If you read this for WENCHERY, you’ve been led astray.

So I’ve been talking with Mannie Rabara about helping him out on his fixie commuter for a few months now, but our mutual kid-management and work schedules have prevented either of us from getting to the other’s houses. Mannie rode Aids Lifecycle with us last year, and is the older brother of Maynard, the rad dude who donated his old Mixte frame that became the first Zoe Carrier. Mannie and I both went to Cal Poly for university, at different times. Anyway, he bought a Factory Fixie awhile back to get his feet wet, and decided it was time for, as we say, UPGRADES. I have a copious overstock of bike parts perpetually being sold, traded or stolen, so I hooked him up with some Sugino cranks and a shorty black stem (again, wrong site, for some of you)… the problem was merely getting it done. The plan was to install them for him and show him how to do it.

I had an opportunity to take Wee Z out for the morning to give her mombot(tm) a break, so I shot over the bridge and down to Oakland and met Mannie near his office. I’ve never actually BEEN to downtown Oakland before. It reminds me of Chicago: wide streets, similar heights and construction style of much of the buildings. No private place to work, so i said, what the hell, let’s do it on the street, the Team Lope way! (again, perhaps wrong site)

Zoe was eager to help, right out of the gate, and was wielding my field tool kit. It was a bit too heavy for her, admittedly.

Along with my regular tools, I brought everything needed for a full overhaul, since I wasn’t sure yet what to expect and I wanted him to be be able to ride away. Drivetrain tools, cog and lock ring tools, chain, Phils Lube, WD-40, and so on.

Downtown Oakland isn’t really sketchy, just more like upper lower Market, lots of homeless and dudes wandering around, mixed with working folk. I parked in front of a sweet Thai joint and set up in front of the MINI. I was aware of the spectacle, but hey. It must be done!

It went very well. His bike was new enough that there wasn’t a lot of junk in the bolts and the lube was still good for the most part so it came apart pretty easily. Which is what you want, doing field repairs. I pulled off his generic cranks and noted that his no name bottom bracket was probably not much different than the basic Shimano BB I brought, so we decided to leave it in place. I cleaned and mounted the new cranks, lubed and added his pedals and toe straps, and the tightened it all down. Reset the rear wheel, and sent him off to test it. I had brought extra cogs so we could change gearing if needed, as he was moving to a 46t chainring on the Sugino cranks, but he liked it as it was. Retightened after his test ride, gave him a 12mm key and some 2-day tips (you know, re-check and tighten everything after two days of riding) and he was good to go. He took the stem for later use, and was generally stoked to be able to ride back to work with his new gear good to go.

It was pretty fun. Best part was that I had a total of five different people stop and ask for my card, thinking I was a mobile bike tune-up kit. There’s definitely a market there. Everyone seemed into the idea that someone could come and help them with their bikes on their lunch hours, and you know, with the free time necessary, it could be fun to do just that, much like how Mike’s has a mobile mechanic out on the bike path during certain events and ALC training days. Mostly, I got a lot of interest from other passerby that just hadn’t seen bike repair in front of a Thai restaurant before.

Zoe slept through the whole thing.

I think Mannie’s fixie is on the fast track to customization and personalization, just as ours are. He already has the bug. What’s next? He has a new wheel and cranks and stem… possibly bars… maybe frame? And then he’s doomed! Nice to see Mannie and fun excursion in the middle of the 24-hour triage of newborn management…

Forgot to mention my work isn’t covered in the event of nuclear detonation, however. Oops.

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So, if you’ve been following along, I made a baby and cargo carrier out of an old Mixte frame, and called it Ye Blacke Death. The combination of fixie riding and a small frame was hurting the knees every time I took the Wee Z out, so i decided to do something somewhat sensible and move to a more traditional frame in my size. Thus, YBD was retired and Rapscallion was born.

