2016 Redux

31 Saturday Dec 2016

Tags

2016, bike crash, cycling, New Year, Toussaint

This was an odd year. A year where my wife and I turned 50. A year that a new nationalism is taking hold in the world. A year of great loss – it seems that a lot of folks relevant to my generation passed away. This was the first time for me that “a year” has had a felt impact on me and many that I know.

On a personal front, it wasn’t so bad. Business is good, I had some memorable vacations and trips, and I ended it out better than at the beginning.

crash helmet

“The Crash” that curbed my cycling activity at the end of the year turned out ok, after all. I even got my bike back the weekend before Christmas.

recovered bike

I received a call from a woman who said “I have your bike. Your helmet, too!”. After I picked it up, the new replacement frame I had ordered from the Toussaint boys showed up, so now I will have two bikes in place of one. Hmmm – a nice porteur would be a great bike to have around… I feel extra lucky to have come out of that mess the way I did!

new Toussaint

As far as stats this year, I rode 2156 miles in 254 trips. Average distance was 8.5 miles with an average speed of 13.5mph. Unlike past years, there was no dip in the summer months – I did more riding in the nice weather this year than I have in the past. My May Bike Month was the tops at 372 miles in 85 trips, but there were 8 months over 200 miles. The vast majority of this was commuting. No rando events, and only one S24O bike pack to Fort Ebey.

I’m looking forward to getting back into bike fitness in the new year, and will try to start out with more interval training early on. I want to do the winter training series that the Cascade folks put on with help from SIR. Hopefully the schedules work out. There are also a lot of backroads in WA that need exploring, so I look forward to some good times ahead.

Happy New Year!!

Posted by Stonehog | Filed under Cycling, Northwest

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Pushing Mammoth

29 Sunday Mar 2015

Posted by Stonehog in Cycling

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Tags

chriscross, Clement, Hetres, Hunqapillar, mso, Oregon Outback, rivendell, schwalbe, Stan's, thunder burt, Toussaint, tubeless, wtb

After a thousand miles using the Clement MSO tires, and an unfortunate rim shredding with forgotten brake pads, it was time to rebuild my wheels. I really like the Clements, so they will likely go back on after the Oregon Outback, but the bike is built for bigger tires, and I have a couple bikes that are lighter and more roadish. This is a mountain bike at heart.

I did a bit of research and decided to try out WTB ChrisCross rims. They seemed to be a good combination of strength and weight, and had the requisite black look I was wanting for this bike. They luckily happened to be the same ERD (604mm) as the outgoing Velocity Synergies, so I was able to try out the rim swap trick re-using the old, perfectly good spokes.

Rim swap – tape, loosen, and start switching rims!

As I’ve had good luck with tubeless Hetres on my Toussaint, and I definitely want to avoid flats with the bigger tires on the long trips, I built these up sans-tube. I only had the thin Stans tape that just covered the spoke holes. The tires I picked for these guys are the Schwalbe Thunder Burts. They are tubeless-ready tires, but fit the rims rather loosely. I knew I would need extra tape, but it took two additional layers. I used one round of Gorilla tape on one rim, but I had to trim it to fit in the well. I went over it with a round of vinyl tape that worked so well, I just used the vinyl twice round on the other wheel.

Finished Wheel

Once I had a few layers built up, the tires popped in with the air compressor, and I added Stans for a fully loaded tubeless wheel. I had to re-adjust the fenders back out 10mm to take into account the expanded diameter of the new wheel. Until I got the tires on, I wasn’t sure if I would be able to run with fenders over these giant tires. I’m still wary, as new knobbies tend to pick up lots of debris, but the first ride was uneventful.

Mammoth Mode

The new tires are definitely beefy. Reminds me of that big off-road mountain bike feel I fell in love with in ’91 when I re-discovered off-road riding. They appear to ride really smoothly on asphalt, and they soak up the bumps even better than the Hetres on my other bike. In the tubeless config, they likely weigh in the same neighborhood, too! Hetres: 412g + tube (150g) compared to Thunder Burts: 435g.

First ride with Burts

Now I just need a few more long dirt rides to sort this guy out. The bars feel pretty far out – this guy has a long top-tube, and drops accentuate the reach. Once I get it dialed in, the tape will go on and the mammoth will be ready for new adventure.

Tubeless vs. Staple

25 Sunday Jan 2015

Posted by Stonehog in Cycling

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Tags

flat tire, Hetre, hetre EL, Stan's, Toussaint, tubeless, Velo Routier

After about 6 months of riding my Velo Routier on tubeless Hetre ELs, it was time to “change the fluid”. I wasn’t sure how long before the first batch would be dried up and gone. After riding to the beach and back, I noticed a slow leak in the front tire. I brought it back home, got out the Stan’s, and gave it a refill without having to remove the whole tire. I noticed that there was a uniform white residue along the inside of the tire including the sidewalls. There were a few chunks of latex that pooled up around what I took for small holes, and I wiped out the inside of the tire before putting in a fresh couple ounces and refilling the tire. I was able to remount the tire and use my floor pump to pop the bead back into place with little effort.

After a few rides, I started to wonder if I was running on borrowed time with the rear – since that is always the tire that goes flat for me. There had been no noticeable puddle of Stan’s in the front tire when I popped it open. To put my mind at ease, tonight I put the bike up in the stand and popped one side off the rim of the rear wheel. While wiping out the remaining Stan’s (about a teaspoon left – mostly viscous yellow – no sign of the white latex still in the suspension), I noticed the twin prongs of a perfect staple that had pierced the tire mid-tread.

