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			thirdraildesignlab posted a photo:	The original aesthetic inspiration for this build. The off-white color matches the MINI, our last MINI, and the Karmann Ghia before it. Ultimately, I let go of the tomato red because my wife pointed out it would look wonk next to all the honey leather. So the bike is just the off-white. This fixed gear build features a custom-installed S&S coupler system, for maximum travel capabilities.Read the build logs and more on the Team Lope Tyre Clubbe site:www.teamlopetyreclubbe.com

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tltcgen Kevins Spicer Kevin’s Spicer

04/24/12

Posted in: TLTC Items to Amuse by TRDL thom | Comments (0)

 Kevins Spicer

I was telling Lung about this frame over the weekend. An e-friend of mine, Kevin, rides this custom Spicer frame with a noBrake bridge that I love. A brake bridge on a fixie is as functional as the vermouth is in my martinis (ie. I wave the vermouth bottle around like a shaman, thats about it)… assuming the frame isn’t relying on it for structural support, which this clearly is not…I love the arc and how tight it is to the wheel.

splash Kevins Spicer
You can check out Kevin’s Kaiju Melt custom figures here. Awesome stuff.

wrcommentrush  Kevins Spicer

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Related posts:

  1. Custom Cielo
  2. Bike Build Process Log: Ghostal – The Last Rites

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Posted in: TLTC Items to Amuse by TRDL thom | Comments (0)

thestart Team Lope Ride Report : Primavera Metric Century 2012 02

This is a companion report to the detailed, dare I even say thurra, ride report Ironlung posted this morning. The Primavera event is probably one of my favorite charity rides in the area, largely based on what Lung pointed out in his write-up: excellently supported, beautiful views at the reservoir, and close enough to home to keep it from being a travel hassle. In previous years, I took a road bike, so my perspective was shaky as I planned for this year’s run on a fixed-gear. I remembered the Calaveras Wall but that was about it. Anyway, Lung and I basically rode a variation on what we took to LA in Lifecycle, and ride every day, basically: him on a Cinelli X MASH Bolt, me on a Cinelli X Mash [sceond gen]…we were set up a little differently from each other. He used drop bars, and I had bulls. Our gearing was a bit different too: he ran 44/16 for a 72 inchgear as his base, and 44/20 for the steep climbing sections, yielding something like 57 inchgear. I rode a deeper 48/17 (77 inchgear) with a 48/19 (67 inchgear) for climbs. Previously, neither of us had used bail-out gears on our bikes. We brought cogs on Lifecycle but never used em, and on all of our rides in Marin and the like, we muscled through climbs with what we had, and avoided the super-steep stuff altogether out of practicality (if one may use the term when discussing fixed-gear bikes in this context)… but here we were facing climbs that were part of a regular regional loop for roadies, and those climbs were spread out over a good distance, so attrition would also be a factor. As any cyclist can tell you, you can go all out and ride farther and longer than you thought possible… on one climb… but that’s it, you’re not going to recover. To sustain for a whole day you need to see the long picture. We knew this was going to be the most climbing we’d done fixed, and early in the riding season to boot, but we were all in.

It was also one of those rides where there were very few hitches. I got out of the house 15 minutes ahead of schedule, we arrived about 20 minutes ahead of our plan, and had no delays in check in. We ditched the start and got right on the road, didn’t dilly-dally at the rest stops, had great food throughout and at the end, and never needed SAG or field support. No llama drama. And Lung never had tripleCramps and my bike didn’t become, like a helicopter, a cluster of components traveling in unstable formation, which was all in all a nice change.

thewall Team Lope Ride Report : Primavera Metric Century 2012 02
Yep, my gearing was too brutal to make it up the wall without stopping, but not for long.

