THIS is an interesting piece of tech, and i should immediately caveat that it’s made for the downhilling/MTB set. downhill bikes commonly have an oversized 1.5" headtube (news to me, not being a mountain biker), into which one would install this headset, but then run a 1-1/8" fork. by doing so, the tech of the headset allows you to change your head angle by up to 1.5 degrees positive or negative from 0, where 0 is the actual angle of the headtube.

yes, you can accomplish the same thing by running forks with different rakes, but that requires a whole bunch of forks and this doesn’t.

VERY fucking cool if you’re a techie. which i am.

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As you have seen from previous posts, Crook was my Cinelli Mash fixie build, which had an expressed purpose: it was my ride for Aids Lifecycle. When I bought and built it, my vision was just to build the fixie I could do the MOST on… the longest days, the best climbs, the most agility, etc. So, it was done up with road drops, ridden for a few months before the ride (about 400 miles) and then on ALC 9 from SF to LA (another 570 miles)…

But something changed, along that preparation period before ALC. I found my initial rejection of the green limited edition version of this frame turning from dislike to interest. I couldn’t shake it. And then I had the idea: ride the gray ghost to LA, then have a metamorphosis to the green. So I took a risk on the green frame, site unseen, and ordered it before I left.

My initial plan was to come home, strip the bike, assemble the new one, then ride up to the city and meet Lung later that week with the surprise build. I had kept my plan a secret. The frame was shipped to my office while we were on the ride. All was well.

Until I got it home the day after we returned. The frame itself was gorgeous. The color is indescribable, and no pics do it justice. But the fork had carbon damage at the crown, painted over by the factory. Unacceptable! So I had to wait several weeks to get this resolved through my guys at City Grounds (zack is awesome, I say) and an understaffed Cinelli US crew. Ultimately, I got the replacement fork, and discovered the crown race was missing. We got that sorted, and I received the race in the mail last Friday, just in time to finish the build before Lung would arrive that Sunday for a birthday ride. The build was done from the back forward, but the front end was waiting on that race.

The ride is a dream, and you can see the Bio of the bike here.

Below are my process pics from the conversion, which involved using the original Crook bottom end, and a new top end.

:::

Unfortunately, the photos of the frame unboxing and the back end assembly were largely lost to a bad SD card. However, imagine me pulling a brilliant frame from the box and squeeing. The green is this iridescent color… not quite flaked, but shimmery. And more importantly, it’s a warm green, not a cold green. It’s paired with a creamy opaque white, a look I’ve always loved, going back to my one-time plans to white-paint-dip a stained-wood raw coffee table top for a project years ago. I love that look.

First, the original Crook was stripped to the bones, for sale to a fellow who was heading to San Diego fixed in a pursuit of folly similar to our fixed-gear Aids Lifecycle endeavors. How’s THAT for synchronicity! Last shot of Crook 1.0′s frame.

While waiting for the fork situation to be resolved, I dragged everything up to the deck for the extrusion shot (using the damaged fork, because hey.) and then decided to do the back end build work up there, while simultaneously BBQing and hanging out with wee Z. Here’s proof.

Here’s a close-up of that damage to the fork. Not a MASSIVE deal, but the concern I had was two-fold: one, the top surface of the crown is unpainted, so it’s visible in the gap between the frame and fork. This would be more obvious as a result. And two, it’s not like it was a sealed defect. That’s the EDGE of the paint. It’ll fray.

That was never fully resolved at the time of this writing. My boys at City Grounds took up the effort in dealing with Cinelli on that front, as weeks had gone by without any fruitful response from the manufacturer. It will be an argument over manufacturing damage vs shop damage. I believe manufacturing. In the meantime, as these weeks went by, my Crook parts hanging on the bikeBasement pegboards like those trophy skulls int he Predator ship, Lung was fast at acquiring and gleefully riding his new Cinelli cockpit. I was dying. I prayed he wouldn’t have a similar issue, like opening the box and finding his bars twisted into the shape of a rhombus or something. They weren’t. Gorgeous bars!

