Tour Divide Musings

[sean_iow]

Firstly, well done to all who have finished the Tour Divide, it's worn me out just watching the dots at times so how you have the drive to get up day after day and get back on the bike is truly inspiring.

As I've been following the Tour Divide and reading the thread here and other discussions I've been thinking about some things I've seen/read and wondered what peoples thoughts are, I thought I'd start a new tread as I didn't want to dilute the other thread with what could become off topic ramblings.

After reading about Greg's free-wheel problems it got me thinking about these again

http://www.velosolo.co.uk/shopdisc.html

They might not of been any use to Greg as his free-wheel locked up and caused lots of secondary damage? but most of the failures I've seen over the years (and these have been in hubs from what are regarded as the cheapest of manufactures up to the high end ones) have been the failure to engage or slipping and the bolt on cog with the wheel turned round could get you moving again, ability to tighten chain and chain line permitting. The aluminium one in 18T is only 26g so would this be something worth carrying on longer trips?

The other thing that I've been thinking about is SPOT trackers. Most people seem to mount them to the bars/front pack but I saw a pic of one rider with his on his rucksack strap. In the event of an accident that requires the use of the SOS button is there a chance you might no longer be within reach of the bike? If you're badly injured and the bike has crashed down a steep slope for example? I have a friend who went on a solo motorcycle tour in Australia and crashed on some washboard in the middle of nowhere. He was quite beat up and amongst his injuries he'd broken his shoulder and leg. His SPOT was on his jacket on his left shoulder area. He'd broken his right shoulder so had to use his good arm to move his damaged one such that he could press the button, ouch, but the helicopter arrived and he was carted off to hospital. Activating the SPOT would have been a much harder task if he'd had to crawl over to where his bike was.

What are peoples thoughts on these and any other things which have caught your eye or intrigued you?

Sean

[mountainbaker]

Re: SPOT positioning, I had mine on my rucksack strap. Seemed sensible to have it on me.

On the first day of the race (2015) a guy on a CX bike crashed on the pass before Elkford, he was doing ~40mph, his front wheel came out of the fork, he tore the side of his cheek off, and was I guess 30 feet from his bike, unconscious. We pressed his SOS button on his SPOT, which was on his seat-pack. He needed an ambulance, there was no doubt. He was out cold for a couple of minutes, and it just starting raining/snowing, and was windy and cold. A Dr arrived (racer) and got him in his bivvy, another guy lit a fire using moss from the tree trunks.

Now imagine if he was 4-5 days into the race when everyone has spread out, or it was nighttime and other racers were stopped for the night, he wouldn't have got to his bike. I felt really bad for the guy, 7 hours into a massive ride, but he recovered fine as far as I know.

[GregMay]

Spot placement:

Many riders don't wear packs - me included - so putting a SPOT there , not possible. I used to ride with mine in the zipped section of my centre rear pocket - but figured, after much faffing - that it was even more awkward to press the bad button if I needed to. Hence, I placed mine up front, on top of my roll bag.

SS gears:

My main concern bike wise was what would happen if I trashed my mech+hanger+hub - low and behold, it happened. Still managed to ride 240km on it after I jury rigged it. If you're good enough with bikes, and carry bits to get you out of situations, you can limp 90% of the sections of the route. You may just have to walk the ups - or turn back around. Personally, I'd consider a frame you can naturally SS before what you've put up - ie an eccentric BB, sliding dropout, or Alternator style dropout. Sadly, the Cuttroat being carbon, has none of these - BUT, the frame and the comfort it delivered outweighed this backup IMHO - I had zero back or hip issues - unlike my old Ti Fargo.

[sean_iow]

If you don't wear a pack of any type then I guess there is only the bike to mount it on. When I go out running, for anything under about 15 miles I don't take anything with me at all, no pack or phone and I also ride without a pack when I can (tools and spares on the bike and food in the jersey pockets) and so I can see why you'd want to ride packless in the heat of the TD.

With regard to the cogs, as you say most things can be repaired/bodged at trail side. I usually ride ss bikes so even when I put gears on I can always shorten the chain and adjust the tension on the sliding drop-outs and convert to singlespeed. When I've been on trips with my wife we run exactly the same mechs/shifters so in the event of a problem with hers I could swap the bits off mine and I'd go singlespeed, thankfully I've never needed to but it's always an option. I can't picture how a free-wheel would fail completely to leave no drive and most I've seen have just slipped and needed cleaning out, my Hope Pro 2 can be taken apart without tools if there is an issue. Maybe I'm attracted by the cogs just because I can't help myself when it comes to shiny machined parts, especially the ally ones, so just looking for an excuse to buy one

Sean

[jameso]

Good topic, applies to any long tour I guess.

thinking about these again

Useful bit of kit, I thought about taking one and probably would for a true back-country tour. Would take a 20 or 22 probably. Also looked at even simpler drivetrains using manual 3-speeds and similar silliness.
In the end I didn't take one, I was confident I could fix what I had unless it was a Greg-style walk-out and freewheel down hills and tbh I'd rather do that than ride fixed wheel suddenly : ) Since by then I'd accept that any race was interupted and time lost was just a change in circumstance or a new challenge, personally not too fussed about a 1/2 day or 2 days by the time it's at that stage. I use a Hope hub currently as they're easy to get apart and service/bodge but I've seen/heard of too many failures in them to be 100% confident in the first place. Maybe no more than many others to be fair.