It wasn’t devoid of challenges. I got two hours of sleep before the start, thanks to a sweltering heat wave. Team Lope vet Jeff Muadib Marks met us on the route, living thereon) and made it up Calaveras before suffering the SAME EXACT MECHANICAL that knocked me out of last year’s Gran Fondo, a rear derailleur shattering that I had never even HEARD of before.

jeffdead Team Lope Ride Report : Primavera Metric Century 2012 02
Here’s Jeff examining his SAW III type deathtrap derailleur

Lung’s salt tablet deployment system was getting a little surly, and I dropped my chain on the rollers due to bearing race issues in my rear axle, though quickly resolved. There was some saddle soreness. I had suffered a pretty bad wrist wrenching on Mt Tam a few days prior that i was nursing at the start of this, which was at full bore inflammation by the end, so the final descent was very painful. BUT. It was the descent after the final climb, after a full effing day of climbing and riding so I was stoked. And like Lung said, it was great to burn your candle on a long day like that but walk away (literally) without injury or recovery issues, feeling like you could ride the next day. You never know, especially when pushing fixies on these things.

calaverasstop Team Lope Ride Report : Primavera Metric Century 2012 02
The Calaveras reservoir area was my favorite. Thanks to Jeff’s misfortune, we got to enjoy it longer than in previous years.

Anyway, it was a great ride. I will say that I wasn’t as well equipped as Lung, partly avoidable and partly not. For one thing, I chose to keep my 77 inchgear as my main drive, rather than gear back down to the 72 we both generally ride… had I switched back, I would have probably felt better as the day went on, because of the muscle work I was essentially wasting. I mean, it’s a compromise, right. Go to 72, spin more, ride slower. But at 77, ride faster and work harder, sooner. I needed to swap cogs sooner than Lung, and I was suffering more at the end of the day. My bail out gear was a 67, which was not enough. It was sure as hell better than the 77 but it was still too steep for these climbs, so while I DID successfully ride all the climbs on the route, I stopped a number of times to recover.

snakekis Team Lope Ride Report : Primavera Metric Century 2012 02
Interesting snake whip skids coming down to Rest Stop 3 at speed…

But man, we had a blast. Skidding all over the place, flying along those rollers, great conversations on the route and at the rest stops with wide-eyed riders that marveled out our general madness, and I can’t reiterate this enough: AWESOME ride support. Strawberries and pineapple and all sorts of carbs at every stop, fudgecicles, ICE for the water bottles, effing ROOSTERS for no reason, more SAG vehicles on the road than I can remember ever seeing, even when you consider the smaller scale of this event compared to the rider count of something like the Gran Findo or the Marin Century. It was just a great time all day, even when it wasn’t.

That’s the last of the unreasonable fixed-gear assaults on event rides for this year, as Marin Century and Gran Fondo both warrant road bike use (I mean, warrant it MORE) and we missed the Wine Country Century (and gave up on Solvang due to travel time)… but we’ll continue to ride our unreasonable fixed-gear bikes up unreasonable climbs in Marin and around the bay area year-round, so wave or holler if you see us…

wrcommentrush  Team Lope Ride Report : Primavera Metric Century 2012 02

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Related posts:

  1. team lope ride report : primavera metric century 2012
  2. Team Lope Ride Report: Primavera Century 2008
  3. Team Lope Ride Report: Mt. Tam Climbing Century

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Posted in: TLTC Items to Amuse by ironlung | Comments (0)

1335196432 team lope ride report : primavera metric century 2012

despite being pretty grueling, the FFBC PRIMAVERA METRIC CENTURY was one of the best event rides that i’ve ever been on, and WR and i agreed that it was one of the best that TLTC had participated in, ever.

for the most part, this was the kind of ride we love and do with regularity — dozens of miles of long, winding rollies. that’s my favorite kind of ride because you have to be on your toes (cornering) and you can’t pussyfoot (climbing and descending the rollies takes effort), but you don’t kill yourself. you put in good work and you feel like you’ve had a ride, but you’re not blown out and useless for a day.

however, on this ride there were two distinct factors that we knew about going in. one was the heat. it was fucking desert hot. the sun just crushing you with almost tangible weight. this also means that you’re covered in sunscreen, which makes you filthy, and when it runs into your eyes, blind. the other factor was the climbs. with 3786 climbing feet over 63.5 miles, it SOUNDS like it would be a challenging but not necessarily backbreaking ride. but keep in mind that 2300 of those climbing feet are in two individual climbs — "the wall," at mile 18, and another at mile 50. because we knew we were going to be facing these challenges (and because i’d had a throat infection for a week and was still on antibiotics), each of us had outfitted out bikes with a bailout gear, like so…