Over the weekend, I completed initial assembly of the Rapscallion prototype, using an Origin 8 El Pasado frame that was once Ghostal, much of the YBD pieces parts, and a Sugino Messenger crankset and bottom bracket. I found, along the way, that the fork clearance, using the beefy 35c tyres, didn’t allow for the fenders, so i moved the fenders over to Wrongbike’s rebuild, and proceeded. I was able to fit the Gamoh front rack on there, and eventually took it out for a test ride. One significant problem unsolved: the brake. The centerpulls I was working so hard to retain were conflicting too severely with the mounting assembly of the front rack’s center tange. On YBD, the layout was such that i could squeeze that tange up IN there, under the transverse cable of the brake, stringing the brake cable above it. But on Rapscallion the stack is compressed but the stem is long, so it didn’t work out. I pulled the centerpulls and added a side pull… I thought, you know what, self? It’s less old timey now so who cares. And so, wrongbike gets MORE old timey, and Rapscallion less. Frankly, with the modern track frame at it’s core, it makes sense.

Heres Rapscallion during the dead load test ride. I was cautious, not having a functional brake. See, the side-pull brake I put on there was short reach, so it didnt clear the brake calipers… I could have waited, put a longer reach brake on it, but I wanted to work with what I had. Those big tyres were juuuuuuust barely clearing both fore and aft, so I thought I’d try something new next. The important part was the fit was better, the ride much smoother (modern steel, even entry level, is so much smoother than 40-year old cheap stuff) and I managed to squeeze that crazy baby seat up onto a threadless steerer. The big questions were answered. Now, time to finesse it.

Here’s the bike on the second dead load test. I replaced the knobby in front with a trusty Soma Everwear (I always have one on hand, it seems) and dropping down to 23c from 35c? Huge difference, not only in clearance but friction, as you can imagine. Since I don’t do much off-roading for fear of losing my precious cargo, I didn’t mind the loss. I loved the look of those knobbies on YBD, but on the track frame it looked uncomfortably too FGFS for my tastes.
I restrung the brake a bit (more on this to come as I test a new theory later) and took it up the hill. By Jove, I could accelerate, climb (a bit) and stop! Yay! Note the deer in the background, judging the lack of new paint.

On the 4th of July, we went into San Anselmo for a little Q and Giants action, equally apportioned before and after pool time. I brought Rapscallion in order to do my first Live Load test.

One nice thing about the frame change, the bike easily fits in the bike rack now without special padding, as the fenders are off and the tyres are smaller.

In order to prepare for the test, we needed to properly affix the first sticker to Wee Z’s new helmet. My bebe upgraded to a larger size. Oh time flies. Of course, it was a Team Lope sticker.

The Live Load test: We were ready for action, despite me leaving both my SHOES and the little foot strap thingies for her seat, back at the house. Sleepy Hollow is pretty mellow so I was willing to risk destroying my arches. By the cried of ‘bike-sickle!!!!’ Zoe was good to go with the revised design just fine, though she seemed incredulous that I hadn’t mounted the bell yet.

It went well. Smooth ride, lighter than the last build, and easier to move around too, since I changed chainrings. I was using a road bike chainring on YBD and had fitted a fat 20 tooth cog in back. Now, I was using a 46 tooth chainring, so I went down from 70.7 to 61.4. It’s now by far my smallest inchgear fixie, but let me tole you what: carry a 25 pound kid AND groceries in front of you? The loading is hard to push around, so I’m down.

We rode all the way up to my wifebot’s old school, San Domenico, and back, stopping to admire an old timey car that sparked my daughter’s interest. Overall, a great test ride and a fun way to spend the holiday.

Thoughts:

-no getting around it, baby seat and cargo rack in front, even without cargo, is a heavy load for a fixed gear. At some point she’s going to get too heavy and I’ll have to transition to a rear rack.

-the new frame geometry helped my knees quite a bit. Not PERFECT mind you but much better. The frame is sized for me at least. The problem remains that you are riding very upright which messes up your triangle of powah. It’s a weird feeling, even on my old townie bike Redcoat. Anyway, I may experiment with changing to bars that, while still clearing the baby seat, are a little less upright and far back from the stem. I think I can get a little bit better riding posture that way.

-I’m striking the underside of the seat just a hair. Not enough to be a problem for ME thus far, but Wee Z snuck her hand back there and got it pinched between the seat and my massively powerful thigh, so I need to experiment there. I’m playing around with ways to get the seat even higher. Will advise.

