Maintenance Time

Click to enlarge and be enlightened.

With Gravel Worlds done and behind me it was time to swap back parts and do some maintenance. You know.....that activity that more and more people are neglecting everyday.? I know this to be true with bicycles because I work on them for a living.

But many people don't maintain things anymore because we have made it so our society, culture, and education is mostly maintenance free. You don't have to lift a finger to maintain your car anymore, for instance, and the time between visits to the mechanic is measured in years in some cases and most certainly many months for most now. Houses are not as maintenance intensive as they once were, and many younger people don't own their dwelling anyway. It's "someone else's job to maintain stuff". Not the realm of everyday folks anymore, maintenance has been shuffled off on "those other people", service providers, if you will, that do the dirty work these days.

My, how our society has become, and is becoming, more spoiled. The most we have to do is charge our devices and we think that is an inconvenience.

Anyway........

Maintenance subject #1- The Twin Six Standard Rando

I swapped the Redshift Sports Shock Stop stem back to the Standard Rando for now. I also re-upped the sealant in the tires as it had mostly dried up. Then it got a wipe down and inspection. This bike needs a new cassette due to a nuisance issue where the rivets that hold the separate cogs on place have worked loose and the cassette "bangs" when it is shifted from gear to gear. I'll upgrade to a better cassette when I do this. I'm also going to get a B-Rad system for this bike as well.

I test rode it after working on it and the way it is set up is super comfortable. I wish Twin Six would have put double water bottle mounts on the down tube like they did on the Ti Standard Rando, but otherwise this bike is very nice.

Maintenance subject #2- The Tamland Two

I switched out a lot of the parts from the Gravel Worlds set up. The aforementioned stem, the Body Float seat post, and the Bar-Yak cue sheet holder all came off. The seat post is now a Salsa Shaft, the saddle is now a WTB SST, and the stem is a Bontrager Race XX white stem.

Mechanically the Tamland is in remarkable shape. I do not need to do anything in that realm to keep it working as it should be. On my test ride after looking it over I noted the lack of smoothness right away which the suspended bits provided. But that's par for the course. I knew it wouldn't feel super smooth anymore.

The Body Float went back on the Ti Mukluk and it will stay there for Winter. Speaking of which, I have three fat bikes to service before Winter hits. I better get busy, eh? I don't think anyone else is going to be taking care of that for me, ya know?