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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Related posts:

1. milwaukee bike polo crew arrested for playing bike polo
2. bike polo rules sequence
3. Bike Build Process Log: Crook – Drilled, Comma, Fork!

Now, we joke about how riders in Pro Tours hold onto the team car or the hand of a manager or support staff and get a dodgy little skitch out of it. I’ve seen this abused. Lung describes it as outright cheating, and technically this is true, and some teams HAVE been dinged where it was abused. Sometimes it’s used to transfer bottles and food to a support rider, etc. (remember Lung also considers support cars cheating as well, though it isn’t as it’s in the rules. Less fun, certainly, I’ll give it that)

But I’ve never seen a team car used to skitch while a replacement shoe is applied after a crash destroys your previous one. I can tell you, there isn’t a circumstance on this planet where I could take off, then put on, a road shoe, at speed. Even with a freewheel. Ha.

DODGE!

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1. Custom Cycling Sambas?
2. Bike Build Process Log: wrongBike – Extrusion Shots
3. USAC bans race radios for 2010, lung rejoices

Readers of the Team Lope Tyre Clubbe site surely know that Lung and I participated in Aids Lifecycle 9 last week. We wrote about our gear preparations, our bike builds (Tumbler and Crook, respectively) and rallied the troops for financial support, netting over $7K for the cause. You may have even gotten updates on our incremental progress via Facebook or email. Now that we’re back, we’ve written up individual ride reports in the Team Lope manner, and I hope reading them is less grueling than the ride was.

The Aids Lifecycle ride this year was nominally 545 miles over 7 days, thought it logged in at approximately 565 miles overall all told. Each day started before dawn, breaking down the tents in which we slept, gorging on breakfast fuels and usually making stops to medical (in my case) or stretching, and on the road around dawn, riding for 6 – 10 hours with a number of rest stops along the way decked out in some nutty theme (and several more stops, thanks to the persistent saddle sores we called ‘grundle sufferage’) before arriving wearily to the next night’s camp, to pitch tent and get organized, shower, feed and pretty much pass out. Some days were kind of thrilling, from scenery to challenge, and some were tortuously monotonous and exhausting. We traveled from the dense morning fog of the bay area, through lush forest, huge agricultural fields of strawberries and various other produce, to arid valleys of tilled farmland awaiting future plantings and flattened by ridiculous headwinds, to the welcome breezes of the beaches to the south. We met scores of other riders along the way, suffered no permanent or debilitating injuries, and I think rode our personal bests. And once in LA, we were consumed by emotion, but also that surreal sense of loss, as this week-long micro-culture of community, tolerance, endurance, struggle, variety and frankly suffering, bled away and the real world returned. I think I’m still trying to process it.

It sure started well enough! This pic above was taken on Day 1, on the way down the coast towards Santa Cruz. I had narrowly dodged calamity when I packed everything but MY EFFING SHOES, requiring my awesome wifebot(tm) to drive down to SF at midnight and deliver them to me at Lung’s place where we were crashing for what was supposed to be 3 hours or so of sleep before having to get up again at 3am to get ready and head out to Cow Palace (in my case, about 90 minutes of sleep). She saved my ass fiercely. Once ont he road, I think i was so overwhelmed by the emotions of the morning (the opening ceremony, among other things, involved all 1900 riders and 600 or so support staff gathering to watch the entrance procession of the Positive Pedalers flag guard (HIV positive riders, carrying banners commemorating the passing of loved ones and former riders) along with the infamous riderless helmets and ghost bike. It was haunting and everyone was bauling. Ultimately, while I did apply sunscreen liberally, I apparently didn’t put enough on my face, because some hours after passing out in Santa Cruz at camp at like 3pm, I woke with the most ludicrous sunburned lips. My face, ears, nose etc were all burned, but the lips, my word. It was like fat grapes with split skin. Other than that grundle sufferage that had us off the saddle throughout the day from the discomfort, this was my most persistent medical agitation through the rest of the ride. My lips proceeded to grow more and more swollen, cracked, bleeding, nasty, and were covered in Preparation H and Zinc Oxide thereafter (‘dubbing what the Team Hype boys called my ‘powdered donut’ problem.. and man, I COULD have used some donuts.) and while this was certainly an aesthetic annoyance, and often a painful one, these are the problems to have, I say, because other than the saddle soreness and some dodgy Achilles Heel issues, I was otherwise fine, and got the job done.