So as I mentioned, the bottom end was remaining from Crook 1.0. These were all new parts before ALC, right, so this transformation was to swap out frames, and the top end changes were largely cosmetic, except for the bars. So I kept my wheels, tyres, cranks, pedals, cog, brake… well, new chain, but other than that, same same. For the new stuff, the idea was to have chrome up top, black down below. I could have done all black, but the few green builds I see on the supernet go all black in the components or in one case all silver. So, in keeping with the ‘dipped’ theme of the white on the frame, the top end was dipped silver. Conceptually. Here wee Z is carefully scrutinizing some small gifts for manufacturing errors. That’s a shim set for the Nitto bars (unfortunately a necessity), a star nut and a special awesome Thomson solver stem cap. I used Nitto RB-021 compact bulls on this build, since the road drop necessity of ALC was over. I sourced a sweet silver cross lever directly from Paul Comp, too. Awesome. Same stem and seatpost, both Thomson, just now in silver. I used a shorty stem this time, feeling like going compact would get me into the bulls’ drop position easier. This is still pending final approval, as on the road it may be too close to me in this configuration, putting too much pressure on my arms. The saddle is one of my Brooks, already broken in, and the wrap is elkhide.

Here’s one Lung will like. Once I finally got my crown, I built my own crown race setter. And by built, I mean I had the hardware stoe cut me a big section of 1 1/2" black PVC. Tappity tap tap!
Look at that, saved $100 right there!

To me, the scariest step is cutting the steerer. On Crook 1.0, I left about 5mm extra, ringed with a final spacer above the stem, anticipating needing some height adjustment on ALC as I went. Didn’t end up needing it. Plus, this time, the bars are compact, so the taller the stem, the closer they are. Anyway, measure TWICE cut once, here at chez Wrongrobot.

Setting the star nut is actually kind of fun. Whamma bamma.

Here the bike is ready for wrapping. The Paul lever is installed on the thicker portion of the bars, as far over as possible to minimize cable housing scrape on the sharp curve of the X2 front end. This would be the slowest step, wrapping the bike up (literally) taking me from Friday night after getting back from Lung’s birthday party, through Saturday and into the next evening.

The elkhide is really interesting. It’s stretchier than calf hide, and is more porous, shows more defects. It’s really rad though. I had started with a lighter color that purported to match the Brooks honey color saddle, but was too tan, so i sent that back and got the darker brown, which matched perfectly. I used something close to a baseball glove stitch. I had no experience with this. You use one thick waxed cord with two stubby needles, and work from the stem outward. I’d get three good stitches and then a fail, distracted by my baby hurtling herself off of something or Anne Hathaway on film or whatever. But it wasn’t arduous. Just required time to get right. Go slowly, etc. In practice, on the road the wrap slips a bit as it’s stretchy and you apply so much force with your hands, so it pulled away a bit from the edges where they started, but still good. Will take some miles to settle in. Easily the most gorgeous bar covering I’ve ever had.

And with that, Crook Type 3 was born. We rode Paradise Loop under windy conditions, and it was a dream. I have some adjustments to make, reducing the inchgear down to the more universal 72 from 75, and some messing around with seat and stem position, but overall, love it. LOVE iot.

So that’s the story of how Crook became Crook Type 3 in a post-ALC transformation!

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Friends of Team Lope, here’s some news. Crook, my grey/grey Cinelli Mash, is no more.
Or rather, it no longer is as it was. These photos were taken 24 hours before Crook ceased to be in my possession. Not from theft or malady, but by design.

I thought this was a nice swan song for Crook 1.0… the frame and fork were sold the next morning. But what of Crook’s majestic legacy? That bike made it to LA from SF, almost 600 miles of brutal fixie fire. This cannot be the end…

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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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THIS is marketed as a "polo" fork, but all it amounts to is a fork with a 120mm spacing. apparently, it gives polo guys another two options for gearing. but what i love about it is that it gives ANY rider another two options for gearing. let’s say, oh, i dunno, you’re riding your fixed gear bike to, let’s say, los angeles. and you don’t wanna suffer up any monster climbs or blow out your knees on any monster descents. but you ALSO don’t wanna have to pack a chainwhip and lockring wrench. boom. using two fixed/fixed rear wheels, you could have a total of 4 different gears to choose from. mashing a flat century? roll big. climbing all day? roll low. the possibilities are really very far-reaching. one fixed/fixed and one fixed/free would give you three fixed choices and a freewheel for if you get injured. a fixed/fixed and free/free would give you essentially two different bikes, each with two different gearings. it’s pretty goddamn cool, if you ask me. heavy, though. and that’s before you put a wheel in it.

