House Cleaning

After The Ride For Jacob I realized I had better get to sprucing up my gravel bikes. I hadn't as much laid a hand to the pink BMC since I came back from BRAN in June and the Ride For Jacob was duuuusty! So, the metric century left a lot of residue on the ol' Peregrine Mk4. 

On the one hand, it is good to have this problem. It means I actually had rides and miles on gravel. This is good! So far this year has been better in this regard. Although local riding has suffered a bit with the heat lately. 

But there is the other side. I clean bikes all the time at the Collective. I really don't want to clean bikes when I get home. However; those two bikes in particular were filthy. It was time. 

Plus, as mentioned yesterday in the FN&V, I have new stuff to test on the chains and I may as well clean up everything while I am cleaning the chains, cassettes, and cranks. I knew I would be happy about it afterward, and I was. 

It is just that it is really tedious work. 

The Dirty XLBird

I have the BMC cleaned up now and the XLBird is getting done as well. Then I will just go out and get them all dirty again. It's kind of like making a bed. You're just going to sleep in it again this evening, so why make it all pretty in the morning? 

That is certainly one way to look at things, but I also understand there are intangibles at play. You often can give yourself a sense of worth and well-being by cleaning up yourself and your surroundings. A neatly made bed gives you a sense of order and calm which is valuable. So this is why you should clean your bicycle. It makes you feel better. 

Really. 

But yeah, it can feel like an endless task if you ride a lot! 

Winter Is Coming

 I know....we haven't even officially gotten to Fall yet, and GT is talking up Winter! I get it, but like the wild animals, I feel Winter coming, and it is time to get ready for it now, not later when it may be too late.

One of those things I need to get done, (besides the stuff around the house I need to do), is refresh/clean/lubricate my Rohloff Speedhub. 

The internally geared hub has 14 speeds and if you have never used one, it is a very nice piece of gear. In my estimation, there is nothing quite like a Rohloff Speedhub, with the possible exception of the Pinion gearbox, which I have not had the chance to use. 

The main advantage here is the lower maintenance and the ability to shift gears when not pedaling. In fact, letting up on the pedals, or a slight "hiccup" in your cadence is necessary before a gear change can be made at all. Internally geared hubs do not like to shift with pressure on the pedals, no matter what brand they happen to be from.  

All these internal Sun and planet gears, with all their bearings and bushings, look like a Swiss watch's guts, and all that stuff requires a lubricant to keep everything happy and spinning along. here is where the Rohloff Gear Lubricant and cleaner comes in. 

I was changing this out once a year, but I decided this was a bit foolish as I was only riding the Ti Muk 2 around five months a year, if that. Plus I was mainly only using it as a commuter bike, and therefor the mileage was very low on the bike. So, I decided not to change out the gear oil last year at all, and now I will change it out for the remainder of 2025 and for 2026. 

Okay, so another interesting thing to consider here is the folowing: I have had the Ti Muk 2 since 2018, and I have changed out the fluids probably maybe five times since then. Kits cost around 30 bucks. This means I have spent about $150.00 on maintenance on the Ti Muk 2's hub since 2018. Given that I have gone through a bottom bracket and a chain ring and chain as well, this means I have spent around $225.00-ish on this bike in seven years. This does not include labor, as I do my own work, so the price would be higher for anyone who relies on outside labor services. 

So.....I don't know that IGH hubs are less money on service. Some believe they are, but I feel it is bike-dependent. I mean, a single speed bike is still probably far less money for maintenance over a period of years than this fat bike has been. Then add in a fixed gear, brakeless situation, and it gets even less expensive. 

Anyway, just some things to think about there. The main point is Winter is coming and I have to get the Ti Muk 2 up and going for the season. 
 

It's A Revival

 Not long ago I saw a bike come into the Cedar Valley Bicycle Collective which, as is the case with many of our donated bicycles, was a bike that had been sitting dormant for probably decades. On the dust-ridden specimen was a saddle which looked like a brown blob. Misshapen and dried up, it probably would have flown under the radar of many people, A saddle worth nothing and being an item worth nothing more than to be trashed. However; I was able to recognize it for what it really was - a severely neglected Brooks leather saddle. 

Brooks B-72 model. (Image courtesy of  Brooks)

I wish I had the presence of mind to have taken an image of this saddle when I started trying to revive it.  Unfortunately I was so wrapped up in the thoughts of just how to approach this dried out hunk of cow skin that I did not take an image at the beginning of the process. And that is what this thing looked like, a patch of dried out leather strung over a steel framework.

The sides were flayed outward, the middle of the saddle was bowed upward, due to the effects of shrinkage while attached to the steel saddle framework. It was severely cracked, and probably too far gone, but this is just the sort of challenge I am attracted to: A project with nothing to lose and everything to gain. I was, at the very least, going to learn something, and that is worth making this project happen.

Reviving a Brooks leather saddle is nothing new. In fact, if you were to think of the saddle as it really is - dried out skin- and if you treated it as such, there is a good possibility you might end up becoming successful in your endeavors. And there are a lot of people with various opinions on just how to do a Brooks saddle revival. So, I hopped online and took a gander. I ended up approaching this with a technique which resonated with my intuitions ahead of looking for help.

Brooks makes a leather treatment they call "Proofide" I just so happened to have a partial tin and another new tin of the stuff on hand. (I own and ride four other Brooks leather saddles already) So, this process relies on a liberal usage of Proofide, time, and a toe strap or two.