And to be fair, everyone was having issues, from splints to IT band fails to knee, hip, back, neck injuries, dislocations, crash injuries, alarming numbers of heatstroke victims, and on and on. I was so concerned about the risk of an IT band flare-up on my right side that I was very cautious throwing myself around on the road. I took descents with care, sprints only gradually, and is my usual manner, conserved energy each day for potential issues to come. Nothing could have prevented the saddle soreness, but Chamois Butter liberally applied sure eased the discomfort some. And while I tweaked my ankle on Day Three, and my Achilles pulled later that same day, despite that potentially crippling injury for a fixed-gear rider, I was able to keep it taped and in the right position, and kept the effort up with no further issues. All things considered, it was an almost unseemingly uncomplicated journey. We each had packed tyres, tubes, full kits of bike tools, extra chain, extra cogs, etc and didn’t have so much as a flat. I can’t get away with a ride around Marin without a dodgy mechanical problem. I was stoked.

This is a familiar image to anyone who read Lung’s first report on ALC from year 7 (2008) as this is the same marker on the same stretch of highway. Some of the route was the same, but some had changed since his trip. Many of the days were longer than expected, and some detours since ALC7 were strange sometimes, sending us into awkward riding situations, like seeing disorienting and morale-busting miles of climbs in view long before you got to them, or pushing us into bad wind or road conditions that perhaps weren’t there in 08. However, lots of these changes were actually corrections from ALC8 last year, which got some course route complaints AND suffered a rain-out. We were pretty fortunate in that regard. Some days were blisteringly hot, and some had breezes (and of course, there’s that 20 miles of headwind day) but for the most part, nothing too drastic that stopped riders, and though road conditions were often pretty terrible, what choice do they have? Californians don’t value infrastructure improvements in the state budget until they taco a rim or worse.

One challenge that i found interesting throughout the week was dealing with the mix of experienced and inexperienced riders. In fact, we were primed going in to be cautious of inexperienced riders who might swerve too wide to avoid a pothole or panic in gravel or freak out if you passed too close. In my personal experience, it wasn’t these riders that caused the majority of our caution, but rather the opposite: experienced riders who were overconfident, aggressive and inattentive to the others. A few teams routinely broke the passing rules and passed as entire pacelines at speed with little warning in unsafe conditions in the middle of traffic. These clowns made it difficult for US, so you can imagine how they made the newbie riders feel. It’s unfortunate that so many riders had the classic inability to visualize consequences of their actions, and I’m glad more riders weren’t injured. There were about three crashes of note (and scores that were minor) all on descents, but overall, a pretty good safety record this year.

I enjoyed passing quite a bit myself, when safe (though not the one time I didn’t see the car and freaked my fellow riders out) especially because of how different fixed-gear distance riding is to regular road bikes: we have to manage our cadences differently. We make ground most on the slight and moderate grades. Flats the roadies who have motivation get away from us in their bigger gears, and on very steep inclines, our slow pedaling MAY put us behind roadies who can turn em around faster. But as a rule, we passed most road bikes in front of us where gradients were involved. They gear down and spin, we HAVE to mash and keep going. It was kind of a nice morale boost for us, how much attention we got over the fixed-gear bikes, and while we lost a lot of time on descents (me especially, going slower and pacing the brake to save my ankle and such) overall, each day we were with the same general group of riders throughout the day, or ended up ahead of those we started with. I did NOT expect this.

A word about fixed-gear. We got a lot of love for this. Sure, many were bewildered as to why we would do it more than anything else, but for those that grasped the limitations of the bike, and the extra effort involved, we got a lot of respect. We would get cheers behind us as we passed and people noted our drivetrains. We got gasps and outcries on climbs as we passed riders struggling to stay on their road bikes, ranging from incredulity to awe to occasionally jealousy. Overall we got a positive reaction, which pleased me. I was concerned that we were a negative morale problem for struggling riders or what have you, or would look overconfident or conceited (though nothing was farther from the truth: neither of us knew how it would go or if we would even finish) but as a rule, we were a well-documented phenomenon. There were a total of 6 fixed-gears and one single-speed (with freewheel) this year out of a total of more than 1900 riders. That’s a bit more than .03%! We also got a lot of love for our recognizable Team Lope jerseys, so we would hear behind us either ‘ayyy fixies!’ or ‘go team lope!’ which was really awesome.