1335198116 team lope ride report : primavera metric century 2012

my regular gear ratio is 44/16, which is a nice middleground 72.3 gear inch. the bailout shown above takes me to 44/20, which is a 57.9 gear inch — baby’s first climber. please note that i also carry an extra couple chain links to accommodate this bigger cog. my chain is outfitted with a master link, as is the extra section, so swapping doesn’t take me long at all. it proved to be a good decision. "the wall" is 1100 feet straight up, over barely 2 miles. "not for babies," as our brothers of HYPE down south would say. it stops guys on full cassettes, and we were fixed. given that fact, coupled with the heat, and trebled with the fact that we’d still have another 40-some miles to go afterwards, we didn’t even try it on our regular gearing, we just swapped at the bottom and proceeded. and even with this climbing gear, i was beat up at the top of that climb. covered in sweat, pushing hard, and moving slowly. but we both made it, and that’s what counts. then we flipped back to the other side for the next 30 miles or so.

we’d hooked up with TLTC supersoldier jefe, who was ghosting the ride, just before the wall, and he made it up and over with us (on his fucking BADASS klein road bike), as well as another few miles before he had the same catastrophic derailleur failure that WR had on the grand fondo some months back. his derailleur caught in the spokes and was torn upwards and apart in a millisecond. luckily for him, it happened on an ascent rather than a descent. we pulled over and endeavored to convert him to a single-speed so he could at least limp into the next town, but his shit was HOSED and it wasn’t happening, so we begrudgingly left him there with a promise to call his old lady once we got a signal, which WR did. jefe also lucked out when SAG brought him down into town, despite the fact that he wasn’t a registered rider. so everything worked out great there.

the only other mechanical we had was when WR threw a chain. turns out his axle bearing race (which is a misnomer, as he has sealed bearings, but it’s still called that because it has the exterior locknut) had come loose on his last wheel swap, allowing for his axle nut to loosen up over a few miles. once we identified the issue, he was good to go in a matter of seconds.

at mile 50 we hit the second climb, which was a different story. it was also 1000 or so feet of climbing, but this time was over a more realistic 5 miles. as such, we went into it without the intent of switching gears. we pushed up a mile or maybe even two, muscling along in our standard gear inch. we pushed and pushed, but every single time we’d round a corner, it kept going. there was never an end in sight, and that gets to you mentally. for me, it was when i finally got to a point that i could see a good 100 yards ahead and it was still going up that i decided to switch gears. ordinarily that would fuck with me but not push me to bail out. it was because at the terminus of that 100 yards, where it turned another corner, i saw a cyclist coming down the hill, whipping around the corner at speed. that meant that there was even more. and keep in mind that we’d been going for 50 miles in 90-plus degree heat, plus the previous climb. and it was a good thing that i did pull over to switch because i needed to take off my helmet & cap, as well as open up my jersey and down half a bottle of water. i was more burnt than i thought. additionally, after i did switch, there was no more shade till you got to the top. that’s a big deal. had i kept pushing through that on my regular gear, i’d have opened myself up to heat stroke.

at the top, once again, we swapped back to our regular gearing, which would take us all the way back to the start for another road ride conquered by the TLTC west coast commanders in a fixed fashion. we’re killing it these days, and getting known for it, and we fucking love it.

ordinarily when we show up on "fixies" to road rides we are met with a mix of admiration and indignation. some people condescend to us with passive-aggressive observations like "that’s just stupid," or "why would you do that?" others tell us that we’re awesome, or, as on this ride, "animals." we take it all in stride because we’re just out to have fun and challenge ourselves. we try and remain good-natured about it when people are shitheads, and we try to normalize it to others when they contend that we’re doing something impossible. but on this ride, it was extra nice because we didn’t really get any of the indignation. we were the only two people doing it fixed and we got a lot of props for it. people cheered us on and congratulated us and even wanted to talk to us about how and why we were doing it. it was really nice, a very cool community on this ride.

