Team Lope Tyre Clubbe » chainring

Bike Build Process Log: Ye Blacke Death – Rubber Hits Road

wrongrobot — Mon, 23 Aug 2010 20:38:58 +0000

Well, Ye Blacke Death is finally finished! Finished in the since, of course, that it rolls and pedals and steers and mostly stops, not that there’s not much more to do. But this was the day that I was able to get it rolling and do some tests. Any build, I’m secretly relieved when it doesn’t explode on it’s maiden voyage. Weirder frames and pieces parts and I wonder a little more about that result. I wasn’t going to throw wee Z on here and hurtle down the hill, but I did want to get out and see what needed adjustment and how it held up.

As you can see, it came together pretty nicely. The bobike fits on a a bracket that seats on the quill, and is removable in under 7 seconds. You can pull the clamp off as well and it’s like it was never there, or leave the clamp on and use the cotter pin to remove the seat. Even on the bike, there’s no interference with the front rack.

The combination of matte black, laquered wood, leather and chrome work well together. It has an old timey vibe, but some new school details. More interestingly to me, it’s the most frankenbike build I’ve done, even more than Fix-e was, and it doesn’t LOOK like it. I think it looks like it rolled new off the assembly line of one of your vintagy commuter bike shops.
Most importantly, it came together how I envisioned it, with the black rims and knobbies, the little gleams on the chrome, the general geometry…

Wee Z even helped with spoke tension inspection. Not at speed.

So, what’s left: well, a lot. Some adjustments are required before it can really do what it was intended to do. See, I tried to hop on it and almost became a eunuch. The Bobike is low and back, so you cradle your precious cargo in your arms as you ride. But for most bikes, that means interference with your riding position. I could get between the seat and the Bobike, but I couldn’t get UP onto my seat. Absolutely no-go if there was a child up in there.

I was sort of resigned to the idea that maybe the seat wouldn’t work out (it was designed for upright commuters in Denmark with adjustable stems and that vertical clearance) and that I’d be putting the rear rack on. But I did some research last night and was reminded, thanks to www.longleafbicycles.com why i got my long quill stem in the first place. I was going about this the wrong way: I thought the clearance problem would be the seat being too much in my face, so I was pushing it farther and farther down the stem, to no avail. As it turns out, it needs to be HIGHER, which is counter-intuitive, I have to admit. That’s where the ginormous stem came in. So this morning, I raised the seat high on the stem (didn’t yet actually increase stem height) and equally-as-important, lowered the SEAT. It made all the difference, and it worked. AWESOME.

Another issue is the brake. I’m a mile from where I started: I have sticky salmon pads, a new center-pull caliper, and I spent a LOT of time stringing and restringing it, which is made more aggravating with this vintage of equipment because of having to use double- wrenches on the hanger nuts. I was too weak in stopping power on my test ride, which was after about three stringings already… and then I adjusted it and am now too tight, so i need to let out about 3mm of cable. But I’m close.

The cork handles, which were kind of an experiment anyway, were 50/50. One went on great, and one shredded like you’d expect thin, true cork to do. Wifebot(tm) suggested glue but i don’t think it’ll hold together very long, so if I keep using these, I’ll be replacing one.

The bars, which LOOK rad, once again may not work, just as has happened on my other rides.

The sweep brings you too far forward, and I think I’ll interfere with comfortable positioning when Z is on there. So i may have to switch to sway, or boulevard, bars. I’ll be looking at that tonight.

Lastly, when I set out on the test ride, I was like DAMN this is a bitch. What is UP. The gearing was higher than I anticipated. I discovered the culprit. Remember how I was messing around with different combinations of cranks and chainrings? I ended up going with a 53, not the 39 I started with. Makes a teeeny bit of difference.

I calculated the inchgear at a gruesome 101. GAH.

I’m putting a 20 on the back tonight, getting it back down to my comfortable low-70s.

All in all though, very exciting and satisfying day.