Proofide is highly recommended for Brooks saddles and it does what you need it to when you want to recondition a saddle. But this was an extreme case, and I was a bit skeptical if this was going to get me anywhere. However; the advice I read online insisted this would work, and the example saddle I saw was actually in worse shape than the one I had in hand. So, again, I had nothing to lose but a little Proofide, time, and effort.

The first application of Proofide, top and bottom, by the way, was sucked into the dried up skin much like dry wood sucks up paint. And it barely did anything, but again, this leather was bone dry. I waited a couple of days and applied a second coat top and bottom. After this the saddle started to become compliant. So I decided to pull in the sides with some toe straps to help form, or as the leather experts would say, "block up" the piece into a shape which I wanted the leather to go.

When Proofide is applied, a slight haze is supposed to develop over the surface of the leather when it dries, and this is to be buffed off with a soft cloth. After two applications, I was not seeing this haze develop, and when I tried buffing off the saddle it really did not do anything. I applied another layer of Proofide then, and I waited.....

A week later I applied yet another layer of Proofide as the previous application had dried up - again with no hazing. I waited about a week and a half longer, and when I checked it out on Thursday two weeks ago, it had hazed over!

So, I buffed it out, and then I noticed that I could see pores in the skin where I could not see this before. I think this is a good sign and shows that the leather is responding now in a way which leads me to believe the saddle just might end up becoming useful at some point.

My research turned up a point I was happy to learn, but I do not know yet if this will actually turn out in practice. I had read that cracks in the surface of the leather would eventually blend into a smoother surface after Proofide treatments. Maybe they will, but I do know that these cracks seem to have lost their "flakiness" and are more like lines in the surface of the saddle now. Not a section which might tear off, or crack more deeply, at any rate. Still, there is a long way to go before they would "blend in" to the surface, as I had read they should do.

I took off my toe straps to see how the skirts were reacting. When I started, they were almost sticking straight out, at about the same plane as the top! They are holding their shape much better than I had expected, only springing back a few millimeters when I removed the straps. I re-strapped it a bit differently, and I will put more Proofide on soon. This process is going to take a while!

By the way, in case anyone was thinking of this, there is no tension  on the top right now, and the tensioning nut was backed off all the way when I found the saddle, making me think it hadn't ever been adjusted. Sad to think this B-72 hadn't really ever been used as it should have been.

I've got time, so this is not a problem for me. I am hopeful it works out, as this was a piece that was headed for the recyclers if I hadn't decided to try this out.

And what if it does work out? Well, on the chance this ends up becoming a useful saddle, I will have to consider where it will end up. I would give a donation to the Collective, and I probably would put this on a bike I sit more upright on. Fortunately this saddle still has the sandwich clamp. The B-72 has double saddle rails, so this was a boon to my wanting to make this work out.

I'll also admit the other motivating factor here is that a new B-72 costs $190.00, so making this old one work would be a nice score.

I'll have an update on my progress later on. Plus, if anyone has any tips, I'm all ears. So far this has been working out well. The leather has actually swollen and gotten thicker, more pliable, and looking more like a Brooks saddle than a hunk of beef jerky.

Stay tuned....

Just In Case...

Shimano XT 11-40 11 speed cassette

All this talk of tariffs on stuff like steel and aluminum made me think about getting a head of things, you know....just in case.

I mean, what if steel prices go bananas? That would make maintaining my "fleet" of bicycles kind of a painful thing. The good news is I essentially had all the bikes on new chains last year, so drive train reliability should be excellent for some time. I even had to put a new crank set on the Tamland. I should be fine for quite awhile now.

But I had itchy fingers so I hopped online late last week and ordered three new chains and two cassettes. My cassettes last and last because I am always flipping wheels in and out of the bikes I own. To wear out a cassette takes some doing then. Chains do not get swapped around nor do they get to sit idle for weeks at a crack, so those I wear out much more quickly. Fortunately, those chains are not all that expensive...yet!

Actually the chains I use are still on sale due to over-inventories of them. I generally like to go with Shimano chains and I have been using 11 speed Ultegra chains, for the most part, with the brief exception of using Wipperman chain during the COVID times. That was due to Shimano chains being unavailable due to high demand at the time.

I do not have a bike with 12 speed. So, I have the liberty to use some lesser expensive 11 speed parts which are usually pretty good quality bits. Like the 11 - 36T SRAM PG 1130, and the XT cassette shown here. Both work on all my gravel bikes. Yes....even on the GRX rear derailleur. Shifts in and out of that 40T cog just fine, thank you!

Anyway, the parts will be here soon. I'll squirrel them away for future usage. How about you? Are you making any preemptive purchases, ya know....just in case?

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. 

Gremlins

 Sometimes I am at a loss for explanations as to how things happen with bicycles. Take for instance what happened on Monday of this week. I was going to ride to work and had decided I'd use my Ti Muk 2, the Salsa Cycles titanium Mukluk I own. 

Immediately upon pedaling away from the house I felt like the right side pedal was weird. Like it was sagging. Bent pedal spindle? No.... That wouldn't feel the same way through the pedal's orbit. What the....!

Now I have to stop here to point out that I last had ridden the bike home from work. I felt nothing wrong at all. Everything was completely normal. In fact, I remember really cranking out some speed riding up the hill on West 2nd Street. No weirdness felt whatsoever.

Okay, so now back to Monday. I stopped a half a block from the house, looked down, and I could see the right crank arm was seriously loose. Like, not just a little bit. And when a Race Face crank set comes loose, the whole assembly can move laterally, and it was moving about a half an inch! 

