What you done t' your bike today

[faustus]

Finishing touches fitting the Bluemel 75 U long mudguards, drilling the holes and fitting the rear L bracket. All done up tight and it feels pretty good, little test ride later on to see if they are quiet and solid.

[Boab]

Finally remembered to put my dodgy X-Track on the bike and try and get the end cap off with a pair of needle nose pliers. As you can see, it's made of cheese, and I'm a bit ham fisted. Now to try and get the nut off and dismantle it.

[kvragu]

Finishing touches fitting the Bluemel 75 U long mudguards, drilling the holes and fitting the rear L bracket. All done up tight and it feels pretty good, little test ride later on to see if they are quiet and solid.

What tyre and mudguard width is this?

[Alpinum]

Finishing touches fitting the Bluemel 75 U long mudguards, drilling the holes and fitting the rear L bracket. All done up tight and it feels pretty good, little test ride later on to see if they are quiet and solid.

I love those Unit shapes. That's one not just practical, but also good looking bike

Besides, on my first WRT ('22) there were many lovely bikes. I was fairly surprised. Was expecting (more) trashy stuff.

Back on topic. Done nothing to my bikes besides riding them, though made a frame bag for my gravel bike lately. Rescued some plastic sheets from the bin at work which will be cut and drilled tonight to give the (bolt on) frame bag the final touch.

[Boab]

Took the fat bike forks off the Scandal and put the SID SL's on. Then took the bike to the bike shop to have them do it properly, cut the steerer, fit a new star nut, etc, only to find them shut. And I mean shut, as in all the signage is gone and it looks like they've either shut for good or moved somewhere else. Last update on their Farcebook was five days ago, and their website is still up and running. Maybe they're off on a picket line somewhere, or looking after kids, I can but hope.



So popped into B&Q on the way home and bought a hacksaw, then bought a star nut and setter online. I've cut steerers before, just never set a star nut, may as well learn.

[fatbikephil]

Don't use a star nut Boab, they are horrible things - get a wedge bung thing - I use Brand X ones off CRC.

[faustus]

Alpinium - thanks!

Kvragu - SKS bluemel 75 U long guards (updated to 75 'style' now with longer flaps and dual front stays). Both tyres are 29x2.6

[Boab]

Tesa'd up the Superstar rear wheel. I've only got 25mm, so two wraps, hopefully that's enough overlap.


I then whipped the Rocket Ron off the other rear wheel and proceeded to pick various and sundry thorns out of it.


Fitted the Rocket Ron to the newly taped rim and shoved in my, never been used, emergency inner tube. Only to find it had to two mahoosive cuts in it. Thank [insert favoured deity here] that I didn't find that out in the middle of no where...


With this many puncture repair kits, you'd think I'd have more than four patches. Best buy some more then, along with a betterer inner tube...


So after way too much faffing, the inner tube and tyre are fitted. I'll give it a day or so, then whip the inner tube out and add some sealant. Which reminds me, I need to build another tubeless inflater after the last one exploded yon time...


Edit:
Got back from a pre-work ride, only to find this when I finally sat my arse down in my office. *sighs* Guess there was more than two holes in this totally unused inner tube.

[Boab]

Tesa'd up the front wheel, de-labelled both rims, fitted the Hans Dampf. The difference between the SuperGravity and SuperGround casings is quite something...


Totally unnecessary bling. Nice to have the Rocket Ron go up with just the track pump, although it's flat again, due to all the holes from the thorns I removed yesterday.

[Boab]

Let us never mention this again...


Also fitted brake disks and the rear cassette to the Superstar wheels.
Then took my left Look X-Track pedal to bits, there was me thinking there was a normal bearing and a needle bearing. No idea if these two are supposed to be the same or not.

[whitestone]

Replaced the front brake pads on the CdF. The old ones were a <cough> little </cough> worn. Might have to do the rear ones as well as they are sounding a bit iffy.

[lune ranger]

Feeling very smug having fitted a PNW Coast sus/dropoer post to my Fargo. I’ve modified a SRAM Rival shifter that I picked up on eBay to be the lever. I needed to take out part of the shifter ratchet at the front end and grind down a 5.5mm solder-less cable nipple to fit at the post end. The result is very neat indeed.