one of the greatest things about the day was the support and organization. with the possible exception of ALC, this was the best-supported and organized event ride i’d ever been on. there were enough SAG vehicles, the rest stops never felt overcrowded, nor were they ever out of any food/liquid supplies or medical/mechanical aid. it was really wonderful. nevermind that we had access to a pretty large meal at the end. lasagne, hot dogs, salad, fruit, juice, brownies, cookies, whatever we wanted. very awesome.

the one improvement that we offered as a suggestion was that they could have used a bit more clear route direction, but that was suggested with a caveat — the route WAS marked clearly, it was just marked on the road surface with spraypaint rather than on trees and such with signage. not everyone knew to look to the pavement rather than to signs. i figured it out early on and had no troubles at all, but others didn’t know about it, so we suggested that they just make that better known.

i was also happy to have made a new friend on the ride. this guy here saw me taking pictures of him so he strutted over and regarded me…

1335200759 team lope ride report : primavera metric century 2012

a great day and a great ride. and stay tuned to this link, because i have video at home that i have to edit down and post.

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Related posts:

  1. Team Lope Ride Report: Primavera Century 2008
  2. Team Lope Ride Report: Mt. Tam Climbing Century
  3. Team Lope Ride Report – ALC Day on the Ride, WR’s Account

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wrenchedup The Flexibilities and the Silences

So the Primavera Century is coming up this weekend, and Lung and I are doing it fixed. At first, I was gung-ho without much attention tot he details only because:
a) we ride fixed everywhere, frequently climbing
2) we rode to LA without an issue
d) fackit

But I started thinking about the last few times I did this event… the Calaveras Road section has ‘the wall’ which is just one of three big climbs of the day… I remember this being an issue for many of the road riders, let alone a couple of dorks on fixies. I got through it, and the other climbs, using my usual double-ring road bike config, but in thinking about muscling up those on a fixed gear, three details emerged:
a) it’s one thing to muscle up a climb, as we often do. It’s another thing to blow that much anaerobic resource on a long day of riding, headwinds and heat and other climbs to follow
2) I recently upgeared to 76*
d) ohfack

Additionally, I haven’t overhauled Crook Type 3 pretty much since I built it up after ALC… and that’s far too long. I rotate through bikes (at one point, 8 of them) in my commute, so the more rigorous overhaul isn’t as necessary for me or as frequent anyway as it is for Lung, riding the same bike every day with few exceptions. And I’ve done several maintenance and corrections evenings, spot-overhauling parts of it. But the creaks int he bottom bracket were joined by some ping-pings recently, and my brake pads were stubs. So it was time to do it up.

I didn’t COMPLETELY overhaul it in the sense that I didn’t break it down to it’s complete extrusion photo level of strippage, but I did the primary stuff: complete drivetrain overhaul, brakes, all bolts and major adjustments. All I didn’t do is pull the 17 off, as I recently put it on, and I didn’t break down the headset.

I’m now whisper silent. I mean, I still have the minor chatter of chainline issues, but the bike itself is a ninja again (a green and white and elkhide and chainline-chattering ninja)… it hasn’t been this quiet since I built it. So smooth. And it’s of course all thanks to judicious applications of my best pal in the shop:

libedup The Flexibilities and the Silences
Ole Phil never lets me down…

gearedup The Flexibilities and the Silences
As far as the Primavera goes, what I ended up electing to do is keep the 76 on the one side, and add a 19 cog on the other, which gets me to around 67. So the total rig is not as nimble as Lung’s 72/03 (or whatever that 21 gets him) but at least we both have a climbing gear to fall back on as needed, one way or another.

I rode the hills by my house a few times on the new cog to get cinched, per the usual routine, and rode in on it, which was sort of torturous, not unlike trying to spend much high-cadence saddle time on Rapscallion with it’s 20 cog (baby bikery) but I really wanted to give it some time to settle in. I will say it’s nimble to climb with it.