Now, you tell me - This did not just happen all of a sudden - so why did I not notice something so awry as this the last time I had ridden it before Monday? 

These are the mysteries of cycling that may never be explained. And it didn't really matter how it got to that point, it needed to be fixed. So, I went back home, grabbed another bike, (the benefits of having several), and went on to work. 

The caliper had crept over toward the centerline of the bike.

When it came time to fix it, I found that it was just a loose crank bolt so I torqued that back on. I will just have to be more vigilant about checking that bolt from now on. But then I discovered my rear caliper was dragging on the rotor badly. 

Another of life's mysterious happenings. Creeping calipers! So, I had to reset that, torque it down, and then I noticed that the chain was a bit too slack. Now this one comes down to wear. No mystery here! 

The Salsa Mukluk has the v1 Alternator drop out plates and well..... I find the design a bit annoying in that you need three hex keys of different sizes to adjust it. 

I get the big six millimeter fixing bolt, because that is the anchor that holds everything in place. But could we have had the other two just be 5mm hex heads? Nope! The adjuster is a 3mm fitment. Anyway.... A minor gripe. Nothing to fret over. 

Then I found out that the adjustment to the chain tension threw off my brake adjustment and I had to do that again. A great example of how everything is not as rock solid on a bicycle as you might think. Oh, and working a post mount brake bolt that is inside the rear triangle and behind a rack stay is really fun. You should try it sometime! (I kid!) 

Then I took off the XT flat pedals because they have woefully inadequate pins and reinstalled my Fyxation Mesa MP's. Quite the work session! But it all came out fine in the end and all gremlins were eradicated.

Fixin' A Wheel

The Tamland with the temporary wheel

 Last Summer I was going round and round with my Tamland's Roval wheels and figured out that the noise I was hearing was some of the spokes getting loose due to unwinding nipples. 

I temporarily solved the issue by using an old wheel I had sitting around. However; I wanted to save that Roval wheel somehow and I thought maybe rebuilding it would be the way to go. 

However, straight pull spokes are expensive, and buying a minimum of 32 of them, (what one wheel would need) was going to be costly. So, since the spokes were really not the issue here, I decided that maybe I had nipples that would work to replace the red alloy DT Swiss nipples the wheel had originally. 

I searched for some brass DT Swiss nipples I knew that I had but there were only 26 nipples in that little box. Hmm.... I started digging through my stash of wheel stuff and I found these red alloy nipples I had saved for years. They had come from a wheel off a Raleigh Rush Hour track bike. If I recall correctly we were tasked to remove all the alloy nipples for the customer right away when the bike was purchased and replace them with brass nipples and different spokes. Anyway, I hadn't found a use for them all these years. 

Oddball red alloy nipples.

As I recalled these nipples were weird. They would not thread on Wheelsmith spokes as they had a slightly different thread pitch. I usually use Wheelsmith spokes, so that was maybe why I still had not found a home for these red nipples. 

I had no good idea what the spokes were in the Roval wheel but my guess was DT Swiss. (And no - I did not check the head for a stamp) I grabbed a red nipple half expecting it to not work when hey! It went on!

Now I have plenty of these nipples, so I started going through the Roval wheel one spoke at a time. Unwinding the old nipple, putting Wheelsmith Spoke Prep on the threads, and then installing with the red alloy nipples from the old Rush Hour track bike. 

The new nipples are longer, which I guess is 'good', assuming that the nipple has a bit more support. The thing is, the old, I assume DT Swiss nipples, had a hex head inside the rim portion that was hidden from view so the support thing may be a wash. 

Straight pull spokes are a bit weird because they usually have to pierce a thicker "flange" so they tend to be a bit longer than you might expect. These are 300mm and 302mm in length for this rear wheel application. 

Plus, they can spin while you are tightening up the spoke nipple. There is no "J" bend to work against, so I have to kind of tension them up by applying sideways pressure which jambs the nail head and helps prevent the spoke from spinning until you get enough tension for that to hold the spoke immobile. 

While I have two tensionometers, I am doing initial tensioning by plucking the spokes and matching pitch. I'll go through and do a final tensioning with the tensionometer at the end. But in my experience, it probably will need only very minor adjustment. 

'Spose I should do some cleaning too.

This will save the rear wheel, use the spokes I have without having to purchase new ones, and get this wheel back on the Tamland again. 

It is important to save this wheel because I don't have much for quick release wheels anymore and less that are suitable for a gravel application. These are pretty light wheels as well as being thematically similar in color scheme to the Tamland, so they kind of look at home on that bike. Those red painted DT Swiss Aerolite spokes are definitely unique! 

So, that's but one of the Winter projects I have in mind to do this Winter. I'll be busting out more as the season rolls along. Hopefully I get around to everything I have in mind to do. That will depend on the weather we get, of course. 

Stay tuned.....

Ti Muk 2 Maintenance

Recent test ride after fixing up the Ti Muk 2

Ever since I've had the Ti Muk 2 (My second titanium Mukluk, thus "Ti Muk 2), it never has had a very good rear brake. Not that it mattered a whole lot since I haven't been mountain biking the Ti Muk 2 but rather just using it as a poor weather commuter. 

It isn't very hilly where I go and so both brakes didn't need to be 100% efficient. It was something on my mind, but not anything I needed to get to right away. It also did not help that I primarily use the front brake. 

However; this Fall I knew I had to give the bike a once over. Check sealant, refresh that, and maybe take a closer look at that brake. I knew what the issue was. It had been compromised by contamination emanating from the shifter box/hub connection for the Rohloff 14 speed internal geared hub. 

