OK, I lied. I thought drivetrain would be next, and at the time of this writing I DO have stuff to post about that, but before I do, what I managed to finish yesterday were the wheels. My wee Z got her first bee sting and was high maintenance the rest of the weekend (crying, unhappy, swollen, etc) so I stayed low-key, doing household chores and hanging out with her. I brought the wheels upstairs from the bikeBasemtn(tm) and assembled them in the house while she battered my iPad.

These are Velocity A23 rims, laced to All City fixed/free. The hubs were chosen based on a darker metal finish, in keeping with the look of the build, and the free is on there in case I want to throw it on so wifebot(tm) can ride it. The tyres chosen are an old story made new again. These are Forte knobbies that were purchased and used on Fix-e 1.0 before I pulled them off on that rebuild and gave em to Lung, who had them in the shop for what, years now? I don’t remember if he mounted them, but when I was shopping for fatty, old-timey tread tyres, he remembered them and gave them back to me, in the Lung-Wrongrobot tradition of sharing our pieces parts. Allmost all modern tyres have sophisticated tread patterns, and I wanted something a little retro looking. I was looking at slicks but fat slicks are a rare breed. Anyway, these are absolutely perfect (except for the gross Forte branding, but one must check one’s snobbery sometimes)…

The original concept was to go for that oily black of iron, but after flirting with the idea of using Nightshade and a sealant, I decided it wasn’t likely to last on there. I didn’t want to be painting these parts, so I decided that they could just be what they are. The cranks are silver anyway. So the hubs are a dark anthracite to black color.

The knobbies are perfect! I’m going for that old-school utilitarian bike look, like one might find breezing through sunflower fields, with a front basket filled with cheese and wine and bike grease.

The A23 section is a short, trapezoidal shape. I wanted the rims to be decidedly NOT deep, and look very utilitarian. These came out even better than I expected, thanks to the handy craftsmanship of Joe at 718c.com.

It’s still hard to get a sense of what it will look like completed, with the seatpost and stem so far up and out of the frame, but you can at least see the knobbies in relation to the frame. It’s starting to come together.

Next up: drivetrain. Promise.

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Related posts:

1. Bike Build Process Log: Ye Blacke Death – Wheels On!
2. Bike Build Process Log: Ye Blacke Death – Wheels Selected
3. Bike Build Process Log: Ye Blacke Death

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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Related posts:

1. Bike Build Process Log: Villain 3.0 – Completeds
2. Bike Build Process Log: Villain 3.0 – Swappery
3. Bike Build Process Log: Villain- Ergo Post, Bars and Coggery

My Ye Blacke Death project limps along. Well, limp is a strong term (and a weak term). Rather, it moves slowly. But it’s still moving. I put it on the back burner to work on Crook, since I wanted to ride that one as much as possible before Aids Lifecycle in June. But now that my wee daughter is approaching ride-a-long age, it’s time to get things going.

The YBD project bike is many things:
- it’s an old timey build, angling to be my tweeder
- it’s a Mixte
- it’s a grocery-getter
- it’s a baby explorer when module activateds
- and it’s a fixed-gear

The idea is, ride around with my daughter, do the shopping, mess around… and then pull the baby seat off and have at it on an old-timey ride.

So, the frame is being prepared for painting, and all that’s left to do is disassemble the headset. It was actually recently overhauled and is in great shape, so I’m toying with the idea of leaving it alone (the frame came to me from a friend who built it up as an Xtracycle before going for a beefier build, so the headset is already cleaned up)… that may depend on the details of the powdercoating process.

This Nitto Moustache bar was originally on Fix-e 2.0, then was sold to Lung for a project, now found it’s way back to me again with his blessing, so it’s a perfect fit for the old-timey vibe.

Various needed items, including a Sugino BB, an 8th-inch BMX chain, and so on.
I’m reusing some old road cranks to add to the antiquity.

I was originally going to reuse the stem but I needed a longer one for that baby seat, and also for a funky upright riding position in an old-timey style. This Nitto was the tallest I found. Look at that! 220mm!

Finally, this is the Bobike Mini, which I got from the awesome guys at Long Leaf Cyclery, based on their recommendation. The seat is a European import, and much higher quality than what I’ve seen out and about. It is positioned on the stem facing forward (hence that loooong boy up top) and it’s rad in 33 different ways. The helmet, by Lazer, is really cute.My daughter already wore it for an evening, gnawed the tag, had fun being a mushroom. It’s a funny little miniaturization of a regular commuter bike helmet but with exaggerated foam. Very Super Mario. I’d even paint it such if I wasn’t already going to sticker bomb it.

