[Harry Meatmotor]

damn.

many squishy. very hauling. so much want.

[Harry Meatmotor]

my best advice is you get what you pay for. the $100-150 bib market is pretty much a wash – all about the same quality/breathability/longevity. Spend more than $200 and I can almost guaruntee you’ll be pleased. I personally prefer Castelli for once a week riding, but wouldn’t commute in it. Voler (Vol-ay) is also a great choice.

[Harry Meatmotor]

i’ve noticed this phenomenon for at least 3 years now. I believe it’s a homeless person dropping the torn up paper. I’ve witnessed the same homeless person a few times last year pushing a shopping cart up the MVT very early in the morning, stopping for a few moments, then moving on about 50 feet, then stopping again. Though I didn’t actually see paper falling to the ground (it was dark – 5:30-5:45 am), this could be an explanation.

[Harry Meatmotor]

@jrenaut 81787 wrote:

I finally got around to lubing the pedals. What do you know, rusty springs don’t work as well as lubed ones! Huh.

Anyway, this fixed my problem so well that I may have to increase the tension on the pedals. Thanks for the help.

PRO tip: lube your pedals with furniture polish!

[Harry Meatmotor]

I’m gonna take a wild-assed guess that they’re rebranded Mavics – Dean road and tri bikes used a lot of the full Mavic gruppos in the mid-90’s and the chunky black aluminum lock nuts/spacers look and awful lot like Mavic bits.

what rim is it laced to?

[Harry Meatmotor]

figured I’d throw in my two pennies since it’s a slow news day.

I’ve only personally seen 3 or 4 failures of a rim due to just rim wear giving way to tire pressure while riding. these were catastrophic failures, one, according to the customer, caused him to need several stitches in his calf after getting skewered. just the thought of that makes me loathe to try and eek out another few hundred miles from a worn rim.

What happens more often than just sheer tire pressure (and even at only like 60PSI, that’s 60PSI exerting itself along the entire circumference of the rim!), cracking a rim at the brake track is that some sort of impact weakens the rim. imagine this scenario. Me JRA on my old beat up rain bike, tires at a low pressure, hit a pothole, pinch flat. little do i know, a small crack just formed because the brake track is worn and more proned to bending. I pop a new tube in, smartly inflate to a proper tire pressure, and get an earful of rapid decompression.

luckily i wasn’t on the bike, but regardless, the rim is toast.

I’ve always heard 1mm, and that’s what i preach. a 100% safety factor over Jobst Brandt ain’t a bad idea, imho.

[Harry Meatmotor]

just thought i’d share a few thoughts on this topic:

First, I’d recommend using a different chain checker than what seems popular around here. The Rohloff chain checker is admittedly a bit pricey, but is much more trustworthy (http://www.amazon.com/Rohloff-Caliber-2-Chain-Indicator/dp/B001GSOHZY). The Park CC-2 can develop wear at the pivot and will give bad readings (so if you see your favorite shop monkey using it, ask them to check a brand new chain on a bike down on the sales floor, and see what the reading is – my bet is that it’ll be at least “25” on the CC-2). Park’s old stamped steel (12″ long) chain checker is even more horrid.

Second, the only time you should replace both chain and cassette is when the chain has stretched enough to wear out both the shift ramps and the valleys between the teeth. When a chain “stretches” the roller’s inner bushing surface wears on the pin, causing the effective distance from inner roller to inner roller to increase. The cassette will wear, too, but only if the chain is badly stretched. Also, most riders have a “favorite gear” (on shifty-gear bikes) and will usually wear out one or two cogs in a cassette more than others. if the cassette has one or two gears worn out, putting a new chain on will probably shift okay in the stand, but hesitate during shifting in your favorite gears out on the trail.

One quick and dirty way to tell if a chain is worn (usually to the point that the cassette/freewheel needs replacing, too) is, when the chain is dry (cause you haven’t been lubing it), whack the chain with the handle of a screwdriver. if the chain rattles, it’s worn out.

Third, the easiest way to tell if your chainrings are worn out is to grab the chain at the 3 o’clock position on the chainring and pull it towards the front of the bike. if you can expose an entire tooth of the chainring, it’s time to replace the chain, cassette and chainrings. you can try to do piece-meal replacements at that point, but you’re only going to wear out a new chain, or chain and cassette, even faster. Running a new chain on a worn out chainring is the fastest way to kill a chain.

I tend to live by the rule: 3 chains per cassette, 2 cassettes per set of chainrings – YMMV

[Harry Meatmotor]

@Steve O 80691 wrote:

Peter White has a pretty comprehensive section on his web site devoted to lighting.

http://www.peterwhitecycles.com/lightingsystems.htm

He’s a bit fussy to deal with, but if you’re looking for euro-style dynamo solutions he can’t be beat. I picked up a BM 350 lumen LED lamp for my wife to replace a crappy incandescent dynamo powered lamp from peter white and it’s awesome. QBP does carry supernova and also stocks shimano’s 1.5w and 3w dynamo hubs, so any shop using QBP as a distributor can get a hold of a lot of what peter white carries. as a side note, I’d love it if some american distribution lighting manufacturers started making some high-cutoff lensed headlamps. the difference between just throwing huge lumens and throwing a focused pattern at the trail is significant, especially from an on-coming rider’s perspective.

