Team Lope Tyre Clubbe

Lung and I snuck in one final spin in before Lifecycle next weekend. We’re both taking the week off to be fresh for the week following (though I can ride to work a pretty mellow pace and distance, he’s going to go cold turkey and sit on the bacterial cage we call MUNI)… I got the SRAM Courier cranks and bottom bracket on last night, though I didn’t have time to swap out chains today before I left, thanks the machinations of wee Z. It was a cooler day then yesterday, at least so far, though it was plenty hot out in Corte Madera. We benefited from little wind and a lot of tree cover, between most of the Paradise/Strawberry Loop and the detour up Chapman.

Though we were going to take it easy (tekkit teasy, as my Swiss cousin-in-law would say) we ended up mashing quite a bit of the Tiburon stretch of Paradise. Fsst pace! Speaking of mashing we crossed the MASH gang themselves going the opposite direction, in those new histogram kits and on road bikes. Other item of interest: we saw a fox sitting in the road. When he got up and trotted off as we passed, I was surprised how SMALL foxes really are.

Other than the mildly alarming smell of grease, the ride went without a hitch, which for me is kind of a record lately. The only thing that was weird was that I was spinning on the new chainring faster than I anticipated… it felt like a 46, but it really was just a 48, only one tooth down from the 49 it replaced. Talk about psychosomatic.

Anyway! Next stop, Lifecycle!

The SRAM Courier is, or was, the first external bearing bottom bracket system released for single speeds, or so I’ve read. It’s really what we’re already familiar with from road bike external bearing systems, and unlike the lighter and somewhat more coveted Omniums it comes in black. When I had my latest and final loose crank on Crook, I decided to play it conservative and switch drivetrains: I just can’t afford to have wonky crank issues on the road to LA.The Courier was the crank set I originally looked at for this project, but didn’t use since I decided to decommission the Villain and steal the Miche Advanced crank set from that bike. Anyway, here we are.

Of course, my last and final attempt to keep the Miche cranks together MAY have actually worked. I did what you have to do when you get deformed cranks/spindles: hammer the effing thing on there before tightening the crank bolt. I got 4 days out of that with nary a wiggle. However, I committed to the new crank set, and who knows if the old would hold. I’ll risk that for a local loop, but not lifecycle.

The Courier comes as a two-piece crankset, with the spindle attached to the drive side crank, the non-drive side crank arm screwing to that, and the spindle seated within a shell that joins the two external cups.

The cups use the bottom bracket tool I already carry for the Sugino cog system (this is actually the wrench’s intended use, in fact) and they go on very easily, when one wisely lubes ones threaded parts properly (and cleans the disturbing aluminum shavings out of the greasy shell from the last bb’s overtorquage).

The spindle is splined, which is a big improvement over classic, deforming square taper systems…

The opposing crank arm uses an integrated crank bolt to screw directly into the spindle. You can see the teeth here of the receiving end of the crank arm. That’s sorta what she said.

SRAM recommends the use of washers between pedal and crank arm, largely to reduce issues of stress from irregular contact surfaces. Wherever, I follow instructions!

And we’re done. Nice thing about modern components… You can swap out systems on a laundry break and not get in trouble with the wifebot. Next up, a chain swap, and I’ll be good to go for tomorrows break in ride! Not as pretty as the pitch black Miche cranks, but what can you do. I need this to work, and these should be golden.

So I ordered a new helmet, prior to Aids Lifecycle. I’d like to say that it was a matter of maximizing safety or some other legitimate reason, but in all honesty, I got wound up in researching th enew Prolight from Giro because I was interested in the way they modified the rear restraint system, and somehow fell into buying one, in one of those random, probably stress-induced purchase volleys. I very much didn’t need to replace my sweet, sweet Atmos. But I did.

As you can see, fromt he two side-view comparisons here, the helmet shape is different. The Prolight goes back to the original Prolight from the 80s for it’s inspiration, with some modern tweaks, so it’s decidedly not the wind-whipped blade design of most modern racing helmets, including the Atmos and it’s recent superior, the Ionos, and it sits a little differently on the head. It’s tschnically I believe the lightest helmet they have now, and certainly feels ridiculous. The restraint system in back has been redesigned in a deceptively simple way: instead of the traditional ratchet/strap assembly of the other top end Giros like the Atmos and Ionos, the Prolight uses an elastic strap, whose terminal anchor points on the helmet are adjustable. As this restraint is designed to hold the helmet comfortably in place (not ON you, as the chin strap does) it’s actually pretty facepalm obvious to use a soft stretchy strap. It feel 100% different… almost invisible.

Anyway, I’m not completely certain i’m going to keep it just yet. The part of me that led to the helmet research in the first place is still annoyed I never got the matte black Atmos I wanted back in the day, and there’s a slim chance I’ll resell this and grab the only matte Atos made, despite it’s god-awful pop art bck end, and spray paint the back. But I dunno.