Anyway, pretty close to being ready. I have everything I need, I think, and next step is paint.

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Related posts:

1. Bike Build Process Log: Ye Blacke Death
2. Bike Build Process Log: Ye Blacke Death – Bars and Saddles
3. Bike Build Process Log: Ye Blacke Death – Rubber Side Down

Today, in between honeydos and home projects and Easter basket assembly, I took a much-needed opportunity and tidied up the bikeBasement(tm) still wrecked from that furious Fix-e 3.0 build a few weeks back. After I got everything on the pegboards and cleaned up, I got to tackle finishing Ghostal’s bulls. I used a second set of white grips I had in house, since the ones on the Taylor bars are staying put. These have caps, not sealed rubber ends, which are fitted with little star nuts. They didn’t fit the bars well enough to use by themselves, so I wrapped them in tape and fit them in there just so, then took Ghostal out for a short spin. The bulls feel GREAT. I have always been very comfortable on them. I positioned these a little high to see how they feel climbing, so we’ll see.

So far so good!

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1. Bike Build Process Log: Ghostal by the Horns
2. Bike Build Process Log: Ghostal – Naked Bulls
3. Bike Build Process Log: Ghostal – Make it Stop!

So, as Lung knows from our ride discussions, I love love LOVE the look of the Taylor bars on Ghostal, which was it’s original vision. But in actual practice, for city riding they remain as uncomfortable as they were on Fix-e when I first bought them. The issue is that the bars drop into the, well, drops, almost immediately, leaving very little at the top of the bars for you to rest on in an upright position. Further, there’s no ‘hood’ position as with conventional bars, so you really have two choices: ride in the drops themselves the entire time, or do like I frequently have, and perch on the crown awkwardly, one hand on the top of the bars and one on the BREAK I MEAN BRAKE itself. This is fine for a jaunt across town, but it’s an awkward position for controlling the bike in the clutch, as per our modern parlance, and frankly, maybe if I was 135lbs the drops would be fine, but that’s too much pressure on my diaphragm, especially with a bag on. Fine for a climbing ride, not so much for riding around town. Meanwhile, I haven’t had my bulls on a bike since I pulled them off of Fix-e for a change-up (putting the Taylors ON, ironically enough)… so I thought hey, this Ghostal is one smooooth ride… how fun would it be with bulls? And so I did. This morning. Squinting at it given the dim light of my bikeBasement(tm) and the lask of near focal capability as my eyes heal from those shark lasers.

Here’s where you come in, dear reader.

Should I keep the Ghostal scheme, and wrap these bulls in white Kierin grips again, or should I use the Brooks wrap to match the saddle, as I have done in the past. I’m of two minds, so I thought I’d see what you thought.

I’ve included the bars as they are now, one-side wrapped, so you can see the Brooks leather tape…

…and here’s a gentle mock-up of the grips.

Let it be known!

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Related posts:

1. Bike Build Process Log: Ghostal – Naked Bulls
2. Bike Build Process Log: Ghostal Whitecaps
3. Bike Build Process Log: Ghostal – Make it Stop!

Team Lope LA Affiliate member Raully Raul has sent me some photos of Fix-e 3.0 in it’s natural habitat…

Take a look, excuse the cable lock from which it will soon be stolen, and enjoy the awesome…

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Just received this shot from Raully Raul. Fix-e 3.0 now has a black seat, a sick new chain, and a dubious lock-lookalike mechanism.

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1. Fix-e 3.0 in the Wild
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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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Related posts:

1. Bike Build Process Log: Villain 3.0 – Swappery
2. Bike Build Process Log: Crook – Prime Assembly
3. Bike Build Process Log: Villain- The Magic Gear

So today was my first real ride on the Ghostal, in between rainstorms here in the Bay Area. Admittedly, it was still quite wet out. I just got impatient. I mean, the bike’s going to get dirty anyway, and so why not just get goin…

WHAT A DREAM!

The ride in was a little low and steady, as it was newly minted and not yet finely calibrated. The seat was too low, so I raised it. The bars remain very low for me, particularly, uh, pizzafied as I have been post-Z… but I did some tweaks to seat position and felt it out a bit more and took a ride at lunch, and I really got comfy in a hurry. Man, it’s an aggressive riding position. It was on Fix-e too, with those bars, ut because that frame was too small, I never FELT it the right way. This is great. In fact, it wants you to get out of the saddle.