Like many things, there is always more to the story once you dig into it. I had never addressed the rear brake on this bike before, so I wasn't aware that the Avid BB7 caliper was not able to center over the Rohloff rotor. I could not move the caliper inward enough to get the inner pad to quit rubbing the rotor slightly. I probably did not notice that before because it was lubricated by the internal gear hub oil! Finding that out was kind of a bummer. 

The mess had been cleared up, after several applications of degreaser and isopropyl alcohol. But now what? Well, I had somehow acquired a single TRP Spyre SLC caliper along my travels, and I noted that the caliper mounting holes were larger/longer than the Avid's were. I dry fit the caliper and was able to get a good result. So, that fancy-pants caliper is now doing the job of braking in the rear of the Ti Muk 2. 

I know....it is a drop bar lever caliper. But I do things you should not do. So, don't follow my lead here. It is not recommended. That said, it is working really well for me. So, that problem has been solved. 

Bring it on Winter! I'm ready.

They Come In Threes

At least one thing went right...

Ever hear of that old saying that "bad things come in threes"? Well, I have to wonder after this past week if the saying is true. I had a pretty unlucky string of road blocks which has stacked things up in the old Lab at Guitar Ted Headquarters. 

The first check came while dealing with the State Bicycle Co. Monster Fork review. I had ridden it enough in one offset setting that it was time to go to the other choice. Well, the first thing I ran into was that the wheel did not want to come out of the fork without a bit of dead blow hammer influence. Not good. Then I figured out that the offset change was not accounted for by the designers of the fork with a corresponding change in brake position. No go.

So, that is in limbo now until I hear back from my contact at State Bicycle Co. to see what they want me to do from this point. Is it just my fork (doubtful) or is it a flaw in the basic design (I'm betting on this one)? We will see......hopefully. At this point I don't know why it is the way it is, I just know it is. UPDATE 10/22/24: After contacting my person at the marketing company they relayed from State that the brake mount must be flipped to make it work and that seems to have solved that issue. Look for my update on this review on Thursday, October 24th.

Next up I decided to try the Irwin Cycles Aeon 35 carbon wheels in the Raleigh again, since I figured out that it was the worn drive train which was the problem, not the wheels. Also, I had to swap wheels due to those Roval wheels having spoke issues. Should have been a "no big deal" swap, since I had those Irwin wheels in the bike at one time. However, since I thought it was the free hub body going bad at first, I removed the Irwin wheels. Then I had taken that rear wheel apart to inspect it. In the process I must have mislaid the drive side quick release end cap and now I cannot find it. 

Email sent to Irwin on Friday. Until I hear back from them, that will be in limbo as well..... 

A screw loose here....

Then on Saturday I was riding my new-to-me fixed gear bike and the screw holding on the brass bell to the handle bar fell out. Next thing you know I was making a fancy catch of the bell before it was jettisoned to the pavement. 

This wasn't that big of a deal, but after the first two things it was something that pushed me to the end of my rope. I just took everything to the Lab, parked the bike, set the bell in the handlebar bag, and grabbed my Honeman Flyer for a mind-cleansing ride around the neighborhood. 

Hey! I just put some new fuchsia bar tape on the HF. Looks great and feels good. At least something went right with bicycles recently! 

Oh yeah, and Thursday was spent fixing my front porch steps until I ran six screws short of being able to finish and I had no time to go get more. That got finished up on Friday. So frustration was a bit of a theme of late here. I am hopeful this changes soon. 

Stay tuned for updates.

Thinking About Winter

Like it or not, there is a season coming soon called "Winter". I put that in quotation marks because what I used to know as 'that season' is not like what I know Winter as now. There has been a change, and maybe what I used to expect can no longer be banked upon going forward.

I'm not going to delve into the whole climate change thing here. You know Winter is not like what it used to be like if you are over the age of 40. Winter used to be a solid four months of snow, ice, and sub-freezing temperatures. Not anymore......

Last year was a typical, for modern times, Winter where we had like four weeks of snow, two "big" snow storms, and the rest of it was "Brown Season". Too cold and windy to do much country riding, but not snowy and cold enough to do any fat biking worth getting the fat bike out for. Yes.....things may have been vastly different where you live, but here in Iowa? Winters mean something completely different than they used to mean in the days of yore. Maybe we'll cycle around back to that sort of Winter and maybe I'll be eating these words in late December. But I bet that won't be the case.

Last December. Cold enough for pogies - No snow to be seen anywhere!

Well, whatever happens, I probably should get on top of things by maintaining my Ti Muk and Blackborow DS just in case. I need to peel off the 26" x 4" Cake Eater tires and clean out the old sealant, refresh the sealant, and then see to changing out the oil in the Rohloff hub. 

The Blackborow DS probably just needs air in the tires. I think I rode that bike once or twice, at most, last Winter. I feel bad about even owning that bike because it doesn't hardly ever get used anymore. I just do not need a fat bike with the capabilities of the Blackborow if Winter is but a whimper again and again. I almost sold the BLackborow in 2021, but you know "almost" only counts in horseshoes and hand grenades. 

And this is how I feel about Winter. It is an "almost, but not quite" season anymore these days. Why even have fat bikes? I probably could do with a stout 29"er with 2.8" tires all Winter if all we see are flurries and the occasional dump big enough to make a snowman from. 