I tried to find it on the outside of the tire to remove it the way it had gone in, but the connecting bar had broken off the tines. I removed them from the inside. I have no idea how long that staple was in there. It could have happened shortly after I started riding these tires tubeless, or it could have happened last week. One thing is certain – I would have had a flat had I been using tubes. As it stands, I didn’t notice the puncture until I went to perform maintenance on the tire.

Pretty cool! I think a few more of my tires will be losing their tubes in the future.

Image

Shimmy Monster

25 Tuesday Nov 2014

Tags

a. homer hilsen, headshake, high trail, Hunqapillar, jack brown, low-trail, Rivende, shimmy, Toussaint

In my estimate, shimmy is something that is related to weight balance on the bike, frame/fork thickness/stiffness, and perhaps tires. Oh yeah – lets not forget velocity, either. If you enjoy stretching occasionally by riding no-handed, shimmy is a demon to be dealt with.

I’ve had some experience with shimmy on my A. Homer Hilsen, but it has been sporadic, and changing things like bar height, front and rear load, and tires seems to impact how bad it is. I leave out speed, as there’s no way I’m going to try to limit that.

Nope – she doesn’t shimmy

When I first built the bike, it had Noodles at around seat height, and I was using Jack Brown tires. No shimmy was present with this 25 lb configuration. I went through a few variations, and initially noticed that when I moved the bars higher, I seemed to get some shimmy. This usually kicked in riding no-handed above 15 mph. I generally kept the load up front on the bike, and this seemed to dampen the shaking, so I was fairly happy. However, with my recent foray into low trail (Cycles Toussaint – no shimmy ever, BTW), I was interested in moving the load back on the Hilsen so it matched the geometry of this higher trail bike. Or so I thought…

Perfectly good headset

It’s been said that a needle bearing headset can cure shimmy. I’ve never used one before, so I guess it was time to check this theory out. I overhauled the bike a month ago, and figured it was time to check the headset. Since it was out, I put in a Miche needle bearing headset, and at the same time added my former front rack to the back of the bike. It seemed like it needed a basket, so I put the medium Wald/Shopsack combo on it that worked so nicely in the past on the front of the bike.

S H I M M Y Y Y Y Y Y . . . . .

Shimmy Monster

Wow – I took this in to work with perhaps 5 lbs of gear in the back, and the shimmy was so bad, it even shimmied with my hands on the bar several times. I experimented with holding my weight forward while I released my hands. This worked at first, but as I moved back to a more upright position, it released the shaking, shifting frame shimmy.

Hmmm – needle bearing not an answer here. After my ride home, I removed the basket/rack combo, and put my front handlebar bag back on. I tied off the tools in my roll bag under the seat. This cured the beast.

No more shakes

Solution for my bike – weight needs to go up front with only a bit of weight allowed under the seat. No weight out back or I get the shakes. It is interesting that my Hunqapillar has never shaken its wooly head. I generally carry weight on the front, however, and this bike has a long top tube that stretches me out putting the weight more forward. It also has beefy, stiff tubes that, like the Toussaint, seem to repel shimmy monsters.

I’ve read of several other light, road Rivendells having a similar tendency, so I will chalk this up to balancing weight properly for the bicycle. If you have shimmy, hopefully this will give you some things to mess around with.

Posted by Stonehog | Filed under Cycling

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Tubeless Road Experience

07 Tuesday Oct 2014

Tags

Hetre, Pacenti, PL23, Stan's, Toussaint, tubeless, tubeless road bike

I’ve been riding a tubeless conversion on my main road/rando bike for most of the summer season. At this point, I can comment on a few aspects that I really like about this setup.

First, let’s talk about the wheel build. I have Pacenti PL23 rims with Stan’s tape (wrapped double) and used a Stan’s conversion kit to get a valve stem and goo. The tires are Gran Bois Hetre Extra Leger. The PL23s are not normally a tubeless rim, but they are compatible without much work. The big thing is to have a sealing valve stem (don’t need the conversion kit, just get some replacement tubeless stems) and make sure the spoke holes are taped tight. You may also need to put an extra layer of tape if your tire fit is too loose.

I used the Stan’s general instructions to set these up, but found that my floor pump wouldn’t push enough air to get the tires to seat/seal, so I set up my compressor with a presta valve so I could pop these guys on. I’ve heard that some are able to do this with a floor pump, but not I.

Once I got the feel for what needed to happen, I put a scoop of the goop in the tire while it was partly off the wheel – just dumped it in the side, and then carefully pushed the wheel onto the rim. At this point, you just do a quick inflate, and spin/bounce the wheel a couple times to get the sealant dispersed around the wheel, and leave it. I was able to ride these immediately.

A myth that I found to be untrue was that the Hetre ELs needed to be run at higher pressures than normal. Not so. I actually run them at 25 front and 35 rear which is about 5 psi lower than normal. Anything more and they don’t feel quite as compliant, but at this pressure, they feel just right.

Now on to the good stuff. I don’t worry about flats much anymore. Lower pressure, fat tire, and sealant take care of that worry. I still try not to willfully ride over glass, but I’ve had zero issues/flats since this conversion, and these tires are thin and super compliant. I also love the lower pressures – wow are these tires comfortable!

There are a few minor downsides. I have to add air about once a week now, whereas before it was every other week or so. I also still carry a spare tube, in case of a bad flat requiring a boot. The requirement to have a compressor to initially seat the tires is the last bother. Pretty small potatoes, however.

I plan to do more road tubeless builds going forward. I’d love to have all the bikes tubeless, and just need to gradually replace my rims with tubeless friendly guys.

Posted by Stonehog | Filed under Cycling

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