Thursday, December 31, 2009

Happy New Year!

2009 was great, here's to hoping 2010 is even better, GET SOME!

Sorry. I couldn't help it. Stackhouse, U rUl.

Wednesday, December 30, 2009

The Beast Stirs

The orphan beast, that is. Track frame is done except for a seatstay bridge (which, given the tandem chainstays and oversized seatstays, plus super short wheelbase, I probably don't even need) and perhaps a powdercoat, since I'll be out of town for the next 2 weeks anyway.

For those who are curious:
74/74 parallel head and seat tubes
11.8" BB height
59cm seat tube (to top)
55cm effective toptube
375mm chainstays (actual) and 373mm (effective) with the wheel all the way forward
Ginormous 19cm head tube (no, I won't be aero...)

Tubing:
1.2mm OX platinum head tube (not an orphan)
1/.7/1x45mm Supertherm down tube (orphan intended for freeride bike project I never got around to)
.8/.5/.8x28.6mm OX platinum toptube (orphan cut too short for Eszter's singlespeed)
.9x28.6mm straightgauge 4130 seat tube (? Found it in the rafters with some other random stuff)
1x30x18mm tandem chainstays (beefcake - orphaned from me stupidly ordering 15 of them because they were really cheap)
.7mm double taper seatstays (orphaned due to severe ugliness)
Surly horizontal dropouts (orphaned/hacksawed from a frame with a non-removeable and non-usable seatpost)

I'll be building a (gasp!) unicrown track fork for her when I get back from AZ. I would just buy a cheap fork, but I realized too late that 1 1/8" track forks are as rare as hen's teeth, at least when your budget is $50. So $20 worth of unicrown blades, $5 worth of dropouts, and a steerer tube, and I'll be set to go. I think I even have all the parts I need, with the exception of the bars and some tubular tires. Thanks to Nowork for lots of parts advice and ideas, as well as the snazzy wheels!

Monday, December 28, 2009

Getting rid of books?

So I stumbled on this online debate at the Times about how to cull books from your personal stash/collection/library/unsightly pile. And I got to thinking a bit - I've only played with electronic book devices a little bit, but I can see how they'll be the future of the written word. So, I actually wonder if I'll have any books at all in 20 years - I pretty much only read books once (though on rare occasions I'll re-read something) and so most of the books that Sarah and I own are ones we really like that we want to have on hand to lend out or give away to friends.

I'm guessing if we actually went through our 10 shelves (or so) of books and kept only the ones we'd actually read again, we'd only keep 10%, if that.

Which, I guess, is a great opportunity for cheapskates - if you don't need the latest best-seller, I have a feeling used books are only going to get cheaper and cheaper as the snobs and geeks move to electronic devices. So I can actually envision a personal future with GIANT piles of old books, or alternately none at all.

I might or might not get a chance to do a post or two from Tucson, but I will be checking email and (sometimes) answering my phone if anyone needs to contact me. Back on the 13th of January. Happy New Year!

Friday, December 25, 2009

Snickers is missing

So last night we let Snickers out in the driveway to take his before-bed pee, and started getting worried when he didn't come back within about 5 minutes. Did some searching of the neighborhood, but no luck. I'm assuming someone decided to pick him up (he's so friendly that he'll happily get into anyone's car) because they thought he was lost?

So if you see an old, friendly, super-lumpy yellow lab with a green collar wandering around, call me or email me. Sarah is pretty upset.

EDIT: Some well meaning person apparently took Snickers to the Humane Society (when he was approximately 50 feet from our house). So we'll bail him out tomorrow. A happy ending!

Wednesday, December 23, 2009

Experiments and a new bike for yours truly

I got a call from the folks at SRAM today asking if I wanted some free parts to try out a new BB/crank interface system they've come up with (I'll post lots more details about that at a later date when I have the stuff in hand, but suffice to say that I think it's argueably a near-ideal combination of the best attributes of many of the existing systems that are out there). This made me think a bit about my bike project for the new year (a new singlespeed to replace the one that I sold to my friend Chris) and how much experimenting I want to do.