Ha! Do you suppose I've jinxed myself, perhaps? Nah......I don't believe in such nonsense. If we get a Winter, well then huzzah! If not, well then - Same ol' - same ol'......

When It Gets Old

Shimano FC-RS510 crank (Image courtesy of the internet)

 I think some of you who are regular readers here might recall that I had been having troubles with a wheel set which I had been using on my Tamland Two gravel bike. It is a carbon Irwin Cycles wheel set and I was having, what I thought was, issues with the free hub. As it seems to be turning out now, that is not the case.

Apologies to Irwin Cycles.

You might also recall how I had recently installed a DT Swiss hubbed Roval carbon wheel set on the Tamland Two, thinking that I had eliminated the issue with the free hub on the Irwin wheels, which, as it seems to be now, was not what was going on. 

I had been toying with the idea of blowing apart that Irwin rear wheel, getting a new rear hub, and relacing the new hub to the old carbon hoop. However; every time I picked up that wheel and spun the free hub it felt perfect. I happen to have two other Irwin wheels with similar rear hubs with a LOT less miles on them and they felt exactly the same. I also did not see any evidence of wear or damage inside the hub I suspected of causing my issues. So, I was reticent to blow up the wheel if it was still in good operable condition. 

And now I am happy I did not blow that wheel apart. 

Late into last week's ride I started to get similar "skipping" issues, but as I was feeling before with the Irwin wheels, it was now getting worse. I immediately knew I misdiagnosed the issue and I knew what was going on. 

My drive train was shot.

Specifically the crank chain rings. I thought about this as I shifted to the big ring for the remainder of the ride, and remembered that these chain rings were installed in late 2014! 

Doh! No wonder that small chain ring was allowing the chain to jump teeth! So, a complete swap of chain rings, chain, and cassette (although the cassette isn't all that old, I probably should swap it out), is in order. Time to research!

I found many times when a customer at the bike shops I used to haunt as a mechanic would need chain rings it was actually cheaper  to buy a crank set than it was to buy separate chain rings. Crazy, but true, and in my case, that still is true. I was able to source my preference in gearing, which is 46T/36T in a Shimano FC-RS510 crank for under 100 bucks. Two chain rings in those sizes would cost well over 100 bucks! Especially the Shimano ones which I would necessarily have to buy to fit the original Ultegra crank set on the Tamland. 

I also opted to try an experiment. The new fad is to go shorter on cranks. Now, I do not have any extenuating circumstances that would point me to using shorter cranks. No knee pains, nothing like that. So, maybe this won't matter, but I ordered 170mm cranks to try them out. Some folks rave about the shorter cranks and they have gone waaaay shorter with 165's or less. I'm not into radical changes because my belief is that minor changes can make huge differences. Let's take a "baby step" and see.... 

The RS-510's are a heavy crank set, since they are not made in the HollowTech manner, but are hot-forged aluminum and solid in nature. If the shorter cranks are 'meh!' or if I see no reasons to keep them on the bike, I will swap the chain rings to the older Ultegra crank set and donate the RS-510's to the Collective. I figure I am getting the arms for free anyway. 

So, are you a 'short crank' devotee?  N.Y. Roll already is singing the praises of shorter cranks, so I've heard a bit of The Hype. Let me know in the comments.

More Maintenance & Changes

Maintenance has been ongoing with the "fleet" of bikes here throughout the end of January and early February. I thought I might take some time to detail what I've been up to and show any changes i've made of late. 

The Tamland got some long, long overdue maintenance recently. How long has this been waiting? Well, I got the chain and cassette for this repair over a year ago. That long! 

I took the opportunity to clean it up thoroughly as well. At the time I did this I was thinking we might be in for an epic "slop season" with all that snow. However; that did not materialize and now I am contemplating removal of the fenders so I can test something else out on the bike. Stay tuned on that...

Otherwise the Tamland Two is pretty much good to go. That bike is "set in stone" as far as how I have it set up with the exception of the fenders and I do have alternate wheels for it. I gotta get that out a few more times than I did last year. It's the ten year anniversary for this bike, by the way, which happens next month. Look for a special post about that coming in a few weeks.

I road the Fargo a couple of times recently for some in-town rides and I was rethinking my take on the Hy Rd calipers. 

I was pretty much thinking they were much like the TRP brakes on the aforementioned Tamland Two. That being more "on-off" with little modulation. But then I found through more riding that the Hy Rd does have a bit softer feel than the TRP full hydraulics do. 

This probably has a lot to do with the fact that my cable housing flexes somewhat and a full hydraulic set up has very little housing expansion. That would account for the softer feel of the Hy Rd right there. 

It is still a very powerful brake, and very quiet. This, more than anything else, is what I like best about the Hy Rd's. I cannot remember a time where those old Avids were "quiet". BB-7's are inherently noisy unless you have the really old and really rare single piece caliper BB-7's. Those are a lot quieter than the newer versions are. 

The Pofahl Signature Custom single speed. Notice anything different? (Ha!)

The Pofahl had the maintenance wand waved over it recently as well. I cleaned out the old I-9 hub and re-greased it with some DuMonde Tech Liquid Grease. It needed it too! It was very black and dried up for the most part inside there before I cleaned it all out with some Finish Line degreaser followed up with some WD-40 and then the Liquid Grease. 

That hub was insanely buzzy before the maintenance but afterward it was relatively quiet. I actually have to attune my ear to it now. So, that's a big improvement and a testament to what a good grease can do inside a hub. 