All in all, a ton of successes, and very close to calling it a done deal and proceeding with repaint. More as it happens…

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At the time these photographs were taken, I built up Carpetbagger, the Coupled travel bike, almost entirely over the course of an evening, stopping as seen above, with only a steerer tube cut, brake stringing and chain away from ride-out.

When I went to install the headset, I had some trouble because the home-brew headset cup press I made was mere centimeters too short. It drove me nuts trying to finagle it, so I eventually put it down and took it in to Tam Bikes, where MASH’s Dylan pressed them for me quick-snap. Actually, he admitted there was some difficulty with them, but he got it up IN there.

Back home, I dropped the bottom bracket in that night and built up the bike as you see it above. A note about that: I’m using a Sugino 75 kit that rode to LA as part of Team Hype’s Magnus’ Cinelli X MASH build. He kept it in pretty good shape, so I took it off his hands when he was liquidating before leaving for Japan, at the same time Team Lope pal Ryan was grabbing his frame. The Sugino 75 cranks can use a conventional sealed BB but he had a nice 75-stamped cup and cone and I took that too. Unlike the cup and cone BB’s I restored on Wrongbike and Ye Blacke Death, this wasn’t thirty or forty years old. I won’t say the others weren’t smooth, but this was like butter. The crankset and BB are noticeably lighter than the Messengers I used on several other bikes. I’d love to compare them to my Dura Ace cranks on Villain. Frankly, the specs are out there. But as someone who counts pizzas, not grams, it’s unusual for me to worry about weight on a build. But since Carpetbagger is intended to be a travel bike, I wanted it light, and so the rims and the cranks, my two heavier components usually, are much lighter here.

Side note: when I was up on the deck trying not to lose headset parts or let my daughter get all greeeeeazzy with her probing digits, I noticed some damage to the frame. Now, I will admit that at one point she waltzed over and drop kicked it onto the BBQ. But I think that accounts for a to-steel scratch on the seat tube. However, there’s a dent in the top tube and another lower on the seat tube, both under paint. Frankly, I think my pwdercoater isn’t very gentle. Remember, same crew that warped Wrongbike’s forks until they were about 14mm too narrow!
But forewarned is forearmed.

Again, another unfortunate defect: a powdercoating fail on the head tube! Fortunately, the scratch on the seat tube and the fail onthe head tube would ultimately be covered by custom vinyl, and the dents? Well, realistically, this is all just new-build glamor consideration. Once the bike is packed and shipped a few times, I’ll be amazed it there’s any paint LEFT on it. Travel bikes don’t stay pretty for long, even protected by tube insulation.

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Many components of the Carpetbagger coupler project are reclaimed from other projects. It’s half the fun. This shot is of some of the small parts that were pulled from other bikes, cleaned with liberal amounts of WD-40, and ready for reuse. I have acquired three or four degreaser/cleaners for bike parts over the years, but you know what, for me, it’s all about spraying the hell out of it with WD-40 and buffing it out.

The bottom bracket spindle, plastic cowl, bearings and cups are from a Sugino 75 bottom bracket I got from Magnus from his ALC09 Mash build. The cog, chain, masterlink and crank bolts all came from Ghostal. There were a number of other parts being cleaned in a second round, for wrongbike’s rebuild but this was just for Carpetbagger. The rest were either new parts, or didn’t require a chemical bath.

It’s one of my favorite parts of a build, cleaning old stuff, especially parts right off of an old rustbucket. Which is interesting, since I generally dislike my hands being caked on with grime, grease or clay. But I find it very relaxing. I’ve learned to do it in very specific, controlled environments these days, though. I lost a bottom bracket cup on the first wrongbike build when it launched off of my loft deck into the hinterlands below, and I lost a few small items through the deck slats out back of my current place when working on one of the Crook builds. Now I’m slowly learning to protect the work area, ha. Dolt!

