Friday News And Views

The latest is up now at your favorite podcast outlets.

Guitar Ted Podcast Episode #20: "Give A Hoot":

N.Y. Roll and I sat down at his place Wednesday and recorded another episode of the podcast. Episode #20 contains some inetresting takes on the recent Lutzen 99er race, N.Y. Roll's rant on hunting, and more.

You can check it all out at THIS LINK. 

This episode is sponsored by the CORE4 event. 

We will be taking the week of the 4th off and we will probably resume podcasting again sometime in mid-July. Got any requests for guests? Hit me up in the comments. I think our next episode will be on dogs and how to deal with them. Got any good tips on how to handle dogs? I'll share them in our next podcast. 

Enduro Direct Line pulleys. (Image courtesy of Enduro)

Enduro Pushes Pulley Update For Derailleurs:

I remember reading an advert in cycling magazines back in the early 90's for sealed bearing derailleur pulleys. The claim was that drive train efficiency was improved by using sealed bearing derailleur pulleys which took less energy for the rider to pedal through. Less resistance meant more power to the wheels. 

I don't recall that many of us were concerned by the loss of watts to draggy derailleur pulleys, but we did buy into the anodized aluminum pulleys which came in a variety of colors.  These pulleys were about fashion ore than performance. 

As a mechanic I can tell you that derailleur pulleys can really affect not only your performance, but they can affect your shifting quality as well. Most people don't know that the upper pulley is perhaps the most important part of your derailleur shifting performance as it is this component that guides the chain to where you want it to go. If that pulley is not operating correctly, you aren't going to see great shifting performance. Note: The placement of that pulley in relationship to your cassette is also of paramount importance. 

So, upgrading the pulleys on your derailleur is a good idea, since many derailleur pulleys are , honestly, pretty poor. Their Delrin/Nylon bushings can distort, get galled, and they lose their lubricity rather quickly. This is where Enduro has stepped in with higher quality materials and actual bearings, (who knew!) to vastly improve pulley function. Plus, these do not require your cage to be replaced. No, they aren't cheap, but if you are running a high end bike that is fairly new, I'm betting you spent 3K-6K on it, so 300 bucks on pulleys isn't too bad. You can check their offerings out here. 

Work Continues Despite The Bad Air:

So, Tuesday I was to meet with several Cedar Valley Bicycle Collective volunteers and representatives of the Waterloo Police Department to retrieve bicycles that were released from cases, or which had identified owners, or that had been abandoned in the city. 

The Cedar Valley Bicycle Collective took in 62 bikes of which 42 were not viable for restoration, or that did not have good enough parts to harvest. Those went to the local recyclers where they counted 1,100+ pounds of scrap to our credit which is not going into our local landfill. 

Plus, of the 20 bikes kept, we already have provided one free of charge to a needy person in the halfway house program and sold another to a father for his son to ride this Summer. 

This operation took about three and a half hours of which I was outdoors for probably three hours of that. Our air quality was bad enough that I contracted a pretty decent headache out of the deal along with a scratchy throat. Not good...

And now they are saying the record wildfires in Canada are going to keep burning all Summer long. 

Great!

That's a wrap for this week. Thanks for reading Guitar Ted productions!