Some of the days were excruciatingly long, such as the century days and those under high wind that made everything that much more grueling and slow. I saw a lot of the state I normally miss when on the freeway: I never knew Los Olivos was such a cute Victorian-style town. I didn’t know Bradley even existed. There’s a lot going on not far from view on those all-day highway trips across the state, and it’s something I never really thought about before. Another thing: the agriculture. Most Californians understand that the state’s primary economic force is farmning. We supply the country, and much of the world, with a huge amount of produce. What was compelling to me was being out there WITH the migrant workers. I always tole anti-immigrant rabblerousers that they should be careful what they wished for (these workers are doing work others here refuse to do, or couldn’t handle, and they do it for very little) but it’s one thing to see pics or see them as you drive by, and another to RIDE by. Being in the sun for hours, being perpetually starved, dehydrated, exhausted and missing your family? You gain even more appreciation for the lifestyle these workers endure to put food on the table for their own, and send money home. It’s pretty profound, at least to me.

Last thing, the little things that were big delights:

Roadies: The roadies make everything happen. These volunteers are up earlier than us, in bed later, build the rest stops, serve the food, prepare camp, organize events, clean up, run support and SAG vehicles, and what’s more, do it with relentless enthusiasm and encouragement for the riders. Ever try to be YEEEEEE happy for more than 10 minutes? They do that for us for 10-12 hours. They honestly work harder than the riders, in my opinion, and my next participation in ALC will likely be as a roadie. I have so much respect for what they did for us. Even though most riders sort of spin by stone-faced and in pain or some zombie-like trance, you have to know, the roadies cheering you and rah-rahing at each rest stop, and the volunteers and guests who came out along the roadside up and down the entire route with homemade signs and treats? They lifted our spirits.

Positive Pedalers: Not a little thing, per se, but I have to note that every time I rode by a PP-jerseyed rider I had a ton of respect and emotion for them. To spend your days, effort, energy and such for this cause is one thing, but to do it afflicted? What a sense of pride in community and commitment to each other as symbols and participants. Amazing.

Chockamilk: I’m not lying, I hadn’t had any in years but consumed probably more than my body weight in delicious chockamilk on this ride. So much so I had to get more when I returned.

Chamois Butter: Before this ride, I’d never really done more than a squirt of Gold Bond lotion before a century. ON this ride, I used a glop of it at every rest stop and often more. It literally got me through the ride.

Fruit Gummies: of all the delicious ride snacks along the route, I stockpiled little fruit gummies the most. Not so much for energy, as they were just gummies (sugar and horse) but after feeding on an energy bar or peanut butter and bananas and oranges and so on, I would nibble on these as power pellets of motivation, just to keep me going.

New Tents/ Camp: we benefited from the lessons learned of last year’s rain, where they discovered the tents weren’t waterproof. We got brand new ones. Excellent. And frankly, easy to pitch, easy to carry, and a good design. I appreciate the ‘cinderella riders’ and their hotel stops benefited from better rest and hygiene (and sanity) but really I couldn’t complain about camp at all. The Port-a-Potties were overall in good condition, the food was plentiful, the showers had strong pressure and hot water, laundry detergent abounded, and the tents kept the outside out and the body heat in. The worst we had to deal with was wet clothes, and that was a factor of choice anyway. And, as someone nursing an injury for more than half the ride, medical services were excellent and appreciated.

Variety and Diversity: I really thrived on how much variety we enjoyed. Not in the roads, not in the food, but in the people. Different riders, different bikes, different levels of school spirit, fun rest stop themes, lots of flamboyance and cross-dressing and enthusiasm… I really loved being part of a small community where being a clown was encouraged.