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This is a dodgy pic. It looks like dark, seedy, ketchup-squirting-type shenanigans are going on down in the Hangar. In fact, there’s a toddler ‘helping’ with bottom bracket lubrication and a box of miscellaneous small bike parts falling onto a loose rock foundation, at any given time. So it isn’t as salacious as all that.

I call the half of my basement where I do the builds Ye Olde Shoppe, and the half where the bikes hang, ready for selection and mounting, the Hangar.

Because I have dorkness.

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figured i’d get this fucker disassembled so i knew exactly what i was workin with, and armed with science, i can set to work getting it tight and rideable again.

after disassembly, i’ve found that there’s not a lot here that i won’t be confident tinkering on. the only real new technology that i found is the quick-release stem and the S-A 3-speed internal hub. i’m going to do some online research on the hub so i know what’s going on inside there, but on initial inspection, it appears that the little chain and cable that actually cause the shifting are one piece that if need be, must be replaced in their entirety as a unit. again, more research is necessary, but that’s actually uplifting news, as S-A internal-geared hubs are not all that difficult to find replacement parts for. whew.

now the stem, on the other hand, is a pretty easily-understandable piece of equipment. it’s just a skewer on top of a quill stem bolt. no rocket science there. but there is a twist to the story. the only removable piece of it is the head. in fact, the stem’s shaft isn’t part of the stem at all, it’s part of the fork. very specialized. luckily, nothing is fucked up on the fork, cause the project would be pretty much shot at that point — i wouldn’t even know where to begin looking for a mid-70s motobecane riviera folder’s fork in good condition. here are some details of the stem’s pieces (and i apologize for not taking a shot of the top of the fork’s steerer tube, which would translate on an ordinary bike to the stem’s shaft)…

as you can see, the only thing wrong with these parts is surface rust. in fact, after i took these shots, i wiped out the inside of the stem’s head with a rag and 90% of the rust just came off as dust, leaving clean metal underneath. AWESOME. this should slam right back together quickSnap.

one thing this single-unit fork/stem thing means though, is that i must replace the bars with risers. i have no choice in the matter. the steerer doesn’t come up high enough to be able to run drops or moustaches. i must use risers. and i must use NEW risers, cause i found the cause of the slippage that was going on up there…

yeah, those bars are fucked.

moving along to other pieces, you can see that the seat is in almost unbelievably good shape, both under and over…

i did not expect that. i’ll end up replacing it at some point, but that just went WAAAY down on the priority list.

also in amazing shape is the trigger for the hub…

in disassembling this, i was able to discern exactly how it works, which is great. i feel 100% confident that despite it’s unique cable-mounting method, i can step right into intermediate-level skill when working with it. plus it looks fucking cool.

i didn’t take many other pictures, but i will say that i ran into a disappointing thing. the point on the hinge where she actually folds appears to be manufactured. no obvious way of separating the two halves. and that means no powder-coating. i might look into it further, but to be honest, i inspected it pretty closely and i don’t think it comes apart. but i’ve decided to embrace that. i’ll wireBrush the small bits of rust off of it, clean it up, take off the labels and branding that i don’t like, and consider myself lucky to have a sweet sweet folder rather than considering myself unlucky to have a folder that i can’t get custom-colored. besides, if i’m feeling really ambitious, i can always have the rack and the fork and the chainguard powder-coated to make it two-tone, which would be fucking sweet, too.

i have to replace most of the little connection bolts and shit, and i still have to gut the bottom bracket (i didn’t feel like getting into that today and it’s a cottered crank, which i don’t have the tools to work on. so either way that’s going over to box dog bikes), but really everything that i’m working with can be easily restored to working condition. the headset is in great condition, all of the connection points are sound, the shifting works, the bolts will be easily replaced — i mean, i don’t see why i couldn’t have have this on the road in it’s current form pretty quickly, barring catastrophic further discoveries. oh, i have to turn up some brakes for it, too, cause the originals are FUCKED. that might be a drag cause the brakes wrap AROUND the fenders. but we’ll see.

and man, what a joy it is to work on bikes that only require basic tools…

it feels so good — takes me back to when i was like 13, tearing my BMX bikes down to the guts and learning all this shit for the first time.

off to the interwebs to learn more!