Excelsior!
*I’ve been saying it was 77 but I checked and it actually rounds to 76, my bad. 48/17

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Related posts:

  1. Brooklyn Bike Jumble
  2. You Dirty Crook
  3. Bike Build Process Log: Crook Type 3 Conversion

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Posted in: TLTC Items to Amuse by TRDL thom | Comments (0)

cargobasic Rapscallion Streamlined

I mentioned this elsewhere, but I recently decommissioned Rapscallion, my baby/cargo fixie. I pretty much delayed doing this until the last possible moment, as I LOOOOVE riding fixed with my daughter in front of me. I’m melancholy about not being able to do so. But 10 pounds of rack and 2 pounds of seat and 30 pounds of daughter PLUS groceries was becoming pretty squirrely. So rather than have a dreaded overturn and injure her, I decided to bite the bullet and move on to the Xtracycle Conversion of my 20er, which will put Wee-Z behind me, and eventually Matteo too. And in 6 months, I can put the seat back on here and take HIM on solo fixie jaunts.

In the meantime, I have this bike at the office set up for grocery runs. Super low gearing means it’s easy to noodle around and skid and zip through town, and I like that it still has a purpose.

I asked Wee-Z if she was OK with Rapscallion being decommissioned if it meant that we’d soon be riding on much longer rides on the new bike setup this spring. Her response:
caught Rapscallion Streamlined

Not actually true. But you know this.

profwrcomment stooges Rapscallion Streamlined

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Related posts:

  1. Rapscallion Loses Some Reach
  2. Bike Build Process Log: Rapscallion – Live Load Test Ride
  3. Bike Build Process Log- Rapscallion: Get On Up

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tltcgen Occupy Bike Seat Occupy Bike Seat

03/27/12

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 Occupy Bike Seat

Drunkcyclist, which I once thought was one surly, sassy individual but now know to be several, created a cool Occupy Bike Seat sticker, which I hope to soon acquire.

On the heels of that discovery, I noted the quite savvy use of a very aesthetically pleasing, in other words FIT, model to showcase a recent 29er review.

occupybike2 Occupy Bike Seat
Here she is, displaying an Occupy Bike Seat sticker, making this relevant to the post.

occupybike3 Occupy Bike Seat
Here she is displaying 29er riding fitment.

I love it! This is what we’ve been missing in Team lope Tyre Clubbe reviews. I mean, sure sometimes we have a soon-to-be-three wee lass modeling the latest baby bike fixie builds, but we need more hotness!

profwrcomment stooges Occupy Bike Seat

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Related posts:

  1. Swarm Seat Clamp Kickstarter Project
  2. Team Lope Bike Grrls – Lucky Seat
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Posted in: TLTC Items to Amuse by TRDL thom | Comments (0)

wbrubber1 Wrongbike Rubber Side Down

As Wrongbike continues the transition from a vintage themed rando style ride to a more composite fixie, I decided to pull the red stripe gumwalls off and replace them with Vittoria rubber. The gumwalls had tread but had been on for over 5 years so I decided maybe I didn’t want to be skidding on them.

wbrubber2 Wrongbike Rubber Side Down

My first thought after putting the new rubber on (these are 25s) was that it was jarring to have brown leather goods and chrome/silver polished parts and then black tyres. But that’s from having gums on there for so long. Look at any vintage roadster out there, even with whitewalls on, it’s got black rubber. Once I got used to it, I started to like it. The new slammed cockpit and pistas are making a big difference in making it aggressive too, along with dropping the wood fenders.

wbrainmode Wrongbike Rubber Side Down
It’s really fun in this configuration. I’ll be wrapping the bars in elkhide when I get a few hours and martinis to spare, but as is it’s been enjoyable. I can skid in the drops, at least a short bit, though my experimenting was cut short by a loose pedal clip. I need to tighten that up. No fun flying out of the pedal on a skid. Above, Rain Mode.

All in all, refreshing to ride this bike for the first time in at least a year…

profwrcomment stooges Wrongbike Rubber Side Down

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Related posts:

  1. Bike Build Process Log: Ye Blacke Death – Rubber Side Down
  2. Bike Build Process Log: Ye Blacke Death – Rubber Hits Road
  3. Bike Build Process Log: wrongBike – Effing Forks, Seatposts!