And as we finished the ride on Day 7 in my old familiar haunt of Westwood and Brentwood, after two days along the coast, it was honestly surreal in it’s ending. You get so accustomed to the microcosm of recent experience, it’s almost jarring to have it end and realLife return, just like with any immersive camping or traveling experience I suppose. It was wonderful to see my wifebot(tm) and wee Z, my young daughter, at the finish line, along with my dear parents, and Raul, Silvia and Damon came out to see us and cheer us on. We got to catch up with several riders we met along the way, take photos, etc and then closing ceremonies and it was done.

I can’t imagine not being involved again. I don’t know in what capacity. We’ve talked about tandem trike recumbents, roadie work, who knows…

It was a very emotional and uplifting experience, and one of the most amazing ones of my life, I have to say.

Links:

You can see my Flickr Set of the ALC9 photos here.
Check out Ironlung’s photos here.
And read Lung’s ALC9 ride report, and his ALC7 ride report before that!

Team Lope shout-outs:

Remi and Magnus of ]Team Hype, our fixed-gear friends to the south.
Remi’s ALC9 Flickr Set

Maynard (pronounced May-Nard if you know what’s up) and Mannie Rabara, my e-friends before the ride and friends thereafter.
Maynard’s ALC9 Flickr Set

Ryan, whom I met through Maynard beforehand, along with MaryAnn and Ron, his brethren:
Watch out for helicopters!
Ryan’s ALC9 Flickr Set

Graham out of Vegas, chock full of optimism and radness.

Seth and the Stix family out of Nashville, presumably finally successful in his personal quest by the time he got to LA.

Friend Jefferson from local Mission Bikes, purveyor of frames to Team Lope East Coast member Joe at 718 Cyclery!

Ariel and co. who we met on Day on the Ride, who always motivated me with her rainbow riding socks.

Holly, Anna, Barbara, and the others we met throughout the ride! And of course, all the unmet, but recognized, smiling faces we saw as we went…

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Related posts:

1. team lope ride report – ALC9, the IL account
2. team lope ride report – ALC “day on the ride,” IL’s account
3. Team Lope Ride Report – ALC Day on the Ride, WR’s Account

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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I get a lot of inquiries around town when I ride fixed. Certainly more so than in SF proper, where you can’t change lanes without swerving to avoid a messenger or a newbie rider or a tall bike or a penny or a 29er or whatever, being such a bustling bike city with the level of riding diversity one would hope for in such environments (so, in other words, both good and bad fixie riding examples onthe streets)… but in Marin, just over the bridge, fixed-gears are less common. And certainly, while I get comments around town, at the coffee shop etc, the real attention happens on climbs. When I’m out there on one of the hills for which Marin is famous in it’s biking-heaven nature, I’ll be alongside some roadies or a mountain biker or whatever, and they’ll often have some reaction. Sometimes, it’s incredulity, sometimes arrogance, most often wonder or delight. Mostly, it’s about how I can manage to climb on a fixed-gear (and if I’m on Crook, with the 82 inchgear, they don’t even understand how hard a gearing that IS in the first place, just that it’s a single gear period) when they’re spinning away on geared bikes. And while many of those comments are positive and enthusiastic, a frequent question is: WHY?

I think that’s totally reasonable. I myself wondered why people did so, before i did. It seemed totally impractical. Why limit yourself to one gear, why remove the freewheel? The examples of fixies in the city, especially at that time, were pretty much exclusively messengers swerving around, prior to the scene picking up and fakengers (as Lung calls them) hovering around meeting points on their custom builds or trick kids doing their freestyle stuff at the Ferry Building. At the time, I just saw workers… messengers… hauling rolls of architectural drawings around town on fixed gear bikes with no brakes. I couldn’t understand why you’d limit your options, reduce the flexibilities, and increase your effort, on a professional vehicle, let alone for personal enjoyment. And the no brakes thing? Madness, I hated it. In fact, going back far enough, you can find posts here from Lung and I both talking about our concerns.

However, we eased into it, each finding slightly different aspects to fixed-gear riding appealing, and it eventually became our primary riding style. WHAT? 20 years of road bike experience, 10 of them exclusively high end road bikes, 8 years of MTBing, and I’m riding a fixed gear day to day? On hills? On weekend rides? WHAT? Again: WHY?