So, another rig ready to go and I hope to do just that with this bike and the Karate Monkey which I also did a little change to. I swapped out the 17T cog for an 18T rear cog to take the bite out of accelerating that bike. One tooth? Yes. Yes it does make a difference. I know because I have been riding it a fair amount of late. I probably will be doing some country rides on it soon to get accustomed to single speed gravel again and so I can test something on the bike I can't talk about just yet. 

That's about it for now. Stay tuned for more soon....

The Cleaning, Lubricating Post

If you recall earlier this year I made the call that i needed to be doing more referencing to past posts from the nearly 20 years of backlog here. Otherwise I get to thinking I should write about a topic and then I find out later that I had already done a series or several posts on that subject years ago. 

This time I am going to point you back through the fog of time to posts I have written on cleaning your bicycles and lubricating the chain a well. 

The first post I will reference here is the one I posted in 2019 about how I go about cleaning my own bikes. It was.....controversial. As one commenter stated, "... I think only old bike mechanics (who know how not to create more work for themselves) understand your bike cleaning practices."

Maybe so. But if you want the best results with the least amount of collateral damage, this is the way you should go about cleaning your bicycles. It works well for me and has for many years. Another primer for easy home cleaning of bicycles can be found HERE that I wrote as part of my Beginners On Gravel series.

Secondly, that post raised some questions which I answered in a separate post. This time it was how I clean up a drive train while it is all still on the bike. Chain lube practices are also covered here. back then I was a strong DuMonde Tech lubricant advocate, (still am), but these days I've been using a lot of Silca's Super Secret Lube. You can check that post out HERE. 

Questions? Suggestions? Hit me up in the comments. If I get feedback I'll do a follow-up post.

Rainy Week Maintenance

 Last week it rained every single day at some point. What a "weather-whiplash"! The week before it was all snowy, sub-zero, windy, and white. This past week it was all gloomy, grey, and gloppy. 

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.)

Airing up tires....

.....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. 

These are the BB-7's you want, but they are rare.

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!

Getting Set For Fat Biking Season

The Blackborow DS on my test run.

Well, sooner than later Winter is going to show up. At least for a bit, and I wanted to be ready for it when it does. So, I did some maintenance and tweaking on two of my three fat bikes over the last weekend. 

My dedicated, max-flotation device is the Salsa Blackborow DS. I have essentially done zero maintenance on this bike since I got it in 2014. The one thing I needed to do was to swap out the chain, which had finally worn out and had finally shown signs of rusting. Pretty remarkable seeing as how I almost never rode this bike unless it was going through rain, mud, flooded waters, or snow. 

During my maintenace on the chain, I checked the bottom bracket, (good!), and the rear wheel bearings, (also good!),and did some deep cleaning. The two stainless steel cogs were showing some signs of discoloration, but that is typical of Surly's single speed cogs. The chain rings, also stainless and Surly branded, cleaned up slick as a whistle. 

The original chain was a KMC 99 model, (no onger in production), so I used a new KMC 9 speed chain I had here anyway. Stripped of its shipping lube, which was easy, since it was so light, I then added DuMonde Tech lube. We will see how that fares in the snow!

A better look at those Revelate pogies.

The really cool deal here is that I finally got these rare Revelate Jones H-Bar specific pogies on this bike. These came out in late 2015 but they were insanely expensive and not many people bought them. So they weren't made for very long. 

I got them because they were gifted to me by the former owner of the Ti Muk 2. I promptly stored them and well.....I finally found them again! So on those went and they are fantastic! These are really well made and they should keep the cold out quite nicely. 

They are huge, but they do not impinge on the ability to use all the Jones H-Bar positions. So, that explains their profile. The hand gaskets are a nice touch and very easy to get in and out from. There are even venting zippers in front which are those waterproofed, weather-proofed ones. Expensive stuff here. I can completely see why these are not made anymore.It's definitely a typically well-built and designed Revelate product with zero compromises. But that makes the price sky-high, and added in with the small niche market these would have and well..... Ya know? It's not hard to figure it out. 

But there it is. My Blackborow DS ready for deep Winter and snow. 

The Ti Muk 2

The Ti Muk 2 didn't need much, but I did need to fashion a new rear fender for it. I ended up using a front Mud shovel and with a few minor modifications t went on very nicely. The previously reviewed Old Man Mountain Juniper Trunk bag is on the rack and will serve as a place to stow the ubiquitous mammoth-sized fat bike tube, and maybe some changes of clothes or a hot Thermos of chicken soup.

So, that bike is ready, and it probably will be my main commuter rig, along with being my "normal conditions" fat bike choice. And what of the other fat bike I have? Well, that will be getting a major refresh and you will all just have to sit tight to see what happens there.

Brake Job

A slotted fastener? C'mon Shimano! Really?

 Not long ago I had a weird thing happen on a ride on the Noble GX5 where I applied the brakes hard to slowly descend a flood control dike. There was no issue there, but later into the ride I had the rear brake lever come all the way back to the bars with little braking power. While a brake bleed may be the initial diagnosis, it has been my experience as a mechanic working with Shimano hydraulic brakes that worn pads can cause this same effect. 

But all at once? I had great rear brake feel, then bad brake feel all in the same ride. Well, I decided to hedge my bets and I got both the brake bleed kit, mineral oil fluid, and a new set of organic pads. 

I figured on changing the pads first as that is the easiest fix. As I sat down to work on this, I discovered that the brake pad retention bolt had a slotted head. Not a hex interface, not a Torx interface, a slotted interface. What?!!