Experimenting on myself is great because I get to see how the product works all the way from production (building the frame) to application in the real world (riding it). And since I'm a pretty huge snob, as well as theoretically not a slouch in the bike riding department, I can get a pretty good idea of how something works and whether it's worth using on frames for customers.

It's also fun to mess with new stuff and write about it on the blog, of course, and I don't want to be that grumpy (too late) bearded (still ok on that one) weirdo (crud, 2/3...) who will only build the same old thing over and over. Not everything new is good, there's lots of hype out there, but there are also legitimate cool new things that are worth doing. Bikes get better every year, and the cream does rise to the top. Hype can only take you so far.

The downside, of course, is that if I build something for myself that isn't to my liking, I'm stuck with it, and if it really sucks, I can't even sell the darn thing, at least not with a clear conscience (generally speaking, my philosophy is that if I wouldn't ride it, I have no business selling it to anyone). I don't enjoy doing hours of work to make unrideable yard art (yes, it has happened), and in the case of the new "Pressfit 30" BB system, there's also the chance that it won't catch on and I'll be stuck with an obsolete and unsupported bottom bracket, which is pretty much guaranteed to be lawn art once the bearings (or cranks) die.

But I think I'll probably do it. Here's the list of things I've considered for the new rig and how I'm leaning right now. Feel free to chime in on the comments if you think there's some crazy new tech I need to be trying out.

-Direct mount front derailleur: Meh, it's a singlespeed. Plus I'm already testing that on Sarah.
-Pressfit 30 BB: Leaning toward yes.
-Belt drive capability: I think the whole belt drive thing is pretty dumb for non-townie bikes, but it's easy to make the frame compatible with the new Paragon stuff, so maybe?
-Radically offset seat tube/super short chainstays: I'm torn on this. I've done a bunch of <430mm chainstay 29ers for smaller folks, but I really like my chainstays fairly long. Might do something in the 425 range with sliders so I can have some adjustability?
-953/stainless: Nah. I've had it with that crap.
-Tapered steerer: No. It'll probably be rigid it's whole life. I think the tapered steerers are a neat idea in general, though.
-15 or 20mm through axle. Once again, I'm torn. Probably pointless with a rigid fork for someone my size, but if I *were* to go to a suspension fork at some point, I know I'd want a through axle. Then again, I've got plenty of QR wheels, so I'd need a new wheel anyway.
-Stupid huge tire clearance. Leaning no. I have ridden the Dissent and Kodiak and they're both ridiculously dumb and slow (IMO) on a hardtail. I can't see myself running bigger than a 2.2 or so in the rear no matter what.

I'm tempted to make myself a near-carbon-copy of my previous bike, because I really liked it, but that would be kind of boring...

Tuesday, December 22, 2009

Direct mount, part 2

In an effort to get Sarah's FS rig ready for our Tucson trip, I threw together the direct mount front derailleur setup today. Learned a few things to do differently next time, and took a few (cruddy) pictures. I think it'll work really well, but I can make it look a bit nicer.

Thoughts:

-It's dead easy, from the framebuilder's perspective, anyway. You can see the mounting specs here. Thanks to Pete for the scanning work. Total time to build and install the mount was probably only 15 minutes. It would be relatively easy to have some generic mounts made that could be mitered and fitted up much more quickly, too.

-Total weight (derailleur) is 140g. The mount I made is 16g. About the same weight as an old-school M750 clamp-on unit, but with a lot of nice seat tube location flexibility built it. Good for weird configurations. Pointless for conventional setups.

-You can adjust the height of the cage by about a total of 5mm, as the derailleur has a little slot on it. You could easily make a mount for the frame with multiple mounting points to adjust height as well.

-The derailleur comes with a built in cable stop and bottom-pull arm. I cut them both off, which took about 10g off, but more importantly removed a bunch of annoying crap that was going to get in the way.

-I didn't bother to make a slotted mount (see the link to Shimano tech docs to see what it's supposed to look like) and am just depending on using the square edge of the mount set up tightly against the ridge on the derailleur. I think it'll work well, if it doesn't, I'll redo the mount.

-The bolt protrudes through the mount and is visible, which you can see if you squint. I could have set this up so that the bolt isn't visible (and routed it through the part of the mount that connects to the frame) but I wanted to be able to add a nut to the back side if the mount gets stripped for some reason.

