Category: Projects

If your front basket blocks your fork-crown mounted dynamo light (and how could it not?) you might be able to mount the mount directly to the basket. Two fender washers to sandwich an intersection of the basket wires, an M6 bolt and a cap nut.

Might work

This March, my friend’s bike was stolen out of my back yard. That sucked. I had fixed it up from its moving-beating (the movers bent some stuff that shouldn’t oughta get bent), and I put on some new bars, and replaced the shifters, and before I’d even cut the (brand new, full pop retail)* cables to length, someone stole the fucking thing out of my yard! My yard. Solid black dog, giant Swiss dog, three mean-ass cats, and they still walked away with it. I guess the advantage of stealing transportation is that it aids its own theft.

Anyway, shame and irritation long gone, Swiss dog replaced with a newer model (Requiescat in Pace, Nadia; welcome, Rosie), seasons have changed, and the other night we took a nighttime trip to the CVS to get some drugs for a possible UTI**, not a fun outing. Walking into the store, I check out the bike that’s abandoned*** out front. “That’s a well-sorted hobo bike… THAT I TOTALLY RECOGNIZE. No WAY.” I took it by the horns and rolled it over to the car. Women were exiting the store, chatting about Michelangelo, and to them I must have looked like someone putting my own bicycle into my own car, because that was how I felt. Snip, snap, into the boot, slam the trunk, and I went shopping.

I kind of cruised the store, with an eye out for someone who might have been a bicycle thief (or a duped grandmother with no other transportation), but didn’t spot any candidates. It wasn’t until we got home that I was like, “Hey, remember when Lisa’s bike was stolen out of our yard?” and Angelina’s like, “Oh my god, yeah, that was horrible,” and I got to say, “well, it was parked*** in front of the CVS, and now it’s TOTALLY IN OUR TRUNK!”

The bike now needs another bout of attention, and the brand new Rivendell proto-Dove bars I got at their garage sale are scratched to hell, because the new owner adjusted the shifters three inches down the bar without using a screwdriver to loosen the clamps. Yeah, they weren’t the classiest shifters, but they worked, which was the whole point. I think I’m going to revert to the flat bars it used to have, and donate the cast aluminum 1985 Suntour (Shimano?) shifters from my first mountain bike. I’ve passed along nicer bits from that bike (WTB Greaseguard hub?), and its Salsa stem still lives on the Quickbeam.

The nice fat slicks are gone, replaced with knobbies, which is what makes me want to set this up with the original flat bars, so Lisa can ride Annadel, 1990 style. Since, actually, there is no higher purpose to a bike than to ride in Annadel. Maybe she needs a basket for Belle, so she can bark at everyone they meet.

* They’re STILL not cut! Just kind of wrapped back up out of the way. Jeez. I guess if you had any pride, you wouldn’t be a bike thief.

** I think the second conversation I ever had with my wife was about UTIs. Right after the “‘God;’ ‘Who do you want to be when you’re super-old;’ and ‘Do-you-want-kids?’ conversation.” Yes, we got married on our second date. Which is a funny story that I won’t burden you with now.

*** Definitely abandoned. “Parked” makes me sound like the bad guy.

I don’t think the 400th post is a “thing” in the blog world, but in any case, here it is.

The Bike Snob mocked the Tire Pressure App on Tuesday, right after our big update.

Go get the tire pressure app! It’s pretty cool, now. 

The update is visual and usability. The underlying function is the same; it should just be easier to get at. Here I am putting all my bikes in order.

This overlay shows the list of bikes. The free version lets you make two bikes, the paid version as many as you want (we know you have seven). In the future, this screen may show pressures, as a quick reference.

If you Add a New Bike, it will clone your selected one. Most people have slight variations of the same bike, just like they do jackets, so it’s a convenience.

This is the Quickbeam, showing pressure, with me weighing 245. That’s 40 lbs of pizza and beer. Mostly beer. Say, 32 lbs of Bridgeport and Sierra Nevada strapped to me at all times. Hence the superwide tires I like.

To get the right pressure (15% tire “squish,” for low rolling resistance and comfort), you need to know the width (actual, by measuring) of your tires, the weight of the bike, and the weight of everything ON the bike (you, your bags, etc.). You can’t trust any damn thing the manufacturer puts on the side of the tire. You are allowed to lie about your weight, though, since it’s an inexact science.

The inexactitude doesn’t stop there. Tire casing plays a role – if you have handmade tubulars, or the equivalent, you can add 10% more air. Do the math in your head, it’s good for you. If you have terrible heavy utility tires, you may not care what the pressure is, but you can probably run them lower.

So you measure. I actually have a monkey wrench I use for this operation. The giant wrench fits over the tire, it’s adjusted snug, and then you measure the gap in the wrench’s jaws.

In the app, you input the width, choose the style of bike (different bike geometries have different fore/aft weight distributions), and tell the app how wide your tires are. It does the math for you, with an equation that fits against measured tire drop.

Pump it up and ride away. This app may shock you – if you weigh 220 lbs and are running 23mm tires, you are going to see that you’re over-weighting your tires, and pumping them up to 120 psi front and back is still way under inflating them. They’re rock hard, so you don’t have any of the advantages of riding on a pneumatic cushion, and you’re still deflecting them for more rolling resistance than you want. Lose-lose. You should have 153 lbs in the rear, and 98 in the front. So 120/120 is overinflating the front, underinflating the rear.