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Team Lope Bike Bio: Crook Type 3

wrongrobot — Wed, 28 Jul 2010 18:03:35 +0000

Crook Type 3 is a transformed version of Crook, the Cinelli Mash I built up and rode on Aids Lifecycle 9, from SF to LA. The concept was simple, and absurd: after completing the 570 mile ride (if successful, which it was) I would swap out the gray frame that made that journey for the limited edition green/ white variant, celebrating the achievement. You can read about the build process for Crook Type 3 here. Suffice to say, I kept the bottom end from the original Crook, and replaced the top end, going with a silver dip theme above the frame line.

Cinelli Mash 09 Limited Edition Green/White Adidas-inspired variant
SRAM Courier 300 Cranks (48/165)
Shimano A520 pedals
Custom wheelset: Soma hubs laced to H+Son 43s
Sugino Track Cog system (17) (Currently 75 inchgear)
SRAM single chain
Dia Compe brake/ carbon fiber cable housing
Paul Comp cross lever, silver
Titanium spacers
Columbus headset and seatpost clamp
Thomson Elite post, silver
Thomson X2 stem, silver
Nitto RB-021 compact bullhorns
VO elkhide wrap
crankbolt wrap caps (!)
Brooks Swallow saddle, honey
Thomson stem cap
Continental Gatorskin Hardshells 25c
Awesomeness

Here’s the build in the wild…

Note the Paul Comp cross lever. That was a hard find, with a deceptively simple solution: Order direct from Paul Comp…
The elkhide is still stretching and getting comfy but it’s gorgeous. I miss gel padding, though. Crank bolts for bar ends. HA!

The gold hub works nicely with the color scheme, which was fortuitous. I’ll eventually have a brass bell on the front end too.

Sneaky inclusion of my Three-Pin rider logo under the chainring, for science.

On Crook 1.0 there was a quote here: ‘by hook or by crook’ which was my inspirational mantra for getting through ALC on a fixed-gear. Now that that was done, I elected to retire it, moving the bike name from the head tube to the usual position here. The cog decal moved from seatpost to seat stay. Oh, and there will be a pinup girl on the nose, it’s just not done. The other missing decals are a Type 3 lettering piece for the name, and a vinyl of our ALC logo used on our ride shirts.

Some adjustments will follow, in seat height and stem. But so far, it’s a greeeaaaaat rahde!

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Bike Build Process Log: Ye Blacke Death – Rings and Things

wrongrobot — Tue, 27 Jul 2010 19:36:09 +0000

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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Even Crooks Can be Rehabilitated

wrongrobot — Fri, 02 Jul 2010 21:44:33 +0000

After Aids Lifecycle, I did a moderate overhaul, ie. drivetrain cleanup and brake inspection, and a surface cleaning of the bike, to return it to it’s former shiny self. Gorgeous I says!

I still quite like the ‘Crook’ placement above the Mash crest. That worked out nicely with the die- cut vinyl.

Here’s a shot of the Team Lope crest on the downtube. Kind of a subtle place for it, I think.

One noticeable scar from the road: a rock chip on the wheelstay. I think this was probably from when one of those pacelines passed in the middle of traffic at 40mph sending us into the gravel. You guys were really fast and cool and stuff.

Here’s that scrape from the chainring moving back up IN there. Fortunately, it’s an aluminum frame so no worries. And on close inspection, many of my bikes have this scrape, either from the chainring or a chain scrape along the way. Badge of honor…

There’s that Three-Pin name plate, along with a shot of the bike’s signature quote:

"By hook or by crook"

What’s really cool is that on the opposite side the lettering is partially worn off as if from age. Gives it some flavor.

That sweet cog reflector sticker. Nice touch on the black seatpost.

Ah, Crook. Ya done me well.

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Chainvetica Copy Cracks Self Up

wrongrobot — Mon, 28 Jun 2010 18:53:44 +0000

This is another inchgear calculator app. Now, I like mine just fine, and it’s quite powerful. No disputing this one is aesthetically pleasing, though, no doubt.

However, I love the copy:

"How many inches are you pushing?

We’ve all been there. The dude/t isn’t taking the hint despite the fact that you’ve used "interesting", "stock" and "just like the manufacturer made it" to describe the bike in question. You suspect that the tiny chainring and huge cog yield some wimpy drivetrain, and in the days before Chainvetica you couldn’t be sure. Now you can.