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with half a buzz on last night, i ducked down into the shop to try and make some more progress on the old bianchi i just had powdercoated cocaine white. the fork was already attached, and the upgrade to the cockpit of another bike left a handlebar in the mix for use here, so i knew i wanted to at least throw that on…

great, done. just needs levers and tape.

i also knew that SOMEWHERE in the shop were some gorgeous friction shifters i snapped up at the bike swap a while back. shimano 600s with a beautiful filigree embossing. i dug around until i found them and threw them on…

just by themselves, that’s the most beautiful component on this bike. they look so fucking fly it’s NUTS. i’m very, VERY pleased.

unfortunately, the rest of the stuff i put on ended up being total fails.

waterbottle cage fail…

i actually love those profile cages. i have two of em on an underseat mount on the leader, and one of em on the frame of loos3y(tm), my fixed townie. not only are they super slick-looking, but they are the perfect size for a 24 of PBR. unfortunately, on this particular bike, with it’s vintage lines, lugged steel, and gorgeous color, it does NOT work. so that’s coming off tonight and will be replaced with a more standard cage, probably in silver, if i have one.

front derailleur fail…

i didn’t realize that the new front derailleur i had was gray. i thought it was silver. that’s coming off, too. i think the vintage one that was on the bike when i got it is full-silver, so i think that’s what’s going back on.

rear derailleur — fail? win? yet to be decided…

i thought i had a modern rear derailleur, but i was wrong. this is what was on the bike when i got it. it’s a darker silver than i’d like, but it’s not gray. and it’s vintage, so it fits thematically. maybe it just needs a polish and i’ll be happy, i dunno. more on that later.

the thing with both derailleurs is this — if i fall back on what was on the bike when i got it, it’ll be a complete set, it’ll fit thematically (the bike’s going to remain "vintage-ish"), and everybody wins. if i upgrade, the groupo will be lighter. that’s really the only benefit.

but there’s another factor. i have another road bike, toro, hanging up in the shop, and it has full, modern campy. i would very much love to use that whole setup. it doesn’t matter that i have shimano shifters, cause they’re friction shifters and friction shifters work with any derailleur.

adding to the madness is that it’s very, VERY likely that i’ll be using toro’s back wheel on this bike temporarily, in order to be able to ride it this upcoming weekend. and while that wheel will be a major aesthetic thom in my side in the short-term, it would be much more hassle-free to just run that derailleur along with that wheel.

so i dunno what’s happening, other than more wrenchTime tonight. i hope to get all the rear shifting running, one way or the other, before tomorrow morning.

till then, please enjoy.

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Ye Blacke Death – Prepare to be Toled!

And so it begins!
With the wheels arriving yesterday from our friends at 718c, the assembly can finally proceed.
Unlike some projects, I’m actually already underway by the time this was taken, as I did the headset overhaul and reassembled that tight to the fork before stopping.

Anyway, with some luck and fortuitous timing, I might have wheels down this weekend!

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i’m not typically one to clean my bike fastidiously, but when it’s nasty and it’s been ridden hard without a tuneup for 813 miles, 570 of which were one single trip, well, it’s time.

my bike had a bunch of accessories (water bottle cages and a cyclometer) and an identification number and an in-case-of-emergency tag on it, and over the course of the last 813 miles, my bottom bracket had worked it’s way through all of the thread grease (constant pressure squeezes the grease out of the threads over time), and was creaking like a whore’s bed. DEFINITELY time.

you can see there that it was just caked with grime. that was road water and dust and gravel and powerade and all manner of nasty shit that’d caked up over the last couple months. you can also see in that picture that i’ve already cleaned the seat stays, so the contrast is a little more clear.

helpful hint : best bike cleaner in the world is WD-40 on an old sock.

here i’ve taken off the cranks and pulled out the bottom bracket and cleaned the whole rear triangle and some of the downtube. i wiped out all of the old grease and got all the nasty shit off the frame with the WD-40.

after cleaning off the cranks and BB, i reinstalled each with liberal amounts of grease. then i cleaned the rear wheel and lubed the chain, removed all the accessories, cleaned the seatpost and seat, and replaced my brake pads…

my brake pads had been on WR’s old road bike toro, which i bought from him long ago. i don’t know if he ever changed em. so it’s entirely likely that they were YEARS old.

here’s all the shit that went in the garbage or back into the parts bins.

what’s funny is that since the only thing i REALLY needed to do was the drivetrain, i cleaned nothing on the cockpit. the fork and front wheel and bars and stem and brake are all still pretty dirty. it’s clean-ISH. hahaha!!! but i got the imperative stuff done, and i can hit the front end later. i’ve got shit to do, dammit!

ta-daa! ready to ride!