It’s so hard to explain, and it sounds fishy to an inquiring observer. It FEELS different. You’re one with the bike. You have to think more when you ride, so as not to pedal strike, or stop pedaling, or instinctively stall out as an obstruction approaches… you have to plan your ride effort. And at the same time, it feels even more natural when you’ve got more experience and you don’t have to think, and you can just spin along. They’re easier to maintain. They’re easier to field-service. They’re fun to customize. But more than anything? There’s a sense of accomplishment and delight in taking something that was hard and foreign to YOU, and embracing it until it becomes FUN. I don’t ride a fixed-gear to impress someone else. I don’t ride one just to bust my own hide when I don’t otherwise need to, out of pride or conviction or self-hate. I just enjoy it.

So, when people ask me WHY? I don’t explain all that stuff anymore. I just say: because I love it.

And that’s the key to making the inappropriate… appropriate. Because it’s not technically appropriate to ride a fixed-gear on hills. Or great distances. or 600 miles down the coast from SF to LA in the boiling heat of summer for Aids Lifecycle.

But it’s fun. And that changes everything.

So here’s to riding whatever you want, however you want to, and wherever you are!

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wow, talk about a super-niche product. the KIMORI FIXED-GEAR ADAPTER is a device that allows you to convert a freewheel road hub to a fixed-gear hub with room for two cogs.

i see a couple benefits, for sure. for one thing, it would allow you to train or event-ride your road bike in a fixed setup so that you had no muscle memory issues to deal with, swapping between bikes. but in that instance, you’re doing such a massive conversion (removing both derailleurs, probably one front chainwheel, and likely the rear brakes) that it becomes kind of a chore in my mind. at least reassembling all that shit does. for another thing, i could see it being useful in building out an old, unused road wheel for a brand new day, but then you’re limited to using that on a frame with 135mm drops. to that end, it would be a MUCH more affordable option than the ENO eccentric hub if you’re trying to convert a road frame for a fixed drivetrain.

but while i see the benefits, i don’t think i GET them. ENO makes a double-cog system for fixed hubs, in addition to a proper 135mm fixed hub that DOESN’T require you to run a dished rear wheel.

i’m not hating on it — someone will find a use for it. i just don’t get it.

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1. Bike Build Process Log: Villain- The Magic Gear
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THIS hub accomplishes the same thing as the SRAM TORPEDO hub, which is that it allows you to switch between fixed and freewheel within the hub rather than flipping your wheel.

the biggest outward difference between the two is that where the torpedo requires you to turn a screw to switch between the two modes, this one allows you to do same by just pushing and turning that god-awful unsightly pie plate thing.

both this and the torpedo seem very niche to me, and i’m relatively disinterested from a personal perspective. but someone will love it.

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Related posts:

1. SRAM torpedo hub tested
2. kimori fixed-gear adapter
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i have to admit, THIS is pretty fuckin trick. it’s a thread-on cover for the exposed threads on the non-drive side of your track hub.

it’s really just a glam component unless you’re a FGFS kid, in which case it would be functional — protecting your threads from getting dinged up on non-drive side grinds. BMXers have had similar guards and protectors for years (surprise), though most of those are to protect axles and dropouts, and any that are meant to protect hubs don’t thread on, because there’s only threads on one side of BMX hubs and they’re covered by the freewheel/freecoaster.

i’m also fairly certain that this only works on fixed-fixed hubs, as it continually specifies "track hubs," which leads me to believe that it wouldn’t fit over the freewheel-side threads of a fixed-free hub. but to tell you the truth, i’ve never looked into whether or not they use the same diameter machining or tpi count. (the depth of the threaded portion is DEFINITELY bigger on the freewheel side, it’s just the diameter and tpi count that i don’t know about.)

anyway, SUPER fly way to add some flavor to your back end. (thatswhatshesaid.)

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1. Phone HALO?
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The prime assembly for the Crook project occurred Monday.
I think this was my most anticipated build. Except for Villain, wrongBike and Ghostal. I guess I’m pretty much generally uniformly enthusiastic about such things.

