Education We Like to Ride Bicycles

I'm bored, doing laundry, and generally procrastinating, so I've decided to fiddle about with a DA account as I'm rather frustrated with Photobucket and it's resizing shenanigans. If any of the linked to pictures fail to work just let me know and I'll fix them straight away.

Anyway, some shots from work to make you all feel better about the condition of your bikes.


This is the quite rusty, disgusting steerer tube of a fork I rebuilt courtesy of one SantaCruz Heckler. A good amount of water came pouring out of the headset when the fork was removed, but to it's credit the FSA Pig headset was in mint condition - not a spot of rust or damage despite the carnage observed above. This image should scare anybody into not only letting their bike dry out properly, but into not using obsessive amounts of water to clean their bikes. This is the damage you are doing but not seeing.


Up next we have the external shot of a rather broken bottom bracket. Can you guess what is missing? Bearings! They've gone all walkabout on this customer. (terrible picture, sorry - due to temperature I only had my weatherproof camera with me)


Non-drive side cup. Two things to note: the outer race for the bearings should not be attached to this cup in any way, and that the bearings should exist.


This is the view of the spindle itself. The inner race for the bearings is that semi-circular groove that runs all along. This should again not be attached to the spindle, nor should there be missing bearings. Rust, time, misuse have all taken their toll on this poor bike, and my recommendation would be replacement before repair simply due to cost. Originally it was a $450 bike, and repair back to a safe, fully functional state will end up being about the same. Unfortunately this customer was dead set on only getting the bare minimum done, so only the entirely unfunctional bottom bracket was replaced - shifting, suspension, general operation of the bicycle was of no concern, just that the pedals didn't move horrifically side to side.


While reviewing my shots from the day I felt this would make a rather good book cover, so I did exactly that. Bit of fun.


Lovely sunset over the city.


And finally, because I love to laugh at myself, this is how I looked on my way in yesterday morning. Every time I see it I cannot help but laugh.


Edit: ...and DA resizes in equal amounts. Dagnabbit! Any recommendations for image hosts?

 

Love the pics Malvolio, especially the final Ryan Dunn esq frozen one. I'll have to try and remember to get some pics of the next bike I have come into the shop in that state.

I'm currently facing a dilemma, what new bike should I buy? So far the Trek Remedy 8 is winning.

 

I believe ImageShack doesn't resize images.

 

Now that's a beard!
I feel sorry for that bike, so much rust...

 

I take it that's not the SantaCruz Heckler then?

The new Cannondale Jeckyll with the funky suspension looks interesting but being an early adopter on a component that price would be scary. I drool over the La Pierres and Santa Cruz bikes at my LBS when ever I visit. A well specced and nice looking Cove Hustler has appeared on Gumtree near me and I'm fighting hard with myself not to buy it.

As I only took up mountain biking last year I haven't been on too many of the trails they were on yet and a lot of it was a bit to extreme for my abilities/bike at the moment. I aim to rectify that this year though!

 

Anyone know of some blue trails close to London?

 

Doesn't look radical enough to be worrisome - surprised there aren't more variations on the rear suspension layout.

 

I love chain reaction. 18 hours after I place an order - it's already at my office!

 

Are you north or south london?

If you're south a bit of googling found me this. Apparently the North downs are pretty good. I've been trying to figure out where to do some mountain biking myself.

You can also look at Bedbury forest and Pensuhurst offroad centre (PORC).

These are all south of the river.

 

Anyone have any recommendations for bike insurance? I have moved in with my mum while I'm between houses and have cancelled the house insurance which covered them before.

 

The north downs are my back yard. I recommend Leith hill, Holmbury hill, Pitch hill and Winterfold. Lots of single track and some dedicated descents for mountain bikers. Also some great roads if your a roadie. The tour of Britain used the area for one of it's stages ending in Guildford.

Peaslake is a great village with a bike shop if you need a quick fix. Also the news agents does lovely pastries and a cup of tea or coffee in a mug for cyclists. On a Sunday this place is chocker with cyclist. Also recommend Nirvana Cycles in Westcott in between Leith Hill and Ranmore. They do weekend rides and evening rides in the summer and are a friendly bunch.

If anyone fancies a weekend hack round this way and you want to get to know the area feel free to PM me

 

Definitely not. Think department store full suspension bike.

But that isn't by any means a new design - Cannondale have been doing the Jekyll in that exact style, with the same suspension, with the same type of shock for many years now. The shock itself has been reworked a bit, but it is essentially the same as it has always been.

Biggest thing you're going to find with it is that the cable running to the rear shock will jam up and get sticky rather quickly, and the actual mechanism on the shock is prone to getting permanently gummed up. Aside from that really stable, well thought out design. Have rebuilt a few of these frames and they're usually not in too bad of shape (which is saying something, as a couple I've done have gone though the TransRockies race).



In other news, if you like citizen action and a brief story, have a blog post about a series of events that happened to me in recent weeks.

 

East. Stratford where the Olympics were held.

 

Peaslake is one of my regular haunts at the weekends, lots of really great riding whatever your ability. If you spot a yob on a Trek Fuel 9 (black and green) that's me.

 

Went for a ride today down to the zoo (have a season pass, was in the mood for a walk, so why not combine the two?) and got some lovely shots. Managed to have my first real serious crash of this winter though, which coincided with the first time this winter I've gone for a ride without a foam hat - at least when riding at any sort of speed. Came off around a corner of pathway that hadn't been ploughed yet while going way too fast for the conditions, sliding a good few feet, which resulted in me having a marginally sore right arm. Could have been worse - hell of a coincidence at any rate.









Needless to say, I'm getting along quite well with my new camera.

 

Really? The write up in this months What Mountain Bike? magazine gave the impression the Dyad RT2 was a new design built by Fox to Cannondales design.

 

Visually, functionally nearly identically to the old shock, and the frame is unchanged (angles and such may have been played with, but the design is the same). So it's a "new" shock yes, but in the most mild of ways.

 

some potatoes from today:







apparently neither of my friends managed to catch the best picture which would have been between these two!

 

Here's the bike I got from a well known auction site for less than I thought it would go for..

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Had a 10 mile ride today to get a sense of it - found it was needing gears adjusting front and rear, some new brake pads and definitely some grips as the ritcheys hurt my hands after 20 mins.

Shortly after getting home a £12.50 order was placed on chain reaction cycles for front/rear pads (Clarks sintered) and a set of grips (Electra ergonomic ones in blue)

A small amount of time adjusting to my specific needs and now the saddle is right height/distance from bars/angle - will need to adjust the forks (Tora 302 SL) preload as I'm heavier than previous owner and then finish the drivetrain upgrade as it has Deore XT for most things except the crankset/BB - think the rear cassette might well be but not spotted any marks on it for a serial number despite having a look while giving it a mini-service earlier.

Will have a few specific questions of Malvolio shortly regarding upgrades but have to walk dog as he is crossing his legs atm

 

Upgrade to bottom bracket

Having done my research with regards to the bike - it is still on it's original crankset/bottom bracket - these being a combo of shimano acera fc-m361 and a bb-un26.

As the rest of it is Deore XT I'd like to upgrade those parts to match so the questions are.

1) Am I better to source a square taper XT crank and chainrings from auction sites/pinkbike.
2) Is there an equivalent octalink/other type of spline upgrade to the bottom bracket so I can fit a newer XT crankset

I think the cassette is a cs-hg80 (looked with a torch and could see some numbers/letters stamped on the 11 tooth lower ring) so it's an upgrade over the 8 speed cassette it had originally - so this is the last piece of the puzzle. Especially as the stem/bars have been done as well.