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boom. run a 20" wheel on your 700c frame and rock a true cargo hauler. pics and more HERE. the site got coverage from PROLLY and URBANVELO before he really had any stockpile of the product, so all orders are pre-orders at this point, but still. loving it. it may not be the prettiest thing in the world, but talk about FUNCTIONAL.

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3. Bike Build Process Log: Crook – Drilled, Comma, Fork!

hooBUDDY. when WR and i dropped off our frames at the powdercoaters (maas brothers in livermore) two wednesdays ago, i had no idea what the results would be. i mean, they come highly recommended by one of the more reputable shops in SF (freewheel bikes), but given his last nightmare with powdercoating (in which they essentially ruined his forks), i had the fears. i always have the fears at my first interaction with a new service provider, though, so i sat back, picked the color i wanted, and executed.

the first thing i noticed when we got em back (besides the fact that they looked AMAZING), was that because they have experience with bicycles, they knew what to tape off. my BB threads, my steerer tube threads, my shifter mount threads, my derailleur hanger threads, my effing CHAIN TENSIONER THREADS — all of it had been taped off and was smooth steel. very professional, very impressive, and combined with the outstanding color quality and the cost, has definitely made them my go-to choice from now on for coloring bikes. total win.

the color of the bianchi will not ever be able to be seen in process pics, i fear. i’ll keep trying over the course of the project, but it’s such an odd color that i fear cameras won’t be able to catch it without being manned by some sort of very experienced photographer. it’s what i call "cocaine white," and it’s essentially a pearlescent almost-silver with metalFlake inclusions that make it sparkle. when it’s indoors, it goes from looking cream to looking gray to looking white. when it’s outdoors, however, that fucker lights up in the most brilliant metalFlake white color you’ve ever seen. it’s simply GORGEOUS.

and here’s a detail shot of where the seatstays meet the seat tube — the only branded place left, as it had an embossed "bianchi" there, which i am LOVING…

so with everything back in the shop, i started putting shit together. first, the BB. i got a campagnolo BB for 5 effing dollars at a bike swap some months back, and that was the first to go on. it wasn’t easy, though. the sandblasting that maas did obviously left some grit in the threads of the BB shell, so i had to use a TON of grease and i had to twist each cup in, then back it out, regrease it, and twist it in again. additionally, because this BB is used, it’s not nearly as smooth as i’d like or hope it to be. it spins just fine (tested it quickly with a set of cranks i had laying around), but it doesn’t whip around like it should. but hey, 5 dollars, campy, what do i care…

next up, tossed on the seat binder bolt. a little bit difficult here, because the holes for same had not been taped off (as i imagined they wouldn’t, and quite frankly, SHOULDN’T be). so it was a struggle to pop it through, but once it was in, everything was fine…

moving forward from there, i pressed in the HS cups. this was pretty tough, actually, because the ghettoGrown HS cup press i made is just BARELY not long enough to press em both at once into this longer head tube. so i had to do em one at a time, which had me fearing, because that puts one plate ON the fresh powdercoat as you press in the first cup. additionally, my HS is a tange-levin, so the top cup isn’t a cup, it’s more like a backwards race. the cup faces DOWN on the top, and is the first threaded piece you put on. what this means is that when pressing the top cup, i had the other plate of the press on a surface that would adversely affect the operation of the HS if deformed in any way. but it all worked out in the end, and the HS cups were pressed…

then i went to install the fork crown race, and things started getting tricky. see, the steerer tube had been sandblasted clean, so where the race mounts was fresh and clean of any additional surface area or texture. additionally, i discovered that my race had a crack in it. add these two fact together and what you get is, in essence, a fraction of a mm too much space between the diameters of the two pieces. the race basically just dropped right into place without needing a setter. this is not optimal. it is sub-optimal. so i thought, "hey! i have another tange-levin 1-inch HS in my little metal locking box over there!" except that box is locked. and i have no idea where the keys are. FUCK. so here’s what i did. using a shit-ton of grease and a very methodical, slow assembly process in which i intentionally overtightened the first top HS cup, then backed it off INTO the locknut once THAT was set — i made it work like fucking butter. no wiggle-waggle front-to-back in the fork, and no bound bearings. it spins smooth as silk and it’s solid. WIN. and even though it means that i’ll have to install a whole new HS eventually, this is a big deal to have made this old one work…

and that was it. i still have some other parts i can put on, such as a quill stem, the derailleurs, the shifter levers, and maybe some cranks (gotta work out some chainwheel shit first), and eventually, bars (i need to receive an anticipated shipment first), and some of that shit may end up going on this very weekend. but for now, we wait at this point…

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