In the meantime, this is a pretty rad helmet, all told!

if you ride your bike every day for everything, as i do, you often find yourself out longer than anticipated, and your undercarriage starts to hurt cause you’re just in boxers or briefs with jeans over em. well, THESE are for you.

the novara padded cycling liners are somewhere between boxer briefs and cycling shorts. cycling shorts are performance material with chamois where it counts, but if you’ve ever tried to wear em as your underwear, like under your jeans or whatever, you know they get uncomfortably tight off the bike. that’s where these come in. this product brings the cycling short down from a true cycling performance product to somewhere near boxer briefs, but they’re better than boxer briefs because they have the rubberized bit at the legs to keep em from creeping, and they’re much less restrictive. tighter than boxer briefs but looser than cycling shorts, and with chamois. they’re also not made of cotton like boxer briefs, but not made of the true lycra of cycling shorts. it’s tough to explain.

the point is that high-quality cycling shorts could be over a hundred bucks. even low-quality cycling shorts are up in the 60s. these are right around $20. so even pricewise, they’re right in between the two products. i picked some up yesterday and wore em today around the city, under my jeans, as underwear. i’m still wearing them, obviously not on my bike anymore, and they’re SUPER comfortable. if i were in cycling shorts, i’d have taken them off already.

i’m DEFINITELY going to pick up a few more of these things. they could even be used in a pinch out on a day-long ride, in place of cycling shorts. (though you’d have to wear something over them cause they are technically underwear, but i do that even with my good cycling shorts.)

these are such a great product for people like me, who are in the saddle every day.

HUGE win.

hooBUDDY. when WR and i dropped off our frames at the powdercoaters (maas brothers in livermore) two wednesdays ago, i had no idea what the results would be. i mean, they come highly recommended by one of the more reputable shops in SF (freewheel bikes), but given his last nightmare with powdercoating (in which they essentially ruined his forks), i had the fears. i always have the fears at my first interaction with a new service provider, though, so i sat back, picked the color i wanted, and executed.

the first thing i noticed when we got em back (besides the fact that they looked AMAZING), was that because they have experience with bicycles, they knew what to tape off. my BB threads, my steerer tube threads, my shifter mount threads, my derailleur hanger threads, my effing CHAIN TENSIONER THREADS — all of it had been taped off and was smooth steel. very professional, very impressive, and combined with the outstanding color quality and the cost, has definitely made them my go-to choice from now on for coloring bikes. total win.

the color of the bianchi will not ever be able to be seen in process pics, i fear. i’ll keep trying over the course of the project, but it’s such an odd color that i fear cameras won’t be able to catch it without being manned by some sort of very experienced photographer. it’s what i call "cocaine white," and it’s essentially a pearlescent almost-silver with metalFlake inclusions that make it sparkle. when it’s indoors, it goes from looking cream to looking gray to looking white. when it’s outdoors, however, that fucker lights up in the most brilliant metalFlake white color you’ve ever seen. it’s simply GORGEOUS.

and here’s a detail shot of where the seatstays meet the seat tube — the only branded place left, as it had an embossed "bianchi" there, which i am LOVING…

so with everything back in the shop, i started putting shit together. first, the BB. i got a campagnolo BB for 5 effing dollars at a bike swap some months back, and that was the first to go on. it wasn’t easy, though. the sandblasting that maas did obviously left some grit in the threads of the BB shell, so i had to use a TON of grease and i had to twist each cup in, then back it out, regrease it, and twist it in again. additionally, because this BB is used, it’s not nearly as smooth as i’d like or hope it to be. it spins just fine (tested it quickly with a set of cranks i had laying around), but it doesn’t whip around like it should. but hey, 5 dollars, campy, what do i care…

next up, tossed on the seat binder bolt. a little bit difficult here, because the holes for same had not been taped off (as i imagined they wouldn’t, and quite frankly, SHOULDN’T be). so it was a struggle to pop it through, but once it was in, everything was fine…

moving forward from there, i pressed in the HS cups. this was pretty tough, actually, because the ghettoGrown HS cup press i made is just BARELY not long enough to press em both at once into this longer head tube. so i had to do em one at a time, which had me fearing, because that puts one plate ON the fresh powdercoat as you press in the first cup. additionally, my HS is a tange-levin, so the top cup isn’t a cup, it’s more like a backwards race. the cup faces DOWN on the top, and is the first threaded piece you put on. what this means is that when pressing the top cup, i had the other plate of the press on a surface that would adversely affect the operation of the HS if deformed in any way. but it all worked out in the end, and the HS cups were pressed…