Saturday, December 19, 2009

Thursday, December 17, 2009

That's not a downtube...










...THIS is a downtube!

Yes, I am building myself a track bike. Yes, it has a 44.5mm BMX downtube. No, there's no good reason for it, except that I'm using only orphan tubes for this and it seemed like it would *probably* be stiff enough. It will also feature some tandem chainstays that I bought on a whim (for cheap) and can't find a use for, as well as the horrible double taper seatstays I purchased by mistake and a toptube that I mis-mitered for Eszter's 29er... should be just as wacky as the 24" dirtjumper that I built from orphans that already lives at the track!

Tuesday, December 15, 2009

Finally, front derailleurs get better! Maybe...

If you've followed the blog for enough years (which you might not want to admit to), you'll remember me waxing rhapsodic about the M571 front derailleur (and pirating a funny story of Feldman's in the process). In the intervening years (I believe the 570 series derailleurs came out in the early 'aughts) Shimano has done everything possible to make front derailleurs suck - consider if you will:
-They got heavier - an XT front derailleur porked up to over 180 grams at one point.
-They didn't shift any better. If anything, they got worse, IMO.
-Their ridiculous cable clamping systems and dual-pull contraptions took up so much space that many short-chainstay bikes had problems with tire/derailleur clearance.
-They stopped making 28.6mm clamp derailleurs entirely, so you had to fiddle with annoying shims all the time.

Well, maybe they've finally done something positive. I just ordered (the day it came into stock) a M771 direct-mount derailleur from BTI. It's going to go on Sarah's new FS bike, I think, since my strategy is to always test things on my wife (FWIW, that's an inside joke for folks who remember the old frameforum and a certain thread about head tubes). Also, I can't test it myself, since I don't have any mountain bikes with front derailleurs.

There are several things I like about the idea, at least in theory:
-Should be lighter. Probably back down to where we were with the 570/750 series stuff. I'm guessing the mounting bracket is about the same weight as a clamp, so it probably won't be outright lighter, but you never know.
-The mounting hardware is simple and the bracket should be pretty easy to make (I'm guessing Shimano does not include one with the derailleur, at least not in steel!)
-Shifting should be excellent - the derailleur is attached to the frame in a pretty darn rigid manner. No aluminum shims or hinged clamps. In theory, this should mean better shifting under load.
-There's a built-in cable stop, so no need to have a stop on the frame if you don't want one (and you could easily hack off the stop on the derailleur if you don't want it). I'm guessing it would be better to have one anyway, though, since for top-pull applications that's going to be a lot of extra housing running down the seat tube, so much so that you'd probably want a ziptie type guide for it anyway.

And here's the big one: you no longer need the seat tube to meet the BB shell to make the frame work with a front derailleur. Yes, E-type derailleurs already accomplish this - but they also suck unbelieveably. This means you can have super-short chainstays on your 29er and still run a front derailleur - because the seat tube can be offset 20+mm forward to keep it out of the way, and the front derailleur can still be installed in the right spot. Kickass.

On the minus side, though, there's no up/down adjustability, so you're stuck with the standard 22/32/44 drivetrain with this setup. It's possible that you could move the mount up or down for different drivetrain styles, but regardless, you're stuck with one front derailleur position forever. For some people, that'll be a deal killer. For others, it's probably not a big deal.

Anyway, more info (and some pictures of how it mounts up) in a week or two when I get it installed.

Monday, December 14, 2009

Dreaming of Summer

Thanks a lot, Doug. I'd post a picture of my sweaty, hairy self on the trainer watching Stargate for contrast, but this is a family friendly blog. Also some of my friends might be scarred for life.

Friday, December 11, 2009

Sheesh...

Someone stole my ratty old Mountain Smith backpack, with my climbing shoes and a chalk bucket, out of my car from in front of the welding supply today. Crazy - who in their right mind would want smelly climbing shoes and a 10 year old backpack?

Anyway, I'm bumming, because I really liked those shoes. Sarah's shoes were in there too. And that was a really good backpack for carrying big loads of groceries.

Have a good weekend, y'all. I'm off to BSR tomorrow to look for new climbing shoes, I guess.