I’m unlikely to over-inflate 60mm Big Apples.

In other news, I set my Strava personal best on the Tin Bar Stage Gulch climb this week, riding the Gravel Roadster with 60mm Big Apples. The bike snob tells me there’s now a “Gravel Racer” category of bikes. My 12 year old ate sushi and really liked it (mostly he eats fries), and I’ve been walking my dogs twice a day instead of riding to work. I Strava that, too.

I rode down to the Bike Peddler on the Bontrager, with the stuck-cog ENO Eccentric hub in my handlebar pack. Truth to tell, I chose the Bontrager because I bought it from NorCal Bikesports back when it was called “Dave’s,” and I thought I might have a better chance with my weird request if they recognized a bike they’d sold. Ten years ago half the employees at both shops had owned one of these closeout Privateers.

When it was my turn at the repair counter, I produced the hub, with the cog and lockring still attached, and said, “What I have is in the nature of a challenge. Is it possible to remove this cog? And… how much would it cost?”

The mechanics laughed, and said, “you’re supposed to remove this before you cut out the spokes!” I told them I bought it, and they said, “I hope you didn’t pay too much.” I said, “It depends on how this goes.”

Untitled, originally uploaded by BikeTinker.

It went well. Two guys, four tools and a vice. As one of the attending mechanics said, “It’s easy if you have the right tools.” He looked at the setup in the vice, “Or in this case, the wrong tools, used appropriately.”

The hub goes in the vice, the pin spanner* fits into two spoke-holes, and is held in place with vice-grips or locking pliers, so it can’t jump off the hub. Chainwhip goes on the cog, with a cheater bar for more leverage. The pin tool also has a cheater bar. Two strong men lean into it, and the cog spins off.

The mechanic picks up the cog and wipes down the threads, “Who wants to call it? $10?” Well worth it. Ten minutes, and 100 years of experience, vs two hours and something broken, if I’d done it myself.

*The pin spanner! This is the key element I didn’t see anyone online recommend. A cog-removing pin-spanner with several pins and a self-gripping feature would be a dynamite tool… Problem Solvers?

I bought a used 7 speed set of bar-end shifters in preparation for gearing up the Gravel Roadster. I also got a nice set of clamp-on downtube shifters for the Ross at the same time, but realized that I don’t have a cassette-able wheel that will work with the 120mm spacing it has now, after 13 years as a fixed gear. The Kogswell singlespeed hub I’ve got on there is only suitable for fixed use (and offroad fixed, at that), because the nut (or something) makes it unpossible to remove a freewheel with our normal Earth tools.

I digress, but the gist is, “hey I might have zero single-geared bikes by the end of the summer.” Unlikely, but possible. I might do it just to freak myself out. I have an automatic Sachs two speed coaster brake wheel and a Sturmey-Archer S3X three speed fixed I can put on the Quickbeam in about four minutes (that’s half an hour in biketinker time).

Back to the matter at hand. I did indeed install the cassette and (just the right) shifter on the Gravel Roadster, and I rode it 10 miles with some friends from work, on their normal road loop (Lakeville, Stage Gulch, Adobe Rd). If we were to judge on tire size, I was the clear winner, with 54mm Big Apples, to their 25mm whatevers (volume increases by the cube, too, so… yeah). If we were to judge on usable gears, though, I was by far the loser. I had two chainrings, but no front mech (that’s English for “derailleur,” which is French for “derailer“), they were only 4 teeth apart, and of the nine cogs in back, I had maybe 5, since I could only get 4 clicks out of the indexing. The smallest cog (biggest gear), and the top three (easiest) cogs were unreachable with the shifter. My hardest available gear was about perfect for the ride leader’s pace, which was steady, just shy of brisk. The cassette is by no means a tourist’s friend, or a mountain bike cluster. It might even be a straight-block (it’s not). The limited range cog set is the funniest thing about the bike, even counting the Cyclone derailleur and the pink fenders. It is a roadster, though, not a jeep.

So I was rolling along Lakeville, getting parched on Stage Gulch and spinning out on Adobe Road, with cogs ranging from 13 to 18 teeth on a 32 tooth ring. About 72″ to 54″ of development, WHICH IS THE SAME RANGE I HAVE ON MY FIXED BIKES.

I had a good time, and my only embarrassment was failing to call out a black foam-wrapped 2×4 laying across the bike lane. “It looked like asphalt! I never ride with people! Ride fatter tires! Geez… ”

But. For all the fun, and the adequacy of the gear, it wasn’t working like it ought, which irks my OCD, and I don’t see the point of having shifters if they don’t give you more range than you can get with a dingle setup.

Why didn’t the Shimano 7 speed shifters give me a full derailleur’s swing of travel? My full friction Suntours on the Bontrager give me all 9 cogs. My friends on the RBW (Rivendell) list told me how to fix it (and more interestingly, why it was broken), which is a post for another day.

(I’m learning a bit from Paul McGowan, not just about musical reproduction, but about blog posting. Set the stage., String the punters along, and give ’em their money’s worth…) ;^)