Naughty

 Last weekend I was down in the Lab doing some maintenance on a couple of bicycles. First up was the pink Black Mountain Cycles MCD. I was going to swap in those wheels using the Rene Herse TPU tubes I have on test here. 

Sounds easy enough. All I had to do was swap the wheels as I had a cassette and rotor already installed on the wheels with the Rene Herse tubes. Then I ran into that common problem I have here where the tolerances between hubs is off enough that the pad drags in the TRP Spyre caliper on the rotor on one side. 

Okay..... Adjust and move on. Sounds easy enough, right? Well, the caliper wouldn't go over far enough to clear the inside pad. Then I noticed the brake pads were really worn out. Time for new pads. Easy enough......riiiiight? Well, this was when I discovered one of the pad adjusters on the caliper was frozen. 

Okay, now is it time to panic? 

I had to retrieve a bag N.Y. Roll left down at the Cedar Valley Bicycle Collective, so I left everything and let that marinate in my head whilst I went over to see Mabel the Rhodesian Ridgeback and N.Y. Roll for a bit. N.Y. Roll brought up Avid calipers during our visit. Light bulb! I have several of those! I could swap one in and be done until I figured out what to do with the TRP Spyre caliper.

Now when I got back to the Lab, I started swapping the caliper over. Everything was lining up well. Then I discovered the cable was dragging really badly on something, either a burr on the housing end where it was cut, or ....? The thing is everything worked great until I swapped wheels! Well, this went on into the following day when I discovered the cable had started to unravel inside the housing causing excessive friction. Ugh! Fortunately I had a new cable, I dressed the ends of the housing with a file, and once I put everything back together, it actually worked!   

Naughty brake!

An 11 speed Ultegra rear derailleur shifting an 11-42 9spd cassette? YES!

Then I did one of those "this really should not work, but it does" things on the Snow Dog. I was running a 9spd cassette with a 42T expander cog. I had originally been shifting this with a Grip Shift shifter which was Shimano compatible. 

This worked marginally well as I had indexing in one direction and no indexing the other way. I was not a fan! So, when I came across a nine speed Deore trigger shifter I decided to make the swap. 

Now what is really not supposed to be done is the rear derailleur choice, an 11 speed Ultegra. This should not shift the chain into a 42T cog and it should not work on a 9 speed cassette and chain. 

But it does.

So naughty....

NOTE: A Gravel Grinder News post will drop at 11:00am CST here today. Make sure to check that out.