then i went to install the fork crown race, and things started getting tricky. see, the steerer tube had been sandblasted clean, so where the race mounts was fresh and clean of any additional surface area or texture. additionally, i discovered that my race had a crack in it. add these two fact together and what you get is, in essence, a fraction of a mm too much space between the diameters of the two pieces. the race basically just dropped right into place without needing a setter. this is not optimal. it is sub-optimal. so i thought, "hey! i have another tange-levin 1-inch HS in my little metal locking box over there!" except that box is locked. and i have no idea where the keys are. FUCK. so here’s what i did. using a shit-ton of grease and a very methodical, slow assembly process in which i intentionally overtightened the first top HS cup, then backed it off INTO the locknut once THAT was set — i made it work like fucking butter. no wiggle-waggle front-to-back in the fork, and no bound bearings. it spins smooth as silk and it’s solid. WIN. and even though it means that i’ll have to install a whole new HS eventually, this is a big deal to have made this old one work…

and that was it. i still have some other parts i can put on, such as a quill stem, the derailleurs, the shifter levers, and maybe some cranks (gotta work out some chainwheel shit first), and eventually, bars (i need to receive an anticipated shipment first), and some of that shit may end up going on this very weekend. but for now, we wait at this point…

Today was a pretty thrilling day, from the bike build project perspective. You should find two build reports over the weekend, one each from lung and me, starting with this one. We had taken our latest project frames into a recommended powdercoater in the east bay (Maas Brothers) and they were done in less than a week, so we took the opportunity to shoot out there today in an attempt to beat the holiday weekend traffic and get our finished frames. Man we lucked out: we drove straight there, and hit a ton of traffic near the construction on the 580 and happened arrive just in time for their early closing hours for the weekend. Then on the way back the route out was now completely packed all the way to the bridge, thanks to accidents, so our timing couldn’t have been better. Anyway, we came back to lungs workshop to do a bit of work before I headed back home.

The finish on these frames is divine. Lung’s choice was this gorgeous white pearl that I swear none of these process pics will do justice to at all, but man it’s gorgeous. For my Ye Blacke Death project, I wanted a simple matte black, and of course Maas had like 33 variants of this color, but I clearly chose the most number one good awesome version, because it looks dreamy. Of course, now it has the telltale fingerprints of post-quesadilla, bike greazy component assembly, but still. Best frame detail, not even discovered until now: the pictured braze-on above. How rad is that little thing.

Once back at lungs shop, I used his handy homemade cup press to press my freshly cleaned cups back up in there. Admittedly, a week loaded with baby birthdays, aids lwifecycle prep, and lack of sleep was taking it’s toll, but lung helped me note that I was proposing to press my cups upside down, complete with reversed fork crown race floating on top. My brain was very much not working. I was like, huh where are the bearings anyway? Ridiculous. Anyway tappity tap tap and we were good to go.

The cups actually went in very easily, without need to readjust the cup press bearing plates. Quick snap!

One of the best details of the paint job was that I had them tape off some of the original chrome, nowhere better than here at the pointy crown tips. Rad! So, anyway, lung also has a, like, 3 feet long fork crown race setter, which is the most satisfying tool in the house as far as I’m concerned. Boom!

That’s all for today. The frame is hot as nails, cupped and good to go for the next step. Plus, with fingerprints for science.

Can’t wait to get going on this one when we get back from lifecycle! But I’m equally stoked to see lungs project manifest, as well.

not a FAN.

prolly’s so fucking real, i love it. HERE’S a great interview with him, which among other things includes the following gem…

OOPM: Obviously fixed freestyle is blowing up right now and getting bigger and bigger, where do you see the future of that going? Do you think eventually people will start making a living off of this?
John: No, never. It’s a credible sport, but the BMX and the skating industry are MASSIVE industries that have infiltrated every aspect of life. Like corporate advertising, fucking Wal-Mart, and companies know that you can go to like southern California, you can throw a contest in NY, and put big money up and guys are gonna fucking go at it. It’s all about crowd appeal too. You can watch guys do stuff on fixed gears that looks ok, or you can watch guys on BMX fucking kill it, and that’s the difference between the 2 sports. One is fun and one is like, you gotta be really fucking good. Like if you’re a pro BMX’er and you’re good, you’re going to make a lot of money. There’s no way if you’re a fixed gear rider you’re going to be as good as a pro BMX’er.

i don’t like that answer because it validates my own feelings about the sport — i like it because it’s real and it comes from one of the sport’s most recognizable names. he’s not apologizing for it, and he’s not talking around it — he’s just being the humble, super-real dude that he seems to be.

win.

when MASH crashed the ToC last year, they put a couple little teasers out, but THIS one’s new, and i really like it a lot — especially the part at about 1:09 where (ranier?) salmons down the opposite shoulder. so city.

Quick quiz:
Which do you desire more: the buckle, or the context?