Tinkering

The current state of the Gryphon Mk3

 Over the Holidays I tackled the issues I had resulting from the addition of that Tumbleweed Big Dipper Bar I installed in November. (Review so far is HERE) The stem and the rear brake are both now perfect.

The Big Dipper bar added width which was just enough to cause the rear brake cable and housing to be a tiny bit too short. I could ride the bike, but turning the bars to the right just a bit too far would activate the rear brake. Not at all what you want, to say nothing of the cable housing rub on the head tube. 

So, my first thought was to get a hold of a shorter stem. That original 80mm stem was stretching me out a bit too much anyway, so I ordered up a 60mm Whiskey stem in a polished finish to keep my silver theme for the Gryphon intact. While the stem did fix the fit issue, it didn't take the brake issues all the way out of the equation. 

So, I thought about what I had to do there. The obvious answer would be to add new longer housing and and cable. However; that would mean tearing into the bar tape I had just put on, and that may or may not go well. Plus, it would be a lot of work and expense. I came up with a better, less intrusive and less expensive idea. Lengthen the housing, buy a new cable, insert it, and boom! The problem was just how  I would lengthen the housing without replacing it. Then I had some inspiration....

The new Whiskey stem shows more of the Tumbleweed branding here.

This bit was originally for a time trial bike's rear brake.

I have a "pack-rat" mentality when it comes to cast-off or extra parts that are unusual. So, when I have an unusual situation to tackle, I often sift through my stuff and see if anything strikes up an idea. This time I saw a piece that originally came off a replacement tri-bike rear brake. The original piece was retained and the new "noodle", if you will, went unused, so I kept that bit. This time the piece was perfectly suited for the task of lengthening my full-run housing a bit. 

Since the flexible steel and aluminum bit was about three inches long, I just scooched the full-run housing forward carefully through the cable-tied mounting points along the frame and added it at the end before the caliper. A new, extra-long rear brake cable was purchased at the local bike shop and when installed I had solved the problem. Now the overall length of the system allowed for full-on right hand turns and the housing was off the head tube! 

So, the final tweaking bit I did was an experiment more than anything. A reader of the blog here sent me some images of a "cut-off" light mod that he hacked from a flat piece of plastic or something similar, then he attached it to his Bookman Volume light so that it looked kind of like a visor over the lighting element. This would prevent the beam from shining up higher than the lighting unit. His images he sent of the beam pattern were encouraging enough that I thought I'd give it a try. 

I used some bit of old Iowa license plat aluminum and some tape to temporarily mount the "visor" to my Bookman light. I must say though that my test didn't really show any improvement over not having the visor thingie on and if I wanted to accomplish what I'd seen it would take a much longer piece to do that. 

So, two wins and a fail. I'll report back if I try the light hack again.