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I’ve been going through a lot of photos in some general Aperture cleanup, as well as reading through some stuff, and I’m really struck with the pang of not doing Aids Lifecycle this year. I think I’m going to campaign internally with the fam to do it for next year. Anyway, as it happened I was also going through some of my sites under the TRDL umbrella and noticed my forgotten-about Twitpic account. My TRDL Twitter account takes it’s content from FB status updates, by design, so it’s automated. But the Twitpic account was used on ALC to send daily photos and the like. Unfortunately, thanks to the EXIM business, many showed up sideways. Nonetheless, what a great day this was. I’m still filled with admiration and envy for Lung’s concept of holding Tumbler one handed by the bottom bracket shell. Sure, things could have gone terribly wrong, but what a shot!

http://twitpic.com/1vciwn#

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In this brief installment of the Ye Blacke Death build logs, I messed with rings, and installed other things.

My challenge, as I showed Lung over the weekend, was that the bottom bracket spindle that I have on this build is too short. I COULD just get a longer spindle, but what fun is THAT. So I frankenbuilt the drivetrain. I spent a lot of time, too much time, playing with chainrings. I started by pulling the middle and small rings off of the crankset that came ont he old Vista that became wrongBike(tm) but this led to the discovery that the chainring bolts were too long, even with a huge amount of spacers. And, additionally, one was stripped and took some effort to get it out. Then I went after the Campy cranks I had in the shop, pulled the two rings off of those to get at the shorter bolts, to use on the Vista cranks… but once I did so, and installed the assembly on the frame, I discovered the short spindle. So, off came the ring for the third time, and the Campy crank was reassembled, with a single 53 chainring. This went on fine, but the corresponding non-drive crank arm hit the frame. Through experimentation, I found that the Vista’s crank arm didn’t, so now i have a Campy right side and a Vista (Suntour) left side. Done!

i sure know my way around quickly pulling chainrings, between the Miche cranks and now these.

This is the Bobike seat that’s going on the front of Ye Blacke Death, right above the back of the front rack. It’s a trick little system. I MAY get a windshield for it, but we’ll see how that pans out. I set out this past weekend, on a Daddy/Wee Z day, to get some installation done on the project, and my intention was to get fenders, rack and seat up on there. Each gave me problems but I saw what needed to be done to solve them. The seat clamps to the stem, necessitating that tall Nitoo Techntronic stem, but I need to get the rack on first. The rack wants to go on after fenders, of course, so that made fenders the next in line.

I was installing in the carport, as an experiment while the cat was away. I put wee Z in the pack and Tole, and she was good for about an hour, so that was actually pretty AWESOME. It’s not the first time I’ve wrenched with her hanging out: I’ve done a number of projects upstairs on the back desk with her in the sandbox. That requires bringing the stand, the bike parts and all the tools upstairs, which is kind of a pain, so I wanted to try the carport this time.

You can see I got the fenders out, there. These are from Woody’s Fenders. Amazing build quality, hand-crafted goodness. I subsequently got them on the bike. Not complete, though. The rear needs to have an L-bracket drilled into the wood, and the front has a bigger issue: seating a front brake securely on the fork, on which the fender also hangs. I need a longer bolt. So there’s that. But progress all the same. You can kind of see, from this shot, some of how it’s coming together. Lung saw it a little farther along and up close.

Getting closer!

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Villain 3.0 is done!

I have a few adjustments to make, stem and a frayed cable and a few other things, but it’s ridable and ready to go.

To recap,
I started with a Look KG381 Jalabert Edition built-up with Dura Ace, and a Look KG381 Team bike from the 03 tour, converted to fixed gear. I pulled everything off the converted frame (Villain), pulled everything off the Jalabert Edition (JaJa) and set out to build up my road bike from the black frame.