I have to say, some builds are harder than others. Full conversions like wrongBike are multi-day builds, from the stripping of old to the prepping for the new, to the painting, to the cleaning and repurposing of original parts, to the problem-solving when things go wrong on the assembly. Others, like Ghostal, are snap-together affairs with some minor delays here and there. Bikes like Villain are somewhere in the middle. I’d say Crook, so far, has been one of, if not THE easiest, build. For one thing, I’m working from almost entirely new stock, and the reuse of old parts wasn’t that onerous. For another, I had a lot of time to sit down there and think through everything and plan ahead a bit on some things that would have stalled me out had I not. Lastly, I think because the vision was consistent throughout, I didn’t have a lot of question marks going in about how things would work. I’m using same brands and same parts I’ve used on other bikes, and I knew what I wanted. I didn’t finish, but I got damn close.

Plus, I have to say, when you work and have family obligations and a young baby, just getting out there to wrench for a few hours is a wonderful thing. A few more and that bike would have been on the road today. But all in all, a wonderful build day.

One item to note was that, like Lung’s Leaser, this is an aluminum frame with a pursuit geometry. That stiffness means two compromises: creaks and discomfort. On the creak side of things, the infamous creaking bottom bracket was already plaguing Lung. We both did some research that indicated some additional lubery between bracket and cups, not just cups and shell, seemed to be recommended. Lung also had a cracked plastic cup on Leader, which he replaced with aluminum when he overhauled the BB recently. Leader is now whisper smooth.
So, I followed the same process, lubing up both the inside and outside of these cups. I’ve used the same Miche BB on Villain, and one frustrating problem, as of yet unsolved, was that the entire assembly rotated inward into the shell, away from the drive side, over time on that bike. I don’t yet know why. Stands to reason it could happen here too. So, I’m still looking into that. But for now, we’re in good shape.

On the discomfort side of things, I ride a Brooks saddle which is supportive, if not cushy. Other than the all-important rider’s triangle adjustment of bar reach to seat, the only other thing I can do to mitigate that ride discomfort on this frame is to double up on the gel padding on the bars. Padding, double upped! And if I have my way, TRIPLED up, for science, pending sourcing another gel kit. With two layers, it’s already buttery But you know how THAT goes. Not the same feeling on mile 60, 70, 80…

The front end came together very quickly, as I’d done the legwork on the headset and test fitted everything like 33 times. Not that it’s intended to be HARD, with an integrated headset and all. But I had some things to work out, largely me tricking my own self into over-complicating it, and me believing blatantly outdated marketing materials from Cinelli. But we’ve already covered that. Liberal lube of all bearing parts and the lower half of the steerer, and everything came together nicely. I won’t be cutting the steerer until i can get out there and feel out the ride position. I also have mismatched black spacers, so for science I’ll probably make them all uniform, once I determine the proper stack. Good to go! Also, Lung recently pointed out a great trick for stabilizing the front end in the bike stand involving a sock or an arm warmer. Since I use these big plastic clamps, this is how I do it: the clamp handles act as the stabilizers over the top tube.

What took the longest? Would you believe the CHAINRING replacement. Tole you what, I’ve been looking for a table-mount vice grip for awhile, which I think Lung looked for for me as well, and I sure could have used it yesterday. Chainring bolts are allen keyed on one side and have a receiver on the other side that needs to be secured from a slotted groove. OK, two hands, already required. Now, hold the crank securely in order to bear down. Crap. So, I spent a good amount of methodical, frustrating energy gripping the crank arm with my knees and working at the bolts with my hands. So much so that my legs are SORE from it. The worst part? The receivers take a flathead screwdriver to that slot to hold them in place, if you happen to have one big enough (which I didn’t) or a special tool. I must have muscled for 45 minutes all tole, getting all but one free, and then had to put it down. This bolt would NOT break free. Miche loctites them, I suspect. Anyway, on a lark I went over and reviewed my handy Spin Doctor kit and YES, of COURSE… there was the tool. It’s not marked such. it was just one of the only tools I’d never used. I actually went over looking for something to use as a jury-rig solution, looked at this tool, and felt like an idiot. Well, it wasn’t easy, but that last bolt came off finally, using, Cthulu forbid, the proper tool.

I moved up from a 46t to a 49t ring. Not a huge difference visually, but a big one on the road.

Lubed and applied, quick snap! Pedals on! I was going to use new pedals, but I cannibalized Villains’ pending what happens with that project. Vy nott, as my mother-in-law would say!