Chainvetica does the math your PBR addled brain cannot. Given the tooth count of your chainring and cog, it calculates gear inches — an ancient formula designed to sum up just how hard it’s going to be turn over the cranks on your fixed gear. The more inches you’re running, the harder it is to push. Use it to pick your cog. Use it to quantify the power of your massive quads.

As an added bonus, Chainvetica also calculates your speed at a cadence of 90 rpm. Your skinny jeans will make 90 rpm exactly "as fast as you can pedal" so basically, this app also calculates your ride’s top speed without all the bourgeois cables and stuff.

All this functionality presented on a bed of orange and Helvetica. Good stuff.

(Does this work with SS mountain bikes? 27c tires? 650c wheels? Kilometers per hour? First of all: yuck. Secondly, we’re working on that.)"

Dude, if I were a hipster urban cyclist with an iPhone, I’d be like ‘Sweet! Wait. What?’

Piss being taken WHILE item being sold!
ha

http://itunes.apple.com/us/app/chainvet … 6126?mt=8#

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Bike Build Process Log: Villain 3.0 – Strippery!

wrongrobot — Tue, 22 Jun 2010 17:21:30 +0000

OK, now that I’m back from Aids Lifecycle, it’s project time! What’s life without projects, I ask? Well, a projectless life, certainly, but anyway, onward…

I have four concurrent bike projects underway, and this is the first report from those efforts. It’s time to frankenbuild Villain 3.0!

You may recall I have two Look KG381 frames, my favorite vintage of my favorite road bike frame. One is the KG381 Team (one of the team spares from the 2003 season) and one KG381 Jalabert Edition, which was the special edition consumer model.

The Ja-Ja is currently built up as my road bike, with the Dura Ace groupo from that year, good to go. Note the saddle upturn was a joke, please.

The other frame was built into my first carbon road bike fixed gear conversion, Villain. Villain made it through two iterations, before being retired. I partially cannibalized it to form the drivetrain for Crook, my Cinelli MASH build, but also, it was struggling under the burden of the fixie conversion with a very high inchgear. So the thing needed an overhaul anyway, and the frame suffered some minor damage when the damn Miche flangeless bottom bracket worked it’s way inward, allowing the chainring to strike the wheelstay.

Between the two frames, the Ja-Ja is immaculate, and the Team frame is a little weathered: some sticker damage, some chips and that scrape I mentioned. But I LOVE the black bare carbon look.

So, Villain 3.0 is a fusion of these two rides. I’m attempting to pull everything off of the Ja-Ja road bike and put it on the Team bike, swapping out parts here and there, and building up a more subtle road bike as a result, then selling the Ja-Ja frame. it’ll be sad to see it go, as I love it so, but while I DO have many bikes in the stable, I bristle at an unused frame hanging there, and Villain in it’s fixie incarnation wasn’t necessary any longer.

So the first step is dissembly of Villain. Not too hard, given I gave his wheels to Raully Raul when I built up Fix-e for him, and I had already stripped the cranks off for Crook. But I pulled the bottom bracket, took the bars off, and cleaned the frame inside and out, noting no noticeable thread damage to the shell, which is good. Good bye, Villain headbadge! (don’t worry, replacement is already made)

I’m keeping some of the Villain gear. I love the Thomson X2 stem, and will be reusing that in lieu of the Ja-Ja FSA stem. I also prefer a few other small gifts from Villain that will make it over.

Not much more to see. I started taking Ja-Ja apart, but this is a slower process, because I’m going part by part, transferring the group over to the Villain frame. I’ve never built up a road bike, so I’m trying to be methodical about the transfer. That said, the best WhytheFace moment was then I pulled the Ja-Ja bars and unclipped the brake and so on and tried to lift it away and sprannnnnnng, it bounced out of my hand, because… you know… it’s cabled to the frame in three other places, hahahahaha. Shows I’ve been working on fixed gears for too long.

Anyway, fohhhhwahd! I have the service diagrams for the Dura Ace group (gah!) and all I have left to procure is a replacement derailleur cage from my recent calamity, and I think I’ll be good to go. Oh, I should mention, new tyres. I LOVE the red slicks but Villain isn’t a red tyre bike.

