Not at all good for riding. However; I held out hope for a few days that the weather people would be wrong. Yeah..... They were right!
So, I retreated to the Lab and thought about what needed to be done down there. I always have at least one or two things I put off for times like these. This time it was maintenance of the fleet.
Plus I had to clean up that Paul hub/Velocity Blunt SS wheel for that single speed project that, as far as I know, is still all on for now. And that wheel was a mess! So much dust! It was so bad that I could not tell which spokes were silver and which ones were black. See, this wheel was built in my personal 'signature style' which is black spokes on one side with silver nipples and silver spokes on the other side with black nipples.
I also had to clean a season's worth of dust off the Twin Six Standard Rando v2 as I let that bike accumulate dust and dirt to stress the Enduro Bearing stuff as much as possible for that review. It had a fair amount of dust on it to clean off, but not as much as that single speed wheel had. I didn't realize 2022 was so dusty! (Yes.....I hadn't cleaned it after switching the Standard Rando v2 to gears.)
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| Airing up tires.... |
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| .....and trying to figure out how THIS happened! |
I was checking out my Pofahl Signature Custom and when I turned the crank it acted really oddly. Then I saw it. Rust! What the......!!! How'd THAT happen? I have the answer, of course. Water or some chemical oxidized the steel, but how did that happen is the question. I don't know, but nothing else on the bike shows any evidence of rust or staining like the chain does.
Weird. Anyway, I obviously have to change that out. I also had to crack open the free hub body and get at the pawls because they hadn't ever been cleaned and greased in all the time I have had those wheels. That's been....woo! maybe sixteen years now! So way overdue, however long it's been, at any rate.
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| These are the BB-7's you want, but they are rare. |
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| First generation Industry 9 free hub, single speed specific. |
The maintenance is still ongoing on the fleet. Lots of bikes to get through here! But once I do all that, then Spring can come at any time and I'll be ready. Heck! Even some late Winter, mild weather riding would be good right about now. Although I am speculating that the gravel roads are a big mess right after all of this rain we've had. N.Y. Roll was to have done a longer ride this weekend to check out things South of here. I'll have to find out how that all went. (Update: It didn't go at all. Too much fog!!)
What a weird Winter! With temperatures forecast to be into the upper 40's this week, who knows if Winter will ever get back to town and freeze me out again. Could certainly happen, but not anytime soon, it would appear!
Does the cable routing identify the preferred BB-7s? My 2010 El Mariachi came with/ has a pair, but I didn't know there are different versions of BB-7s.
ReplyDelete@Derek - No, cable pull is the same. What you would be looking for is the one-piece caliper body. (Reference my image again) This caliper flexes less and therefore delivers a much better feel and power than the later version of the BB-7. You can also identify the earlier version by the different pad adjusters than what the later versions had.
ReplyDeleteThese early version BB-7's are prized by trialsin riders and can be difficult to find since they went out of production in the mid-2000's. Look for them to pop up on used MTB's from the early to mid 2000's. It might be worth it to buy such an equipped used MTB just to flip it for the calipers. That is, if you are looking for post/IS mount brakes. These were never made for flat mount brakes. (Although there are adapters)
hey, I've got an old pair of calipers that are a 1 piece body and look like that, but they're labeled "BBDB Road" on that Avid sticker. I thought that they were BB7s but now I'm doubting myself...
ReplyDeletePerfect week for some maintenance, GT! Glad you’re making headway with your projects.
ReplyDeleteWhich grease do you typically use for the hub pawls? I purchased some dumonde tech freehub grease for mine (per recommendation of i9) but I wonder if there are any fair alternates out there? Not that I overhaul hubs often, but it was pretty pricy for a 1oz container of it! I’m guessing the best approach is to go with what the manufacturer recommends, but just want to pick your brain to see if you had any experience deviating from that.
@wp - Those probably are Road BB-7's. They did make a specific pull ratio/leverage arm for those but the rest of the caliper is identical.
ReplyDelete@Tomcat - Hey there! Thank you for the comment. I used the same grease, the DuMonde Tech. I could also recommend DT Swiss free hub grease. I have some of that around somewhere that I use for my DT Swiss star ratchet free hub. It is really very similar to DuMonde Tech's grease.
ReplyDelete@Guitar Ted - doh, of course. Different pull ratios. Sometimes I wonder which synapses are still firing on my side. But now I'm confused - if those BB7s are on the Pofahl are you running the longer mtb pull ratio with drops, and if so why?
ReplyDelete@wp - Long pull Tektro drop bar brake levers. RL520's to be exact. The Pofahl was originally going to have a custom made titanium flat bar, which is another story for another time..... Point being, I put drop bars on the Pofahl, which wasn't supposed to be a drop bar bike, and so I had to use long pull brake levers to match the calipers already on the bike.
ReplyDelete