I’m using a sweet cog retainer system from Sugino in this build. Similar to designs by Miche and White Industries, it involves a carrier, a lock ring, and grooved cogs that fit to the carrier snug. This means that on the road, you unscrew the lock ring and pull the cog right off. Couldn’t be any faster. The Sugino system uses a curvy sine-wave shape to that connection, to maximize efficient bearing surface. It’s a beautiful, beautiful set up. The only drawback is that it requires a Shimano-compatible BB tool to adjust it, which is a new tool for the ride kit. But man, SWEET stuff.

Here’s a money shot of the back end. Check out the gold cog with the gold hub. I’m pretty pleased. It really has the effect I wanted.

These wheels Joe built for me are wonderful, and that’s a DEEEEEP section. Check that out against the wheelstays, for scale.

I think the second longest part of the build day was the cockpit. I’m using FSA K-Wings and they offer an internal cable routing design. Let me tell you, routing stiff cable housing from a hood a short, inflexible distance to enter the bars and come out farther down, very difficult. FSA have an ingenious helper tool, though, which I definitely made use of: it’s a strap of nylon that you push into the wider exit channel, then open wide, creating a loop. Push the cable housing through, snare it with this nylon loop, and pull it out the exit channel. Brilliant! Still not EASY, but I couldn’t have done it without it. This process was time-consuming because of the measure twice, cut once philosophy. Actually, make that measure thrice. You have to get the cable housing measurement just so, then route the cable itself, and get the brake strung, and if anything doesn’t measure up correctly, you have to start over. Tool long and it wouldn’t work. Too short, and, well, more housing required. Worse, I have 33 feet of black housing, but of COURSE I’m not using that on this build, so my stock on hand was less bountiful. Overall, it worked find and is all good to go. Gel on, brake strung, just waiting to wrap the bars until I confirm hood alignment position.

:::

The build as it stands:

Here’s the bike as a whole. Not great pics, in low light conditions down in the bikeBasement, but you should gleam at least 33% of the awesome from these pics. It looks EXACTLY as I visualized it. I’m so in love.

Here’s the front end, with most of the detail obscured, of course.

Here’s from the vantage point of the haters behind me. GORGEOUS.

What’s next?

- I need valve extenders. Badly. My long-valve tubes have valve lengths of 48mm. The rim is 42mm section. I was able to gain purchase on the rear tube somehow with my pump and inflate it, but just barely. The front, however, eluded me several times. it recedes a bit into the rim section. It’s clear that if in a controlled shop condition it’s this much trouble, on the road it’d be far worse, so I sourced some black valve extenders and I’ll pick them up shortly. They’ll be looooong and jangy, but get the job done! I don’t mind that. I like some distance from the rim.

- Once the front is inflated properly, I’ll do some test fits and ride around, checking the angles and stack height. That will tell me what spacers I still need, if any, and then I can cut the steerer and cap it.

- Brake adjustment, of course. Hasn’t happened yet. Just threw the wheels on this morning for the photos.

- Final wrap of the bars pending verification of the hood positions.

- Of course something critical is uninstalled: the chain! But it’s here, ready to go. Solid BMX half-link beastie. See, without loud clackity Campy freewheels, Lung and I need SOMETHING to warn you we’re approaching from the rear…

-Final step: beautification. i have some custom graphics and bar end work underway.

Oh, one final note: This is my first time using a Thomson post and I’m sold. I love it more than those Ergo posts on the Look frames, as light as they may be. First, it’s a FAT section. But also, two bolt adjustment for seat positioning, fore and aft. It’s never been easier to quickly align seat angle. So awesome.

Follow this topic in the R3 Forum here!

Related posts:

1. Bike Build Process Log: Crook Type 3 Conversion
2. Bike Build Process Log: Fix-e 3.0
3. Bike Build Process Log: Crook – Assembled and Ridden

i originally POSTED about the SRAM torpedo a long while ago, but today i found a pretty thorough REVIEW of it on one of my most-favorite bike blogs.

of interesting negative note is the slack issue.
of interesting positive note is the superior cold weather performance.
of interesting hysterical note is the trick to unfreeze a stuck freewheel in the winter. yes, i have done that.

Follow this topic in the R3 Forum here!

Related posts:

1. SRAM torpedo [f] & ]f[ hub
2. cole weather ridin
3. Iron-Based Heated Seat

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