Coffeeneuring Challenge #4

I ran some errands this morning, and got a cup of coffee at The Flying Goat in Santa Rosa’s Railroad Square. This should be a Coffeeneuring Permanent. Nine years ago I rode by The Flying Goat on the Quickbeam, and was chased down by Buck, a fellow who builds frames for Chris King now. Randomly running into him at the Oregon Manifest kickoff party several years ago was crucial to me having anything to report to Bicycle Times at all…

/digression

$2.50 in my own cup, pretty smokey flavor, okay crema. Fantastic ambience. Other groovy bikes locked up (or not) in the vicinity.

 
Coffeeneuring challenge
 
Coffeeneuring challenge

 
Coffeeneuring challenge

 
image

 
Apparently Flickr is uncool with panoramas

More Tinkering

After getting the Quickbeam’s S3X squared away, I mounted giant-sized 47mm Schwalbe Marathons, but the front couldn’t quite clear the fender.

wtb dirt drop bars, rivendell quickbeam, newbaum's tape

  • Remove extra large Marathon tire, install Kenda Kwest in 37mm. Looks pretty good!
  • Pinch the tube under the tire bead, and have it blow 20 minutes later sitting in the entryway. 6″ blowout in a never-patched tube.
  • Put in a new tube. Lots of patches on it, so it’s got to be good.
  • As long as the wheel’s off anyway, clean the rim, hub and spokes.
  • Putting the wheel back in is a little fussy, because the allen bolt on the front fender stay pokes way in and makes it hard to get to the spades for the dynamo wires to attach. The rear stay is even worse. It almost touches the cog, and looks stupid.
  • Change out all the stay mount nuts for shorter ones that don’t crowd the hub or the dynamo wire tabs. Make sure they all take full-size hex heads.
  • As long as the nuts are out, I should reorient the V-O fender stay mounts that don’t quite “stay.” They’d been pointing up to get more of the stay inside the mount, but that didn’t help the grip anyway, they may as well hang down properly.
  • Hey, look, the front brake pads could use some sanding…
  • Snip the S3X shifter wire shorter. That’ll look better. Boom! Crazy hair! Wire strands splay out everywhere. Dammit.
  • Remove left crank and bottom bracket cup. Something down there’s been creaking. Grease up the cup threads, and inside, where it contacts the bearing. Reassemble. It only took a minute, and I think it worked.
  • The rest of the bike is really starting to look fresh, and the tape is really skanky. I think I bought a roll of green Newbaum’s from Rivendell when I got the orange and blue for the Bontrager and the red and black for the Gary Fisher.
  • Peel off top layer of tape. Wow. That looks positively Victorian under there, like something a coal miner would wear. Cover it up, quick… with a single roll of tape for both sides.
  • That’s pretty half-wrapped; it barely comes past the hoods. Make up the difference with the tail-end of a black roll, and be done.
  • Go ride with the dog.
  • Suspect that the new oft-patched tube has a slow leak.
  • Ride to the store for 6 lbs of sugar, 6 pack, two sodas and a half liter of red wine vinegar in the front basket.
  • Find that the fender front fender is loose. The load is a littel wiggly, and something rattles when you whack the basket. Pop the wheel out, tighten the bolt that mounts into the rack, and get the wheel back on in seconds. All the practice has paid off!
  • Buy a fresh tube (SEVEN DOLLARS??) and remount the tire. Do all the stuff as before, but with fingers crossed.

finally got this thing dialed in!

S3X busted nut

S3X busted nut., originally uploaded by BikeTinker.

The wheel was slipping in the dropouts (yeah, yeah, “fork ends”) after I changed a flat, so I added two links to the chain and cranked down extra hard. Two days later I noticed the end had cracked, but it still shifted.

Yesterday, at the bottom of the hill on Willis Road, it snapped entirely. The top two gears still worked, but the low gear only freewheels. I climbed the hill anyway, and picked about two gallons of blackberries for jam. Then I went to the Hotel Oregon and put my feet up.

 

Amphibians?

simpleonesWhat are these shocked twin amphibians staring at, as if to say “Good Lord!” I wonder.

Could it be… the Rivendell Simpleone is approaching? The Simpleone is the rebirth of the Quickbeam – new name, new paint, same geometry.

Why a new name? My theory that Grant and Co. have a big bag of awesome names they’d like to use up, was, apparently, wrong. The story goes that, at the request of the Tolkein rights holders (not the film company),  Rivendell agreed (in a non-legally-non-binding way) to stop using certain Lord of the Rings names, including Quickbeam, Baggins and Legolas.

Also, these bikes are made in Taiwan, not in Japan by Panasonic, and they have fancy headtubes and plainer graphics.

I would like a 62cm, please.

Simpleone frame on Rivbike.com