to it and turn the cog off. I tried some simple grabbing and vice-ing with no luck other than gouging the crap out of the flanges. :(

My realization was that I needed a better way to hold the hub while turning the sprocket.

This led me to the machine shop for an afternoon after i came up with a rough design. To the Right is the end product of that session. It looks fine and dandy but there is a flaw: Using the ParkTools chain whip didn't touch the darn thing at all. It simply flexed all over and made me angry at it. Heat didn't help, chemicals didn't help. I was at wits end.

I felt like I was close but i was missing some key component. I went over and spent some time browsing OTN for some inspiration. This led me to a thread about removing freewheels from crankarms. While not exactly the same it gave me the missing link:

 <iframe width="560" height="315" src="https://www.youtube.com/embed/LvgXUWsWaic" frameborder="0" allowfullscreen></iframe>

These guys happen to have decent videos and are rather well known in the Trials circles as being pretty darn good.

Anyhow, the key I was missing was leverage! Getting stuck freewheels off in the past had never been this hard because i always had a wheel attached to the hub to put a huge amount of force into the system. Using the chain-wedge technique to hold the sprocket and a modification to my "tool" I got these suckers apart!

As of right now I have this neat little hub laced to the Alex DH32 rim that had been on the bike when I got it. Using $40 worth of DT Champion spokes that I got on sale I now have a trials-esque rear wheel with a total out-of-pocket expense of about $80. I also have now built my first wheel (okay I am still working on the trueing part but it is assembled at least)