Silence!

It was the toe-in.  And coming from the Big Honkin Hammer School of Technology, I fiddled around with the Kool Stop Salmons for about ten minutes before my patience wore thin.

The solution involved removing each pad assembly from the canti arm, clamping the threaded post in my trusty Harbor Freight big arse table vise, and leaning down on the pad to insure that the front would make contact with the rim first.  It took two tries, but now there is just the pleasing swish of the pads doing their job against the rims to bring the Trucker to a perfectly modulated and purposeful stop.

No calipers, no levels, no torque wrenches, no problem.

Touring Wheel

One of the concerns I’ve had about the LHT since the start was the wheels.  I think there was a lot of pressure on the guys at PP to keep the cost as close to a complete build as they could, and when we talked about the wheels, I didn’t flinch at the entry level Alex/Joytech combination that they were able to supply.  And the truth is, they’re not a bad wheel, just not the best combination for extended riding where reliability is paramount.

Within six months, the front wheel was replaced with the Shimano dynohub/ACE19 32 spoke setup.  The dyno is reputed to be Ultegra quality, and with the 32 spoke configuration, it was definitely a step up from the 24 spoke build.  For 3000 miles, the dynohub has performed flawlessly.

That left the 28 spoke rear, which also has performed well; although I’ve broken two driveside spokes in the last few months.  So when thinking about upgrades, that left me on the lookout for a reasonably priced touring wheel that would come close to matching the front for looks.

Recently I found a well-priced Alex Adventurer rim, 36 spokes, laced to a Shimano XT hub.  The Adventurer is heavier than the DC19, but the geometry and appearance is similar except for the sidewall – it’s thicker and has a larger and smoother braking surface.  Plus the spokes are stainless, matching the front.

But the real difference is the XT hub.  It’s super smooth and very quiet.  Even looking at the components, one can see the difference in quality.  Joytech can be hit or miss depending on the model and when it was built, but the XT hub leaves no doubt that it is going to be smooth and reliable.

Changing over the cassette was no problem, but the brakes had to be adjusted out a smidge, and now they howl like a banshee.  I’ll play around with them, but I might just have to move the Koolstops to the X bike and invest in a set of VO noise-free pads that Dave has been using.

So I now can have peace over the rear wheel as this is much better for a touring set up.  There aren’t too many more issues/upgrades to address on the bike at this point.

I’m not sure where the DC19 set will end up; maybe in the shed as spares, maybe over to the X bike, or maybe for sale.  I’m going to see what it takes to tear down the rear hub and service it just as a useful project to learn.

I’ll get some pics up soon.

Small World

Last night I went to a viewing.  I didn’t know the deceased, but we are friends with his daughter and son-in-law.  Since they were the only people we knew there, we kinda went right to them, expressed our condolences, and had a conversation about her father.  They all were taking it quite well – among Christians a funeral is actually a celebration of the deceased going to heaven.

Anyway, as we were excusing ourselves to leave, the daughter mentioned something about her brother the photographer, who was next in the receiving line.  It suddenly clicked that he was “the” Blair Seitz of numerous photo books fame, and that I had not only met him before, but he had photographed me some twenty years ago.

This was back when I was competing regularly and probably at the top of my game.  He wanted to produce stock photos of rowing and a friend of a friend called me and arranged a meeting.  I ended up signing a modelling release and getting a check for an afternoon of rowing back and forth on a small patch of Pinchot Lake.  It was a beautiful fall day.

When I mentioned this to Blair last night, he remembered it straight away, and said that one of his favorite pictures was still up on his web site.  He described it and told me how to find it.  Among close to 5000 pictures, this 20 year old shot of me is still there:

credit to BlairSeitz.com

I was so excited about all of this that I forgot to say I was sorry about his dad.  Oh well, I think he understood.

I Did It!

I’m pretty full of myself at the moment.  I wanted to ride last night, but I was wiped out after splitting firewood for an hour.  Finally I realized that I had to run an errand and I could take the Trucker.  As I was wheeling it out of the garage, I noticed the rear wheel binding up on the brakes – broken spoke = wheel out of true.

Murphy prevailed and I found the culprit on the drive side.  But wait!  In addition to my handy dandy crank puller, I also acquired a $12 Chain whip.  So using that and a pair of needle nose pliers to rotate the cassette cap, I was able to dis-assemble the wheel and replace the spoke.  Then I tried out the spoke wrench on my Crank Brothers tool to true things up.

Now I have no idea what the tension should be on the spokes.  I just eyeballed the wheel against the brake pads as I spun it around.  There might be a minor hop, but it is true.  One step at a time.

I’m thinking now that for any trips over a day, as long as I’m running a 28 spoke rear wheel, carrying a chain whip in the kit is probably a good idea.

All told, about 20 minutes at the shop table.