The black frame was undergoing some issues under the strain of fixed-gear conversion… make that big-gear fixed conversion. i was running an 82 inchgear. It was an experiment. But it led to weaknesses in the design of the Miche Bottom Bracket becoming apparent ( no flange, slides in, cranks scrape the frame) and lots of undue torque on the dropouts, which have a 5mm rotational adjustment in them (which largely allowed for my magic gear in the first place.) Certainly the modern crabon frame can handle the torque of a big inchgear… this wasn’t even the biggest combination you’d get out of a standard 53/39 + 12/23, but while the front end of the drivetrain could handle it, the back end could not. Road dropouts just don’t suffer those forces like that normally. So, anyway, the condition of the frame was some nicks and dings in the finish here and there from the previous owner, some crank scrapery from me, and otherwise good to go.

Final build details:

Frame: Look KG381 Team (2003 Season)
Bottom Bracket: Shimano Dura Ace
Crankset: Shimano Dura Ace (53/39)
Pedals: Shimano A520
Wheels: Easton Vista SL, debadged
Tyres: Conti Gatorskin Hardshells 23c
Cassette: SRAM Force (11/27)
Front/Rear Derailleurs: SRAM Force
Brakes: Shimano Dura Ace
Stem: Thomson X2
Bars: Ritchey Carbon Streem
Brifters: SRAM Force
Tape: Shimano vinyl perf
Seatpost: Thomson Elite
Saddle: Brooks Swallow

ping!

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So last night I got home from work an hour early and hurtled myself into the bikeBasement(tm), head first, through three partitions and a large timber column. I was THAT motivated.

Drivetrain upgrade time!

So, I started by pulling all the Dura Ace parts off that I was replacing. It’s kind of cool to see both the changes in design philosophy over time, and the differences in problem-solving, especially in the rear derailleur design (I’ll do my best to avoid what happened to Andy Schleck, of course*).

As I was pulling the 9-speed cassette off of my wheel, I discovered I was missing a familiar-looking tool: The Park FR-5 rear cassette tool, which looks similar to a bottom bracket tool I have (well two) but wasn’t quite the same. This is where having a bike shop in Tam Junction comes in handy. I was able to get that tool and back to the basement in about 15 minutes.

Next up, moving cassettes. As you’ve seen from Lung’s videos on the subject (or will, once they are broadcast) modern cassettes come in a combination of single and group pieces. The larger three or four cogs, depending on the manufacturer, are carved out of a single piece of metal, in my case titanium, and then the remainder are single cogs with spacers. They have a specific groove design in the center and fit the hub body a specific way. There’s compatibility issues all over the place, but not for me: while the Dura Ace groupo I pulled would normally suggest incompatibility of my hub with this new cassette, in my case I got lucky, because the wheel I was using was not my ORIGINAL wheel, but a newer one retrofitted to use the 9-speed cassette. I had owned a Cervelo Soloist with a modern 10-speed Ultegra groupo on it (2006) and swapped it for this 9-speed Dura Ace from 97… I had used a spacer and adapter to make the hub work. So now, I was golden for using this new SRAM cassette. Nice! That doesn’t often happen to me…

The cassette comes on a plastic speedloader, much like the ballistic version of same concept. In my case, because of the gears I selected, I had to modify the speedloader configuration, but once I was ready, line up the grooves, slip slip and boom, ALL on. It’s interesting to see the newer cogs and their guide teeth with angled faces. Anyway, quick snap, we were good to go and get back on the bike.

Adjusted the rear derailleur, ran the cable (now the cable housing swings wide up and over the stays) and same with front, swapped out for my new 10-speed chain (swapped out my new 9-speed chain, mind you, grrrr) and set everything, and boom!

Next up, final adjustments. I spent another hour this morning trying to adjust the index shifting with little success. I’m going for expert help…

*If you haven’t seen the footage, Schleck’s chain popped off on his acceleration up the climb in the pivotal moment of yesterday’s stage. There’s lots of controversy about attacking vs. waiting and all this other stuff, but I was more interested in what happened mechanically, as I always am when pratfalls occur in the tour with these guys. They have the best mechanics out there and the best equipment, but the wrenching is happening fast, and sometimes things aren’t adjusted, sometimes parts fail, and sometimes riders err. I’m always curious what it was. In this case, we don’t really know but there’s a good chance Schleck jumped the chain on a heavy shift. The nature of SRAM derailleur design led to the chain drop. IF that’s what happened…

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