SPOTs, makes sense to have them on your body not the bike. An arm-band mount maybe, but they need to face upward I think?

~40mph, his front wheel came out of the fork

Ouch .. nasty but could've been a lot worse. Something went very wrong there.

tbh the things that catch my eye on rides like that are the number of bikes with huge seatpacks buzzing the tyre over ever bump, or cheap ti forks, that sort of thing. Stuff that would bug me or I'd not be confident in for a local ride never mind a big trip overseas. I only say cheap ti forks as a chap doing well in the TD 2015 broke his and ended his ride, could've been a nasty crash. Just general stuff around untested kit I guess - failure of some things is inevitable, some kit more so than others.

[Ben98]

Didn't it become popular at one point to run a 135mm front fork with a singlespeed hub so that in the event of a freewheel failure the front and back wheels could be swapped? I'm assuming that this pretty much died with the uptake of dynamo hubs?
Also, wasn't there someone looking to produce a hub with a 6 bolt disk mount on both sides?
I think it's a clever idea to have a bail out option if touring in the middle of nowhere, but for a route like the divide which I think has a few bike shops on it it seems overkill to me.

[whitestone]

Greg, did you get to the bottom of why the hub locked up? I'm not familiar with the Pro4 but if it's anything like the Pro2 I can only think that one or more of the pawls broke and jammed between the two parts of the freehub - there's not a lot in there to go wrong. The TD must put a hell of a lot of strain on kit - that one ride is 75% of all the riding I've done on my MTB in over two years!

[benp1]

that bolt on cog is a great idea!

Can't picture how chainline would work, and would you have to remove the brake caliper so the cassette doesn't hit that (or you'd need spacers if you're taking the cassette off)

[GregMay]

Greg, did you get to the bottom of why the hub locked up? I'm not familiar with the Pro4 but if it's anything like the Pro2 I can only think that one or more of the pawls broke and jammed between the two parts of the freehub - there's not a lot in there to go wrong. The TD must put a hell of a lot of strain on kit - that one ride is 75% of all the riding I've done on my MTB in over two years!

Looks like the seals didn't. The internals gunked up, kept the pawls engaged, thus the fixie moment. But yes, 4,400km in 20 days...well, it is quite a bit of loading on kit isn't it? Still, not 100% convinced I'd be happy with that hub for it again.

In other news, my first edition SP 15mm dyno hub is still fine post Divide and 3 years riding - but the output port on my Mk1 Revo died on day two.

[jameso]

Didn't it become popular at one point to run a 135mm front fork with a singlespeed hub so that in the event of a freewheel failure the front and back wheels could be swapped?

That was on the original Pugsleys. I nearly got something similar made for my Jones truss fork front wheel but decided it was a bit ott / survivalist : )
It does all get me onto the thoughts of how bike tourng rarely gets into truly remote self-supported adventure, there's places where 15 days food and water is needed and a broken bike would be quite serious, it seems rarer for people to ride in places like that than it is for climbers or ski-tourers to go a week or more outside of the range of help or food etc. With the amount of adventure spam on social media I expect we'd hear more about rides in places that remote but there's not much. The Iditarod is probably the most regularly ridden area at that level of exposure?

[whitestone]

4,400km in 20 days...well, it is quite a bit of loading on kit isn't it?

This year's Tour de France is (a mere) 3519Km in essentially the same time frame which kind of puts the Tour Divide in perspective. It's not just the distance it's not having ready access to workshop facilities to keep on top of things, there's no practical way if you are racing to carry tools to deal with major bearings or complicated things like freehubs.

[sean_iow]

that bolt on cog is a great idea!

Can't picture how chainline would work, and would you have to remove the brake calliper so the cassette doesn't hit that (or you'd need spacers if you're taking the cassette off)

I'd never thought about the details, just saw a shiney cog and thought 'I want one of them' With the wheel in the other way round the smallest cog on the cassette will be closest to the frame so there should be plenty of clearance to the calliper. Unless you had something like a Next Best Thing tool http://www.spacycles.co.uk/m2b88s72p595 ... ng-remover you wouldn't be able to get the cassette off anyway. On my Pro 2 hub I think as the freehub just pulls off you could take it off to look at the pawls with the cassette still on but getting the seal back in place when putting it back would be tricky. I envisaged that the bolt on cog could be used if the freehub stopped engaging and would be used to just get to the next bike shop. I've never ridden a fixed wheel bike so learning that, with SPDs, in the middle of a remote area, off road might be a big as challenge as walking out but depending upon the terrain and the circumstances for the 26g it weights is it worth taking? The chainlike would also be off, but no worse than at the top/bottom? (I never know which way is which) of the cassette normally but whether the derailleur keeps the chain on normally? I'm tempted to buy one just to see of it works, or I might try drilling the disc bolt pattern in an old cog out of a cassette to try.