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Final Spin Before Aids Lifecycle 2010

wrongrobot — Mon, 31 May 2010 18:50:11 +0000

Lung and I snuck in one final spin in before Lifecycle next weekend. We’re both taking the week off to be fresh for the week following (though I can ride to work a pretty mellow pace and distance, he’s going to go cold turkey and sit on the bacterial cage we call MUNI)… I got the SRAM Courier cranks and bottom bracket on last night, though I didn’t have time to swap out chains today before I left, thanks the machinations of wee Z. It was a cooler day then yesterday, at least so far, though it was plenty hot out in Corte Madera. We benefited from little wind and a lot of tree cover, between most of the Paradise/Strawberry Loop and the detour up Chapman.

Though we were going to take it easy (tekkit teasy, as my Swiss cousin-in-law would say) we ended up mashing quite a bit of the Tiburon stretch of Paradise. Fsst pace! Speaking of mashing we crossed the MASH gang themselves going the opposite direction, in those new histogram kits and on road bikes. Other item of interest: we saw a fox sitting in the road. When he got up and trotted off as we passed, I was surprised how SMALL foxes really are.

Other than the mildly alarming smell of grease, the ride went without a hitch, which for me is kind of a record lately. The only thing that was weird was that I was spinning on the new chainring faster than I anticipated… it felt like a 46, but it really was just a 48, only one tooth down from the 49 it replaced. Talk about psychosomatic.

Anyway! Next stop, Lifecycle!

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The Big Gear

wrongrobot — Tue, 30 Mar 2010 19:13:35 +0000

Here’s a shot of Crook in it’s tweed variant edition.

I’ve seen a few ridiculous big gear chainrings in those shots from the early 80s where someone is drafting a Fiero or something out in Ojai… but this is olllld school knee-bustery!

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DIY chainring bolt tool

ironlung — Tue, 02 Mar 2010 21:19:20 +0000

the back part of a chainring bolt (the nut, in other words) is juuust wide enough to preclude the use of all but the largest of flathead screwdrivers. as such, i’ve used everything from the back of a knife blade to the rim of an abandoned pop can to hold them in place while i tighten the front. but thanks to our friends at URBANVELO (pittsburgh, pa, REPRESENT!), we’ve now got another option. grind down one of the small, freefloating rings of an old cassette and viola!

of course as noted, a proper chainring bolt (nut) tool is only a couple bucks, but hey — what fun is that?

i’m on it.

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Bike Build Process Log: Fix-e 3.0

wrongrobot — Tue, 23 Feb 2010 20:58:26 +0000

Our man Raully Raul, my college roomie and one of my bestest pals, came to visit us this weekend. Raul is an active, crafty fellow: he climbs mountains, he climbs effing ICE, he surfs, etc and he works with his hands, from woodworking to photography. It all makes him a better architect, and an interesting guy, in my opinion. And he loves to try new things. So, on his arrival, I showed him and a few other friends the bikeBasement and my stable of excessive velocipedes. Later in the evening, he noted to me ‘hey, I’d love to try and ride one of your fixed-gears…’

Now, from someone else, that might have been the Akavit talking, but not Raul.
I was stoked. So, we made plans to check them out in the morning. The next day, I brought out wrongBike for him to try. I figured it was the most upright positioned build, with an easy posture, a light gearing, and was a good first try for fixie business. We headed down the hill and across the street to some flat area, went over the basics about fixed-gears: fixed drivetrain, no coasting, brake location, back pedaling, don’t lose concentration and try to stop pedaling, and so on. Soon, he was ready to go. And man, he took to it faster than I did by a MILE. Soon, we were up in the Scotts Valley side of MV, and off to the bike path. We took the bike path end to end a couple of times, and he grew stronger and more confident. We tried different pacing, so he could observe the relationship between pace and effort: too slow and it’s muscle work, too fast and it’s heart work, but 80rpm and it’s the perfect balance. Anyway, it was a colllle and windy day, so after awhile we headed back to the house. We saw a LOT of ALC training riders on the path as well, and I believe Cyclomania may have passed us or just missed us.