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Posted in: TLTC Items to Amuse by TRDL thom | Comments (0)

wbrake1 Wrongbikes Brakes Need a Break

This is just a pet peeve post. Not much to report.

wbrake2 Wrongbikes Brakes Need a Break

I slung the front brake on the latest iteration of Wrongbike the other night, using new Tektro finger levers sized for the pista bars being used, as donated by one Lung.

The annoyance I feel is the adjustment of the ‘clothes hanger’ on the front brake cable, which collects the straddling cable that in turn holds the two sides of the caliper system together. This Brake Delta or Brake Triangle, or, as I like to call it, COCKBIT, drives me nuts. Sure, I’m somewhat spoiled by stringing and adjusting side-pull caliper brakes. But the center-pull design is what I started out on with these conversions, first with Fixie and then with this bike. I’ve adjusted these 5,000 times, and enjoyed precisely zero of them. Now, look, it’s not rocket science, I know. But to test your setup you have to cinche that cockbit down tight, and that’s always a pain in the ass for me. Wrench on the back, socket on the front, fingers bleeding from the brake cable pokery invariably, and somehow it’s never properly adjusted the first time, and I have to adjust it two or three times. Let’s not forget you’re either holding the brakes together somehow, or you’ve sized it, let go of the brakes, then are setting the cockbit blind and hoping you didn’t slip a bit.

I have a tool called the Third Hand by some, that grabs the cable and pulls it tight against the tool itself, freeing you up for the aforementioned wrench and socket action, but I’ve had little success with it, due to clearance issues. The porteur rack makes access very tight.

I think what also frustrates me is that you go through this and the end result is a brake that works OHHKAY. The stopping power on those little chalkboard eraser pads is there, but not THERE there. And you have none of the mechanical advantage of side-pulls when using a finger lever. You aren’t supposed to be using the finger lever, actually. That’s part of the problem.

I haven’t decided yet whether I’ll keep this brake as is or just through a simple side pull on there. We’ll see, once I get to take it out for a test… which, looking at the longevity of this storm system, may be April.

Note also the space madness of getting the brake cable housing looped down to the hanger. I don’t like that one bit. So far.

profwrcomment slang Wrongbikes Brakes Need a Break

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Related posts:

  1. one lever, two brakes
  2. Bike Build Process Log- Rapscallion: The Hanging
  3. Bike Build Process Log: Villain- Cranks, Brakes and the Like

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Posted in: TLTC Items to Amuse by TRDL thom | Comments (0)

3tiredayslicks Tyre Day and thus the Thickslicks

I hate changing tyres. At least I used to. You have to understand, this comes from twin unpleasant scenarios: too many field tyre changes that usually involved two or three tubes due to pinch flats or valve collap; and home changes where I fought with deep, tight road wheel clincher rims and kevlar bead tyres until my fingers fell off. But a few weeks ago, I went to switch out front wheels on Crook, and it went so smoothly that I decided to take on another wheel with some issues, and that went well too. So, it appeared like my curse was lifted. So last night, I went to town on ALL my remaining wheel projects, while BBQing ‘Honest Dogs’.

1tiredaydrink Tyre Day and thus the Thickslicks

Step 01: Beverage. It’s been an unseasonably warm weekend (and new week) here in Northern California, and I spent a lot of it outdoors with the kids, though not riding. So I was in a cool, refreshing drink mood. Hence, sangria for the people.

2tiredaytask Tyre Day and thus the Thickslicks

My tasks were pretty straight-forward: New rear wheel on Crook, so new rubber going on that one; replacing the rubber on the front wheel to match, because I’m a matchy-mcmatch dork, which sort of goes against fixie-hipster science; pulled the white tyres off of the white track wheels, and the black/white Everwears off of the black wheels, because I was inspired at 3am to go white on black, and not in a SugarDVD capacity. Necessarily. Lots of taking off of one rim and applying to another rim, lots of opportunities for exploding tubes and mayhem. Also, kids running around, alcohol and open flame. And a knife. And ladybugs, which are in mating season.