One thing I may explore is the brake pad situation. These are non-machined rims, so I used sticky red compound pads. And predictably it is staining the rim red. I was down with that! But IF I can clean the rims up (and I doubt it) I might try gray pads, just to see. They’d still stain it, but less so, at a compromise of brake effectiveness, already hampered by the rim and the shot lever. Speaking of shot lever. I reversed it and it actually feels better.

Yeah, this is a FUN ride.

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Related posts:

1. Ghostal: Lever Righted
2. Bike Build Process Log: Ghostal – Make it Stop!
3. Bike Build Process Log: Ghostal by the Horns

One of the things I’ve long envied about Lung’s work situation has been that since he lives and works in San Francisco, he can bike commute pretty much every day if he wants. I used to be able to do this, some six years and change ago, when I worked downtown, and made the most of it, though back then, social occasions and other relationship-related stuff would happen after work here and there and I’d ride whatever other days that I could. Given the relatively short distance of that commute, I would sprint it and get the most out of it I could. After that, however, these recent years I’ve been commuting into Mill Valley from SF, which has been AWESOME. What a great way to get saddle time in throughout the week, riding through the city, the Presidio, over the bridge, and into Marin. Solid! Except, funny thing, attrition sets in. Stacking a full workday onto that ride meant that if I did it more than three days a week in the best case scenario, I’d be too exhausted to really enjoy it. As it was, the ride in would be great, the day would drag and I’d be tired from lack of sleep and whatever, and then sort of dread climbing out of Sausalito to get home. This commute was merely part of any usual weekend distance ride, but suddenly, when you have to do it just to drag your tired ass home in order to make dinner and such, it feels a little more like a chore on certain days. Particularly late summer when the wind and wet on the bridge and the climb to it were pretty brutal. But still, even though it could be a mixed-bag, it was still an awesome ride, and a great opportunity to get on the bike for two hours each ride day.

Then I moved to Mill Valley.

Suddenly my long ride opportunities disappeared. We have a baby at home, so i don’t have the luxury of before- or after-work climbs up Tam. I’m on duty all the time. So now my riding is limited to work commuting and the occasional lunch ride. I lost those miles, that saddle time, and the journey I loved. HOWEVER, loss and gain can go hand in hand. While I lost some ride time, what I gained was a return to the bike commuting schedule I used to have, where I can ride, like Lung, as many days of the week I want to, and this has been a boon. Where 6 years ago I had one bike and one bike only in my possession (the Bianchi Veloce dubbed Toro, was the ride at the time) now I have upwards of 7 of my own in various stages of rideability. So while I have been changing out bikes every few days on my longer commutes in months and years past, it’s always been a strategic decision: which bike to take? What’s the weather going to be like, what’s my cargo, how tired am I? I’m happy to say that over the last 18 months I got very comfortable riding even my big-gear fixed-gear on that commute. But I still had to think about it.

Now, I have a wonderful embarrassment of riches in the bikeBasement, as you may have seen in other posts: I have a series of hooks in a beam so that all the bikes can hang like, as Lung put it, a sweet bike wardrobe closet. So in the new digs, I go down there in the morning with the luxury of not knowing which bike I’m even going to take on any particular day. I’m using the same pedal system on each bike, so I can just drop down there in my shoes and pluck a bike off the rack and ride it, whatever strikes my fancy for the day. It’s great. As wee Z gets a little older and has a schedule that will allow me some longer rides, i’ll get the exercise back in, but in the meantime, at LEAST I get to start each day the right way: on two wheels!

Currently, only four bikes are rideable: wrongBike, Villain, roadLook and redBike. The fifth, Fix-e, is currently partially decommissioned as I sold Lung her wheels. Nothing’s more pathetic than a bike with no wheels. So that carcass hangs on a hook like that scene in Good Fellas with Jimmy Two-Time, waiting for another ressurection. The sixth, Ye Blacke Death, is way early in the project, and has a ways to go. The seventh, Ghostal, is very near road-ready, just waiting for a few final hours in the bikeBasement to finish up the wheels.

Good stuff!

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Related posts:

1. Bike Build Process Log: Villain- Commuting and Tweaks
2. Bike Build Process Log: Ghostal – Stoppers and Starters
3. Prepare for More Madness on the Golden Gate Bridge

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