Ride Report: 10.25.09

Tonight I got to test the changes to the Trucker with a nice ride at dusk.  While the rattle from the front rack is annoying when toodling up the street, I find that the wind noise pretty much cancels it out when riding at speed.

The gearing is going to take some practice and a few miles to get accustomed to, I think it is going to be an improvement.  At the top end, I find with 44X11 I spin out around 34-35mph.  Even then, I rarely find myself going that fast.  When I do, I’m usually coasting down a hill and not pedalling.  On this bike, I just can’t see myself trying to push it faster than that.

On the low end, I’m now thinking that the 22X34 isn’t that bad.  Twice I came up on some fairly steep grades where I threw down into the granny and chugged away.  Sure, grinding along at 3.9 mph isn’t exactly light speed, it still made for a nice cadence to effort ratio.  I also imagine part of this was in response to being pretty out of shape these days.

The interesting part is in the middle.  With the smaller gap between the 36t ring and now the 44t, I found myself shifting a bit more, but it’s usually just to fine tune things.  Plus, I’m very focused on keeping down the speed and finding a cruising zone.

Shifting is different.  Hitting the “big” ring isn’t that big of a deal; and throwing down into the granny is no change given the Jumpstop.  The main difference is upshifting from 22 to 36.  It seems to take a little more lever to get it up on the ring.  Again, it’s probably just a matter of getting used to it.

So this is a lot of information to process after just an hour on the bike.  If I’m true to form, I’ll be playing around with this for a while; but first impressions are favorable.

Misc. miles: 7.3

Distance: 12.9 miles  2009: 992.4

Poor Man’s Touring Bike

It seems as if every few months the Sloth and I decide to exchange our discarded parts bins.  We ooh and ahh and come away feeling guilty because we somehow took advantage of each other’s kindness.  This time, I’m pretty sure I got the better end of the deal, because the Trucker is now sporting a perfectly fine pair of Blackburn lowriders.  I know that he’ll see this and grouse that they were just taking up space in his basement, but the truth is that the bike side of my S240 equation is now complete.  At some point, we’re going to have to shame Scott into posting updates of his LHT, which is sporting some nice looking kit these days like a pair of anodized VO fenders.

In addition to the lowriders, I mounted a $9.99 venerable Nashbar front rack.  I know that Nashbar is a dirty word for many, but every so often they fill a need at prices you just can’t walk away from.  I needed some tools, was also looking at front loader racks, and the decision made itself.

As for first impressions, I think the NB rack serves it’s purpose.  It will hold a bag or allow for strapping down a stuff sack while not interfering with whatever panniers I have mounted on the forks.  As you can see, the Cyo is mounted up front and the wiring routed with zip ties and electrical tape.  It looks kind of vulnerable up there compared to how it was mounted back on the fender, but the choices are limited; and this appears to be how most do it.

I’m not crazy about having a rack mount on the brake bosses.  I’d much rather have braces going down to the fork mounts, but it seems the choices are limited to Nitto, which is out of my range; or an Axiom front rack, which looks like it is currently out of production.

I took a ride around the neighborhood with the grocery panniers loaded up and I really liked the feel of the ride.  With the weight down low the bike felt very stable, and I didn’t sense any adverse effect on the steering.  Obviously some more test rides are in order, but I’m cautiously optimistic that my front loaded approach is going to work.  There is a slight rattle/creaking with the Nashbar that I haven’t been able to isolate.  I’ll keep playing around, but it may come down to it being just a cheap aluminum rack.  If anything, it will work fine for now and confirm my inclination towards a Jandd Extreme front rack in the future.

Within an hour of taking these pictures, they were outdated.  One of the tools I picked up was a $7.00 Octalink-compatible crank extractor.  This is the first time I pulled a crank, so it was a little unnerving when I reached the point where the wrench got real tight and it was either “it needs a little more muscle” or “I’m going to strip something that will put my bike out of commission and cost a lot of money to fix.”  Fortunately, the little bit of muscle eased the crank off the spline and it slid out perfectly.

All of this was so I could lower the gearing up front.  Pedal Pushers had a 22 tooth granny that I changed out with the 26t, and I swapped the 48t outer ring with the 44t ring off of the X bike.  I think the 22 is a bit of overkill.  At 22/34, I was able to spin out at a whopping 4 mph.  I’d have to be hauling quite a bit up a blistering grade to grind that much, but I suppose a little insurance is not a bad thing.  Perhaps a 24t would have been a better choice.

The jumpstop makes throwing down into the granny a non-issue, but I did notice that upshifting from 22 to 36 is a little more finnicky.  It might just be a matter of practice.  The 44 looks really small, but I somehow doubt that I’ll ever spin out at 44/11.  Again, some test rides will help.

So now I need to stop writing about bikes and stop wrenching about bikes; and start actually riding bikes.  Fall baseball will be over in a week, our church construction project is almost complete, and if we ever see a weekend without rain again, I might just get out on the road.