Warning! Rant Alert: As a mechanic it is my opinion that slotted interfaces should be banished from Planet Earth. There is no reason to use that anymore when superior technology exists and is extensively used in the industry. Why do I feel this way? Because a slotted interface fastener is super easy to damage, harder to work with, and .....well.....it just is not a good choice anymore. As stated above, better ideas exist and are readily available to any manufacturer. Okay....rant over. 

Once I had carefully selected the proper size flat blade screwdriver, the fastener came out undamaged. Whew! That was the worst of the job right there, and the rest was a breeze to finish up. I buttoned up everything and went out to bed in the pads to the rotor. 

And how did that go? Well, the brakes are better. But they are not what they were yet, so I may do a brake bleed anyway just to see if I can't bring the lever feel back to what it was. I mean, I can lock up the rear wheel and braking power, modulation, and all is just fine. It's the pad contact feel that is lacking and it seems to me that the lever travel is just a bit much yet. But here again, I've had Shimano road brakes on many bikes in my workstand where you couldn't get the rear to feel like the front no matter how much you bled the brakes.

And I had zero evidence of brake fluid leakage, which would indicate that the system is still sealed, but that doesn't necessarily mean anything here. It just points to the fact that it was mostly the pads that went away, but there may be something else going on here. 

Stay tuned. I may end up bleeding the brakes after all.

Brake Job

A slotted fastener? C'mon Shimano! Really?

 Not long ago I had a weird thing happen on a ride on the Noble GX5 where I applied the brakes hard to slowly descend a flood control dike. There was no issue there, but later into the ride I had the rear brake lever come all the way back to the bars with little braking power. While a brake bleed may be the initial diagnosis, it has been my experience as a mechanic working with Shimano hydraulic brakes that worn pads can cause this same effect. 

But all at once? I had great rear brake feel, then bad brake feel all in the same ride. Well, I decided to hedge my bets and I got both the brake bleed kit, mineral oil fluid, and a new set of organic pads. 

I figured on changing the pads first as that is the easiest fix. As I sat down to work on this, I discovered that the brake pad retention bolt had a slotted head. Not a hex interface, not a Torx interface, a slotted interface. What?!!

Warning! Rant Alert: As a mechanic it is my opinion that slotted interfaces should be banished from Planet Earth. There is no reason to use that anymore when superior technology exists and is extensively used in the industry. Why do I feel this way? Because a slotted interface fastener is super easy to damage, harder to work with, and .....well.....it just is not a good choice anymore. As stated above, better ideas exist and are readily available to any manufacturer. Okay....rant over. 

Once I had carefully selected the proper size flat blade screwdriver, the fastener came out undamaged. Whew! That was the worst of the job right there, and the rest was a breeze to finish up. I buttoned up everything and went out to bed in the pads to the rotor. 

And how did that go? Well, the brakes are better. But they are not what they were yet, so I may do a brake bleed anyway just to see if I can't bring the lever feel back to what it was. I mean, I can lock up the rear wheel and braking power, modulation, and all is just fine. It's the pad contact feel that is lacking and it seems to me that the lever travel is just a bit much yet. But here again, I've had Shimano road brakes on many bikes in my workstand where you couldn't get the rear to feel like the front no matter how much you bled the brakes.

And I had zero evidence of brake fluid leakage, which would indicate that the system is still sealed, but that doesn't necessarily mean anything here. It just points to the fact that it was mostly the pads that went away, but there may be something else going on here. 

Stay tuned. I may end up bleeding the brakes after all.

Roller Cams On The Brain: Service What You Have First

Frozen: Not the movie either.....

 I have a side-hobby which involves learning about electric guitar amplifier repair. If you read my review on my new amplifier I got recently, you already know this. Anyway, one of the podcasts I have listened to quite a bit in the past was "The Truth About Vintage Amps with Skip Simmons". I found some parallels in philosophy on modifying old amps and old bicycles there. One of those parallels, which the featured person on that podcast often repeated, was along the lines of the following:

"If it works, or if you know that it did at one time, just service it first." 

That sounds obvious, but if you are a bike nerd, like I am, your mind can run amok with thoughts of , "Well, this would be cool to do with that.....". You know what I mean? You don't think about what it is so much as what you think it could be. And therein lies the beginnings of failed projects, troubles, lots of money spent, and broken dreams. 

Fix it first! See what you've got. If the bones are good, if the foundation is sound, okay then.... Maybe you've got a platform to customize from. Plus, you are not wasting time trying to make something into what it is not only to find out that the bicycle doesn't fit you, or that it handles oddly, or that you've spent so much on it you will never realize the benefit of your dollars spent. 

Not a lot of evidence of use here.

I have tried to internalize that wisdom I gained from Mr. Simmons, and I am going to apply it to this Dorado bicycle I have, which if you've missed seeing last December, you can go back and read about it here. 

This "fix what you've got first" mentality led me to stop and pause on my thoughts I had about the wheels and replacing them. The more I looked at the originals, and the more I thought about this wisdom I had gained, the more I came around to thinking about this project in a bit different light. I reconsidered a few things, and here is what I have found....

There is some patina here, but nothing detrimental.

A good hard look at the wheels revealed something to me. The evidence is telling me something here, and that is that this bicycle wasn't used very much at all. 

One thing I've learned over the years of service and retail bicycle work is that consumers are deathly afraid to use their front brakes. I guess catapulting off the saddle if you touch the front brake lever seems to be a myth that needs busting. That's not my point here. But since that seems to be the case for the vast majority of casual cyclists, you can readily tell if a bicycle has a lot of miles on it by looking at the rear wheel. That is, if it hasn't been replaced.