[redefined_cycles]

Feeling very smug having fitted a PNW Coast sus/dropoer post to my Fargo. I’ve modified a SRAM Rival shifter that I picked up on eBay to be the lever. I needed to take out part of the shifter ratchet at the front end and grind down a 5.5mm solder-less cable nipple to fit at the post end. The result is very neat indeed.

When's the big ride..

[lune ranger]

Nothing particular. Had the post on my Krampus previously but the Krampus has gone elsewhere now so the post needed a home.

[redefined_cycles]

Well, hope you're fully fixed and riding back out very very soon Luke... Dropper posts are ace

[redefined_cycles]

Planning a little outing ride tomorrow for (one of) the alternative (on your doorstep version) winter event thingies. Since I started the thread and there's only 5 on there, I thought I must make the extra effort.

So after taking the little one ou for a walk to the Peaks this am, I felt broken in and ready. Don't wanna miss anything but equally trying not to overthink it and be stressed (you know ). First things first, the bike needed a clean and some bag swapping was in order.


Not been ridden in almost 6 weeks, so I washed it with the (Wildcat, I'll have you know) halfframe bag insitu. Lots of shaking the chain in degreaser and a bit of scrubbing of the bike. Careful not to let the Isopropyl into the freehub, I used what I'd done the last few shakes of the chain with. Dabbed it over the cassette carefully and chainring. Looking smart enough


Still got an Exposure and Cateye mount on even though I don't currently have any (working ones) in the house. Hopefully some time soon I'll have another Exposure and I'll grab another Cateye AMMP (which appears to have died whilst charging it).


This scene captures what I've been doing foe the bike(s) as opposed 'to' the bikes. Outhouse was a right state so it now has a new toolwall with the bike stand in same place. A few more shelves and a general good tidy had been done in the last week or 2. Lots of jigsawin'.


Briefly considered popping a new chain on and rotating. But common sense came through and after the clean and decontamination I warmed up the Smoove and smothered it in.

THE END (for now ).

[fatbikephil]

Finishing touches to this:-



I deserve a good kicking for building this as it is a classic case of want over need. When the lowside first came out I was interested but couldn't justify it back in 2018 as I was too busy BAMing and bikepacking. Anyway I largely forgot about them until a mate (aged 63) declared he'd bought a DMR dirt jump bike and was riding the local pump track and I should too. I put a wanted add for a steel SS 26er on here without much hope but Stu called my bluff with a proper jump bike. I bottled this on the basis that it would be useless outside of dirt jumps and would likely result in my breaking something....

So I threw my old inbred together with a tensioner. It was fun, but felt too small (I once toured the Western Isles on this!) too twitchy and the beautifully smooth and well damped bombers were bouncy as hell when stood up pedaling. So I figured 650B plus, or even normal 29er, was a better bet and a Karate Monkey was hunted for. The plan was to squeeze onto a medium so it would be nice and short but none turned up. I thought of the lowside but these were all out of stock until Feb 10th, ironically enough, my Birthday.

Nowt turned up and a new KM frame was 900 quid. Then the Lowsides re-appeared. It was my birthday, I'd had a few beers and Swinnerton cycles were doing the frames for £722 - 15% of RRP. You can guess the rest....

Threw it together over a couple of weeks. Took a while for the wheels to turn up so actually built it up with the 29ers I'd acquired. This gave it a bit of an SE ripper vibe (scaled up) so may return to it at some point....

Anyway a trial run down the local woods revealed it to be a hoot and proof that 6 foot long top tubes and 45 degree head angles aren't the thing for noodly, rooty single track (or pi*sing around pulling wheelies and trying to ride up logs) so money well spent

I'll not be bikepacking on it tho'

[redefined_cycles]

Well, the helmet. Liked the way the head torch worked other yesterday and I could peer into the undergrowth. So removed the strap today and added some VHB 3m tape. Saved about 1.5g but more importantly it feels more aolid and less reatrictive and ugly...

[jameso]

Unlaced a front wheel so I could split the dynamo hub shell and see if I could replace the bearings.. nothing to lose eh? Bearings have lasted since autumn 2016 and this wheelset has done 4 TNRs, rides from here to Eurobike or Eurobike to Turin, N-S of France twice, Wales tours, a few decent audax routes and 90% of my winter road miles and loads of local riding since then. No idea of total mileage but I'm impressed how long it lasted - a river ford that was almost fork-crown deep in January seemed to finish it off but it could be coincidence. Front hub bearings can do well but my SP dynamo of similar QR spec only lasted 2 1/2 years of similar use.