4tiredayslickon Tyre Day and thus the Thickslicks

One area in which Lung and I differ is the aesthetics of the THICKSLICK tyres that were released by Freedom last fall. He doesn’t like the big lower case goofy font branding. I actually like it, because it evokes the fat tires of drag racers I saw as a kid (well, saw on TV or whatever) where they had similar lettering. I think it’s cool that the lettering works it’s way down to the contact area of the tyre. I love love love slicks. And after beating myself up skidding on Gatorskin Hardshells (the super-beefy kevlar contis I swear by for distance riding on road bikes and on this bike, even beefier than normal Gatorskins) and basically wasting them, I thought I’d have fun with a fire-and-forget skid tyre.

ThickSlicks are interesting. There’s more there there than I originally thought. I assumed these were cheap rubber tyres like Vittoria Randos that are so soft you can draw on the sidewalk with them on hot days, right. But according to folks I know around town, even the basic model (the Sport version I’m using, vs the beefier kevlar Elite model) lasts forever, even skidding. It’s the principle of mass and how they built the section up. It’s a thick tyre. Noticeably so. And much heavier than others, as a result. They went on pretty easily (after muscling my nearly new Gatorskins off) and look great. And, as of this morning, I can tell you they skid even BETTER.

5tiredaywhiteon Tyre Day and thus the Thickslicks

This was the other project: I took the black Chukker wheels that Joe at 718c made me for the baby bike, Rapscallion, and put white track rubber on them. That bike is getting repainted matte black to match the original frame for that project (the Mixte) so i thought it would be a neat look. They look pretty boss to me.

No explosions, no lacerations, no deaths. Big deal, some tyre swaps. But this is an area in which Chiaramonte’s Misfortune Principle generally applies in quantity. So yay.

profwrcomment slang Tyre Day and thus the Thickslicks

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Related posts:

  1. Bike Build Process Log: wrongBike – Tyre Trepidations
  2. vittoria rubino tech tyre
  3. SOMA everwear tyre review

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tltcgen RapscalLean RapscalLean

03/01/12

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rapslean1 RapscalLean

So the fun thing about Rapscallion, my toddler toting cargo fixie, is that I can transform it into a pretty reasonable flyer in a very short period of time. I realized I never posted what that was about, so here we are.

The Gomoh front rack is secured by two bolts in the base of the rack, attaching to a mount that runs behind the brake calipers, and then two bolts that secure it to the forks down by the wheel. Pop, pop, pop and pop. It’s off. Mounting bracket remains. You could put a rusty auger bit on this if you wanted to scare any cyclist-mauling ambulances.

The baby seat is held onto a mounting plate by two long pegs that are further secured by a cotter pin. I leave the mount on, and remove the seat quick-snap. The mounting plate is of a spacer type so it sits on the steerer. I considered quickly removing it too, the first time I did this, but was lazy about it. Now, I look at the plate as a forgiving object when smashed into, compared to the isolated spacer stack on the tall steerer when it’s absent, if one were to, oh, I don’t know, skid like a silly fool.

rapslean2 RapscalLean

It’s not glamorous, but man it feels light. Partly this is because of contextual awareness: I’m so used to this thing having 20 pounds of rack and 30 pounds of daughter on the front wheel. So freed from that, it zips. Frankly, the one complaint I have is that it’s not fast enough, because it has a 20 cog on there, designed for that normal loading.

rapslean3 RapscalLean

So one of the main reasons I took this bike out this way yesterday was that it was raining, and this doubles as my rain bike. But also, I wanted to see if I could start expanding my skidding beyond the comfort zone of the bulls on Crook. I’m happy to report a few observations:

- I can skid off risers, though not as easily yet as bulls. Though, when I put my mind to it, I found it pretty easy to get forward.
- I can skid on SOMA Everwears MUCH easier than my bulletproof Gatorskins. This stands to reason, as the gators are textured and grippy, and the Everwears are softer rubber, and well regarded for skidding anyway. But my first time comparing, so wow.
- The unwinding bottom bracket cup has not renewed it’s pernicious unwinding since I took it home and got up IN there. We’ll see.

Anyway, transformations! And yes, in Stay Limber Mode, this is called RapscalLean.

wrcomment mustache RapscalLean

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Related posts:

  1. Team Lope Bike Bio: Fix-e
  2. Bike Build Process Log: Rapscallion – Live Load Test Ride
  3. Team Lope Ride Report – You CAN Take it With You

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