This is especially true if the bicycle is a rim-brake type bike. You just look at the brake track and determine how much aluminum has been ground away due to braking. In the case of the Dorado here, I am not seeing any major, or much minor wear, at all. The next thing you examine is if the wheels are true and tensioned properly. True and straight is one thing, but a wheel could have been trued and that throws the tensions off on the spokes. In the case of the Dorado, I don't see anything that would lead me to believe the wheels had been abused, or ridden all that much. 

Just rubbing my fingers on the rim was enough to polish up this area.

Then you take a look at the overall appearance of the wheels. Are they stained? Is there oxidation, rust, (same thing, but you know..), or is there any grease leakage over the hubs? This can indicate heavy usage of the wheels, but again, I am not seeing evidence of any of that.

So, why replace these wheels? Why not just service them, clean them up, and place them back on the bike? Really, the only thing wrong here is that the sealed bearings in the hubs show damage from sitting and having condensation rust the bearings. Pop in new sealed bearings and I cannot find any reason not to use these wheels. At least not until I find out this bike will be useful in some way. Maybe then I'd upgrade. 

Obviously, from an expense standpoint alone, not building up new wheels makes a lot of sense here. Those sealed bearings will be a lot cheaper to get and less time will be needed to finish that job up than it would take if I built new wheels. On every front, servicing first makes more sense. 

I have found that the frame of the Dorado is a bit longer front/center than my current townie, which might actually be a good thing. We will see. But I am thinking that if this turns out well, I'll be swapping townie bikes. Any way it goes, one of these is probably going to the Collective once I am done and will be donated for someone else to use. 

Stay tuned.....

Roller Cams On The Brain: Service What You Have First

Frozen: Not the movie either.....

 I have a side-hobby which involves learning about electric guitar amplifier repair. If you read my review on my new amplifier I got recently, you already know this. Anyway, one of the podcasts I have listened to quite a bit in the past was "The Truth About Vintage Amps with Skip Simmons". I found some parallels in philosophy on modifying old amps and old bicycles there. One of those parallels, which the featured person on that podcast often repeated, was along the lines of the following:

"If it works, or if you know that it did at one time, just service it first." 

That sounds obvious, but if you are a bike nerd, like I am, your mind can run amok with thoughts of , "Well, this would be cool to do with that.....". You know what I mean? You don't think about what it is so much as what you think it could be. And therein lies the beginnings of failed projects, troubles, lots of money spent, and broken dreams. 

Fix it first! See what you've got. If the bones are good, if the foundation is sound, okay then.... Maybe you've got a platform to customize from. Plus, you are not wasting time trying to make something into what it is not only to find out that the bicycle doesn't fit you, or that it handles oddly, or that you've spent so much on it you will never realize the benefit of your dollars spent. 

Not a lot of evidence of use here.

I have tried to internalize that wisdom I gained from Mr. Simmons, and I am going to apply it to this Dorado bicycle I have, which if you've missed seeing last December, you can go back and read about it here. 

This "fix what you've got first" mentality led me to stop and pause on my thoughts I had about the wheels and replacing them. The more I looked at the originals, and the more I thought about this wisdom I had gained, the more I came around to thinking about this project in a bit different light. I reconsidered a few things, and here is what I have found....

There is some patina here, but nothing detrimental.

A good hard look at the wheels revealed something to me. The evidence is telling me something here, and that is that this bicycle wasn't used very much at all. 

One thing I've learned over the years of service and retail bicycle work is that consumers are deathly afraid to use their front brakes. I guess catapulting off the saddle if you touch the front brake lever seems to be a myth that needs busting. That's not my point here. But since that seems to be the case for the vast majority of casual cyclists, you can readily tell if a bicycle has a lot of miles on it by looking at the rear wheel. That is, if it hasn't been replaced.

This is especially true if the bicycle is a rim-brake type bike. You just look at the brake track and determine how much aluminum has been ground away due to braking. In the case of the Dorado here, I am not seeing any major, or much minor wear, at all. The next thing you examine is if the wheels are true and tensioned properly. True and straight is one thing, but a wheel could have been trued and that throws the tensions off on the spokes. In the case of the Dorado, I don't see anything that would lead me to believe the wheels had been abused, or ridden all that much. 

Just rubbing my fingers on the rim was enough to polish up this area.

Then you take a look at the overall appearance of the wheels. Are they stained? Is there oxidation, rust, (same thing, but you know..), or is there any grease leakage over the hubs? This can indicate heavy usage of the wheels, but again, I am not seeing evidence of any of that.

So, why replace these wheels? Why not just service them, clean them up, and place them back on the bike? Really, the only thing wrong here is that the sealed bearings in the hubs show damage from sitting and having condensation rust the bearings. Pop in new sealed bearings and I cannot find any reason not to use these wheels. At least not until I find out this bike will be useful in some way. Maybe then I'd upgrade. 

Obviously, from an expense standpoint alone, not building up new wheels makes a lot of sense here. Those sealed bearings will be a lot cheaper to get and less time will be needed to finish that job up than it would take if I built new wheels. On every front, servicing first makes more sense. 

I have found that the frame of the Dorado is a bit longer front/center than my current townie, which might actually be a good thing. We will see. But I am thinking that if this turns out well, I'll be swapping townie bikes. Any way it goes, one of these is probably going to the Collective once I am done and will be donated for someone else to use. 

Stay tuned.....