Thursday, December 10, 2009

Great article about fork chatter

I have had to explain this about 1000 times in my life, so here it is in nice understandable terms (with a graphic, even!) from Lennard Zinn at Velonews.

In short, it's not the fork, it's the brake. Gotta love the mini-Vs!

As if you needed to hear more from Eszter...

...she's the cover model for the latest issue of XXC magazine. No, I have not read it, but I'm sure it's interesting. Check it out.

Photos for James

James has the dubious distinction of being the person whose bike was built (or, rather, is being built) in the coldest temperatures *ever* at Waltworks world headquarters. So, since my feet and hands get numb after about half an hour of work, it's been going slowly. But we're getting there - I'm hoping to finish the rear end tomorrow or Monday.


I like to cap the fork blades with quarters, because they're just the right size, and everyones like George Washington and/or Bald Eagles. They've got a lot of stuff in them that doesn't particularly like to be TIG welded, but it works with a little patience.

Tuesday, December 08, 2009

Giving the finger to the UCI

Check it out: Promoter Breaks Ties with Pro XCT Series.

Get average sport and beginner racers (and folks who have never raced) psyched about racing these events, and you'll have money for prizes. Nobody is going to pay to watch, it's a participant sport. Sponsorships only cover so much. As a promoter, your income is going to come from entry fees - so the more riders have a great time and come back next year, the better you'll do.

Spend all your time and money kowtowing to the UCI and USAC (and ignoring the amateurs), on the other hand, and you'll end up with 20 "pros" vying for a big steaming pile of nothing while a few disinterested spectators and the occasional parent stand around the finish fencing looking bored.

It amazes me that USAC hasn't figured this out. F*&$ the Olympics - I want to see a full field in the women's junior beginner. THAT is when you'll be able to make a living racing a mountain bike.

Monday, December 07, 2009

So you want to be a framebuilder?



The pictures tell the story, really. It's cold enough that I had to wear plastic bags on my feet to keep them from going numb while working. Yuck.

Friday, December 04, 2009

Go see the Santaland Diaries


If you live in Boulder, that is. Even if you're not a David Sedaris fan, I think this one will still entertain you. Plus you're allowed, nay, *encouraged* to drink alcohol in the theater.

Tickets are cheap and plentiful. Check it out at the Dairy Center website. Just don't watch the "trailer". It's terrible and not funny. But the play is, trust me.

Thursday, December 03, 2009

Paragon comes through again...

This is so much better than the Spot/Gates dropout that it's not even funny. The perfect setup for folks who want a belt-drive bike (or just want the option for the future). No expensive coupler, minimal extra weight/fuss. Good stuff. Nice work, Paragon!

Wednesday, December 02, 2009

Random fork musings

Stu sent me this email about his 69er-conversion fork:

Walt,
Sorry to take so long to get back to you about the new fork. It is really great. I thought it may be nice and get me riding the Gunnar a bit more, but it has transformed the bike and I only want to ride that bike now. Thank you so much. I don’t know how you did it and nailed the specs, but you did. I will spread the work on how great your stuff is.

Thanks again

Stu


Which got me to thinking - it's not a surprise (to me) that I got the specs right for what the bike needed to do, since I've done a lot of forks for 26" wheel bikes being converted to 69ers, (or B6ers, or whatever you call it when you've got a 650b wheel in front). I've probably built 30 forks like this over the years, mixed in with a couple hundred others not intended for different-size wheel bikes.

Today was a fork day, and I got one (Tom's, pictured above during construction) done, and spent the rest of the day going back and forth with Mac trying to figure out where all the little mounts need to go to attach his lowrider pannier rack. Some projects are pretty much a slam dunk (like Stu's fork) and some, man, they just take forever. But folks are paying for custom work, and even if I end up spending *way* too much time, I like to try to oblige.

Tuesday, December 01, 2009

Avid BB-7s for cheap, cheap, cheap!

A distributor sent me the wrong brakes (needed the road version) so if anyone is interested, I have a set (front/rear) of brand new Avid BB-7 disc brakes, in the boxes. They are both 160mm rotor models. $80, shipping included, or make me an offer.

EDIT: Sold to Andy J.