[Dyffers]

I'd take your spoke key too as a geared rear wheel probably has enough dish to not fit in the frame the other way round (I say probably as I can't think I've ever tried it but I doubt it'd fit without redishing the wheel).

Might be worth carrying a handkerchief as well to tidy yourself up after having a little cry about the amount of bike wrenching you need to do before starting your fixed gear ride back to civilisation.

By the way I've carried and used a NextBestThing cassette cracker in anger at the side of the road and it works well...but probably better to sort out why you're breaking rear driveside spokes *before* you set out on a long weekend of cycling.

[sean_iow]

Isn't the rim centred over the axle? On all the wheels I've built I'm sure they are as I don't measure the 'dish' just use a gauge to check it's the same both sides.

I've never broken a spoke (yet) but I don't normally carry spares anyway so if I did I'd just tape, cable tie the bit stuck in the hub to a nearby spoke to stop to flapping about.

It's good to hear that the tool works though as I have thought about getting one. I've had several instances where bits of tree etc. have flicked up into the spokes and I've wondered how I didn't break any spokes so if I was going on a long remote tour I could carry a next best thing and spare spokes just in case. As I build my own wheels I have spare spokes for all of them as I order them in multiples of 10 for cost reasons.

[Dyffers]

Yeah, you're right, not thinking straight this afternoon

[sean_iow]

It took me a while to get my head round it when I started building wheels. For the first few when I was correcting the dish to centre the rim I managed to tension the spokes on the wrong side and made it worse I still have to stop and think which set to tension, then check in my mind, then again and once more for luck

[Wotsits]

Wouldn't it be just as easy to take something like a piece of braided hose & some tie-wraps to convert what you've got into a single speed using the hose as a chain tensioning device..
Or, at the most take something like a hypercracker, a single speed cog & spacer rings as well..

[Bearbonesnorm]

Didn't it become popular at one point to run a 135mm front fork with a singlespeed hub so that in the event of a freewheel failure the front and back wheels could be swapped?

That's how my Inbred's set-up ... but I might swap it for something else now James has accused me of been a survivalist

[jameso]

Well it's getting that way .. I thought it was cool when I saw it on Paul's Arrowhead bike. But you're only a real survivalist if you have one of those rambo knives with fish hooks in the handle on the bike, like the AWOL launch bike shots. All ready to fight a wolf in the woods like Liam Neeson

I was pretty happy this weekend though, forgot/lost a few tarp pegs and realised as I got the tarp out on a wet night - used my micro swiss army knife to whittle some pegs. So far it's only opened cans so this was proper stuff..

[sean_iow]

I had a new brake disc to fit to the bike last night so I took the opportunity to try the wheel in the wrong way round. With the disc removed and the wheel back in the chain line, on this bike anyway, would seem to be ok if a cog was bolted where the disc used to be. This would depend upon what cranks and position the chainring is in on the cranks. Here's what it looked like.



Obviously if fitting for real the mech would have to be taken off and the chain shortened.

On the other side of the frame the cassette does clear the calliper, but this would be dependant upon which brakes you use as it's close, and which cassette. Mine is a 10 speed 11-36 but I guess if you had an 11 speed with a larger spread the cogs might catch.



I'm not sure my Hope freehub would fail such that I lost all drive as it has 4 separate pawls but other makes use a different method so might be of use on some set ups.

[GregMay]

Again, you need to ask yourself:

a) is this the time I really want to be dealing with a fixed wheel bike
b) is it really worth it.

[sean_iow]

I have ruled it out as being any use for me, it's more just out of interest to see if it works. I might still drill and old cog to try it. I've never ridden a fixed wheel before but I'm booked in latter in the year for a session at Calshot Velodrome so some experience of fixed wheel riding might be handy before I go there. I've also not ridden a road bike or on drops since I was 17 (nearly 30 years ago) so what's the worst that can happen riding a fixed wheel track bike on (reputably) the country's steepest banked track?

Where I live the furthest I can get from my house (as the crow flies) is 16 miles, it was 12 but I moved house last week. I also rent a workshop elsewhere on the Island and have a spare bike there, so the longest walk I face here if I have a major mechanical is about 8 miles, so hardly worth me even taking a pump on rides let alone spare drive train parts

[GregMay]

I used to race at Calshot - watch your head on the ceiling. I bloody well hate that place. Sketchy track at best to race on!

[sean_iow]

Thanks for the advice, that's calmed my nerves We actually went there for the session earlier in the year but it was cancelled at the last minute as condensation from the roof had dripped on the track overnight and made it too dangerous to ride. The instructor said that with beginners if someone crashes then everyone behind them goes down as they cant stop/get out of the way and then because of the noise someone from the group in front will look round and bring them all down. So he said basically on most laps we'd all go down as we hit the slippery bit and he didn't want to damage the track or the bikes

[GregMay]

Sounds about right. On the plus side, crashing on a track, not that painful really. They are relatively soft.