[Harry Meatmotor]

as mentioned earlier in the thread, ponying up for some sintered metal pads will probably alleviate quite a bit of brake squawk, but to the detriment of the rotors.

general observation: Avid rotors are typically kinda crummy, but they’re relatively inexpensive.

Usually, noisy (organic pad material) brakes indicate some fouling of either the rotor or the pads. First thing to check is to make sure there’s no debris stuck in the pads – if there are tiny chunks of anything stuck in the pads, use a pin to pick them out. Another trick is to go down to the car parts store and pick up a can of brake cleaner (and get the not-so-safe for the environment stuff. the “safe” stuff is junk and despite the label, it isn’t “safe” for anything… also, don’t waste your money on any “bicycle” brake cleaner, it’s hugely overpriced). With the wheels off the bike, spray down both sides of the rotor, and keep a shop rag over the hub so as to NOT spray the bearings. Then, carefully give a couple squirts of brake cleaner on the pads and let everything evaporate.

Pop the wheels back in the bike and take it for a spin. you’re going to want to “bed” the pads to the rotor by getting some heat into both the pads and rotor. you’ll do this by either doing several hard stops from speed, or finding a big long hill and constantly, lightly brake. what’s going on here is that some of the pad material is going to stick to the rotor and some of the rotor is going to stick to the pads. when some crud gets on the rotor (especially anything with any kind of petroleum base, i.e., oil or grease) or the rotor is sparkly clean, the pads/rotor are going to make noise. Once there’s a good amount of pad material that’s transferred to the rotor, you’re usually gonna get nice and quiet brakes. However, it only takes splashing through a puddle or two to wash some of that pad material off, and get some crud on the rotor. None of that will really negatively affect the power of the brakes, but it will make them noisier.

Pro Tip: a quick way to clean your rotors and get some pad material back on the rotors (while you’re riding) is to take your water bottle and squirt some water (NOT PURPLE SPORTS DRANK) at the caliper, while you’re applying some pressure to the brakes. then, keep applying light pressure until the water has evaporated due to heat.

[Harry Meatmotor]

There’s a couple of ways you could go about this depending on how much you want to invest, imho. if you’re just looking for a good lumens/dollar ratio you can’t beat this:

http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/B008KXDO8Y/ref=oh_details_o05_s00_i00?ie=UTF8&psc=1

Though, i’d highly recommend getting the wide-angle lens:

http://www.amazon.com/Angle-MagicShine-Gemini-Lights-Headlight/dp/B004WLCLQY/ref=pd_bxgy_sg_img_y

And don’t count on the batteries lasting for more than a season’s worth of charging cycles. the batteries are, however, fairly inexpensive to replace.

If you’re looking for something more robust, both the cygolite expilion 800 and the niterider lumina 650/700 offer good output, good beam patterns, good mounting systems, and decent product support. Lezyne’s higher output lights also offer some pretty good output plus a great beam pattern.

If you’re looking for something that’ll last for several years with no problems, look at exposure’s systems (diablo + blaze = fawsome), or dinoitte (understated BLING!). Check competitive cyclist’s website for deals on the exposure systems – they’ve got good deals from time to time.

[Harry Meatmotor]

@vvill 80662 wrote:

How does one pronounce “hozn” anyway?

[ATTACH=CONFIG]5033[/ATTACH]

[Harry Meatmotor]

@jrenaut 80637 wrote:

Welcome!

How does one run a shop like a pirate ship? Do you have a plank?

Similarly to how Tony Bourdain runs his kitchens.

[Harry Meatmotor]

@TwoWheelsDC 80504 wrote:

Looking at the temperature projections, the trails should, at the very least, be ice free until through most of the night, even if snow does accumulate.

agreed, tho i’m pessimistic about tomorrow morning’s conditions.

[ATTACH=CONFIG]5023[/ATTACH]

[Harry Meatmotor]

@Phatboing 80435 wrote:

How on earth do you manage this? The last time I put white bar tape on my bike, I got it grimy just by putting it on.

http://www.fizik.com/accessories/bar-tapes/superlight/white/ don’t settle for anything less!!!

seriously, this stuff isn’t your typical foam or cork tape. it’s not stretchy (at all), so it takes some care in wrapping to get it to lay flat and even. but, it stays super clean for a white tape. Only other tape that does a decent job in white (but is quite a bit more ‘spensive) is the lizard skins stuff, but it (for me) is more slippy than goose poop when it gets wet. NB – i don’t like riding with gloves in the summertime.

[Harry Meatmotor]

@hozn 80414 wrote:

I love the -17(?) slammed stem on the speedy bike and the bar tape / hood colorway on the commuter is beyond. Beautiful bikes!

rules 8 and 44. The guys at the shop laughed when I pulled out the white Fizik tape during the initial build. “on a commuter?” they scoffed. “oh ye of little faith,” i mocked. 9,000 miles later the beaming white tape now remains triumphant, impervious.

[Author]

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