I unlaced only the disc side so I had something to use as leverage on the non-disc side (the rim) to unscrew the halves of the shell. Found out it was a push fit anyway.
Managed to sever the wires from the coil to the outer tabs by not realising one of the end caps was a push not threaded fit. The threads going all the way up to it and the channel in the axle suggested a threaded fit but no.. soldering iron out to rejoin 2 tiny wires and shrinkwrap slim enough to go back in that slot.

Got the bearings out, 2 x 6000RS, will pop new ones in and re-lace over the weekend. Needs a bit of silicon sealant to finish off. If it sparks up OK I'll get some photos as a how-to as I think other brands use this hub and it's not looking too difficult to do the bearings once you know the steps and how to not damage the wires.

[godivatrailrider]

Replaced the front brake pads on the CdF. The old ones were a <cough> little </cough> worn. Might have to do the rear ones as well as they are sounding a bit iffy.

Spooky ...postie delivered 2x sets of sintered pads for the CDF yesterday ... I usually buy pretty cheap ones but thought I'd get sintered this time

[whitestone]

Had a bit of an incident with the back tyre on the Solaris the other weekend. No matter what I did it wouldn't hold air, put in a tube and while pumping that up the stem broke off!

A couple of days ago I replaced the tyre with an oldish one we had lying around and it held air. The only problem was that we'd all but run out of sealant. Anyway today we got some more sealant so topped up the tyre. It was still up to pressure after a couple of days so likely to stop up, I just wasn't happy that it had only about 20ml of sealant in.

I'd got one of those WTB Nano tyres that was on offer so while I had all the tools out I fitted that to the gravel Taylor project. Of course the old tyre was tubed and I didn't have a tubeless valve. Managed to find one on an unused bike so phew! Tyre popped on, sealant added and a quick ride up and down the road to help seat things.

[Boab]

I noticed there's was a new notchy feeling on the gravel bike during this morning's ride, happens occasionally, feeling it though one or t'other of the pedals. Not sure where it's coming from, the bottom bracket seems fine, while the chain is a bit worn, it appears to be running fine. Might be the bearings in the Look Keo's, as they don't feel nice and smooth any more; given both pedal bodies are borderline knackered, I don't see much point spunking money on new bearings. Might have to look into new pedal options... After poking, prodding, pulling and wobbling various bits, I then fettled the gears, as they've not been happy recently.

I then stuck the Scandal onto the stand, as it was nice out. Fitted the Hope Retainer ring, with some needless bling bolts. Put the new inner tube into the rear wheel, mainly to stop the tyre going out of shape, but also to make sure the tubeless tape is properly seated.



I also fitted a boost adapter under the front wheel disc rotor. Then I tried to fit the new body plate to the spare SPD's, but couldn't get the screws out. They were starting to round off, so I stopped. Not sure how to get them out, so I'm open to suggestions...?



It was starting to get chilly again, so rather than trying to service the clutch and fit a new chain, I put my knackered X-Track pedal back together. It's not spinning quite as freely as the other one, but it still spins, so that's good enough for me...

[lune ranger]

Yesterday. I drilled out the frame guides on my gravel bike so I could run an uninterrupted length of gear outer cable. There was an annoying clicking sound being generated when I turned the bars more than a few degrees and I think it was confirm the ferule. I hate internal cables.
Also cleaned the drivetrain to within an inch of its life and applied some Effetto Mariposa Flower Power Wax after reading about it on here.

[PaulB2]

My son's bars have been slipping so got his bike out and gave that a once over and spritz. Looked at my full sus since I've got to transfer some kit over to the hardtail and realised I've not cleaned it since last years WRT so probably time to do a full spring clean of the fleet over the weekend.

[fatbikephil]

I also fitted a boost adapter under the front wheel disc rotor. Then I tried to fit the new body plate to the spare SPD's, but couldn't get the screws out. They were starting to round off, so I stopped. Not sure how to get them out, so I'm open to suggestions...?

]

Heat on the pedal body to break the corrosion weld then use an impact driver to undo the screws Boab