Once home, I gave him each of the other bikes in turn, so he could compare. Now that he had a sense of fixed riding in general, time to try different morphologies of the builds: different gearing, different bars, different ride positions. He liked the drops on Ghostal a lot, and got really jazzed by Crook.

In fact, he was the first person to ride Crook other than me, and thankfully, no deaths.

Anyway, I thought this was a GREAT spiritual mission for Fix-e. This was once my first single-speed and later fixed-gear and also my first build. Lung walked me through the entire bike. So the bike was decommissioned late last year when I gave Lung the wheels, and I had shelved it for a time, deciding what it wanted to be, now that I had more bikes to ride on a regular basis. But Raully Raul was now committed. He enjoys a car-free lifestyle in LA, living near the beach and walking or bussing everywhere. So he was pretty excited about getting a bike again for the first time in years. So, I thought, here’s Fix-e’s new home.

There were several things I loved about that night’s build:
- We got to work on it together, mirroring what Lung and I did on this same bike
- I was able to build a functional fixie entirely out of parts in the bikeBasement (a point of pride for lung and I both)
- Raul was stoked to do it, and man, he is crafty as I mentioned, so we were tearing apart the brake and effing with the wheels and so on like as if he’d been wrenching bikes for a year.

It was a great time!

Fix-e 3.0 consists of the original frame and cranks, which were still intact. In fact, that’s how we were able to assemble the bike in one late evening: the cranks and headset were still together and good to go. I used a Dimension arc bar, which Raul liked the position of, being a longer version of what he rode on wrongBike (though he may go old school drops eventually) and one of the Vista’s breaks I mean brakes, from before the wrongBike build, but with new modern rubber. We strung it to a chrome Odyssey lever, and this is perfect Raul right here: he solved Fix-e’s annoying cable hanger problem in like 3 seconds.

The cable hanger is OEM and has an open slot in the front so that the cable can be removed from the hanger, right, but it is designed for conventional 10-speed brakes and cable housing arrangement: with a BMX lever, the cable and it’s little cable stop still want to jump forward and out of the hanger if you really slam on the brake. This was a safety problem I struggled with throughout my riding this bike. I tried all sorts of things in the past: mangling a cable stop, adding a washer to the hanger, changing cable and brake lever positioning, etc. Raul? He proposed bending the shit out of the hanger at an upward angle. BOOOOOM. SOLVED. I was stupified. I never considered taking pliers to the damn thing.

I used my IRO wheelset from the rapidly bone-picked Villain build on Fix-e 3.0. Those are awesome wheels, and a large part of why this new build came out so well, I think. They’re smooth, clean and black. We used a 15t cog to compensate for the chainring’s relatively small size, trying to get close to wrongBike’s inchgear. The chain I had on hand JUST fit, but that was with the back axle just entering the dropouts, which are the old lateral kind that you enter from the BB side of the wheelstays. So I recommended he probably would want to get a longer chain and rechain it at home. I mean, I always like a fresh chain on a bike regardless.
Clip/platform spikey pedals (my ole AnkleBiters, in fact) and my trusty yellow seat that used to go with Toro, and the bike was ready to go. A final safety check, and we were done, at 12:03am. Not kidding.

Raul was excited.

Next day, we waited for the rain to break, and wifebot(tm), who was pretty into the new build and wanted to see Raul ride it, kept watching for optimum weather, which never really came. So in the afternoon, we headed out and Raul took his inaugural ride. Here you can see he represents the Team lope and TRDL brands, and enjoyed TLTC SAG support.

Raul FLEW up the street. Wifebot(tm) even exclaimed ‘whoa he’s flying up that hill!’
I think the foot was good and everything worked out. It was so awesome to see Raul, who 24 hours prior had never ridden a fixed gear, now was riding around on his OWN fixie. SOLID.

We took the wheels off, crammed it into the trunk of his rental car, and they were off to LA.
He’s already changed out the chain, and next step?
SURF BOARD rack.

3 gets you 6 he learns to skid stop before I do.
In fact, he may already know how by the time of this writing.

Welcome to the Team Lope family, dude!

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