It's almost like getting a new bike... almost. Until I spotted the Niner.

Last Monday's STXC (Does that even make sense? "Short Track Cross Country"?) took a little of the shine off my recently repainted (and now rebuilt) SS MTB. Falling over in some realllly soft, rutted, dirt made my handlebar twist sideways. Twisting it back was way too easy-- something is up with the stem. So the whole rest of the race had me mentally shopping for a new 1" threadless fork, headset, and stem. Although I hate to get rid of my Tange Switchblade fork.

Then I saw a new Niner. Fully composite frame. Thing was almost so light that a breeze could carry it away. Single-speed and 18 pounds. With "heavy" wheels, according to the rep (?) hanging out around the Niner tent.

As much as I don't care for composite stuff, this bike made me WANT!

Awww, gee. I still wuv you 21 year-old SS MTB of mine. :) Twisty quill stem and all. We'll get that fixed, I swear.

Comments will now be moderated.

As if family life, work, racing, trying to keep my bikes running and keep the stem tight on my "new to me!" SS MTB, annnnnd working on the damn creaky house (new bathroom! new closet! new living room!) weren't enough, I now discover (rather late) that the comments are being spammed by creepy car salescreeps and creepy asian porn Creepy McCreepsters.

Thanks creeptards. Begone!

It's almost like getting a new bike! Almost.

I think it's taken me three WHOLE years to get around to having the old 1989 Stumpjumper frame painted. Poweder coated, actually. But I finally did it. Hurray! Brooker Enterprises in downtown Portland took care of business.

Behold!



Signal red.

Now I need to have the head tube and bottom bracket shell prepped. Need a new headset too. I think I can get a bit more use out of the current Shimano BB. It still turns smoothly enough(16 years later!!).

The headset has seen better days, I think. Hopefully the shop can set me up with something that isn't a piece of overpriced junk.

Oh. I still need to rebuild the front wheel with the "new to me" XT hub. I rebuilt the rear wheel last year because the freehub was making threatening "KA-BONG!!!!" noises and felt like it was skipping.

I also need to finish putting together my errand bike. The MTN-TEK klunker fo' sho. How are you even supposed to pronounce "MTN" anyway? "M'ten"?

Anyway-- I'm excited to get the red SS MTB put together.

As an added bonus, I cut out a weird filler in the dropouts. Oddly the bike had "sort-of" semi-horizontal dropouts. It had a filler or bridge that was part of the mold when the drop outs were cast that prevented the axle from sliding all the way back. I took a Dremel with a cut-out wheel and cut it out and then filed it smooth. Now I get the full use of the drop out. Yay.

So this is what it used to look like.



Note the sub-awesome rattle-can paint job that artfully incorporates rustiness. Yeah. When I'm done it's going to look Super-Rad.

My Midge handlebars. Let me show you them.

I love the Midge handlebar by On-One. Perfection!

Out out damned cantilever chatter!

Lennard Zinn had been teasing us for weeks now with his apparent solution for all time! -- to the dreaded and hated cantilever brake chatter that seems to be so common on cyclocross bikes these days.

Unfortunately the article doesn't go into quite as much depth as I'd like but it does confirm a few things for me-- namely that the brake pads were skip-slipping on the braking surface. Erk-erk-erk-erk! Some time ago Sheldon Brown had indicated that fork-crown mounted housing stops reduced or eliminated front cantilever brake chatter. And it's for the same reason that linear-pull brakes also don't suffer from the chattering.

A prime factor is the rigidity of the front end of the bike. Van Dessel discovered that forks with a tapered steerer (1.5" at bottom to 1.25" at top) vastly improved braking action. The larger crown race plus larger fork legs created a more rigid structure that resisted flex.

But what do you do if you have a convention bike? I sure as hell don't have the budget to go buy a new bike.

Well there are a few things you can do-- number one seems to be to run a linear-pull brake. You'll need to get a "Travel-Agent" adapter to enable use with your aero (or STI) brake lever or buy an aero brake lever designed to work with linear-pulls (Cane Creek and Dia-Compe both produce such a lever). Shorten the front brake pads-- this would entail cutting off the rear end of the brake pad as mush as possible. Apparently this is something the Richard Sachs CX team does.

Fortunately this is not something that's a problem for me. My LeMond still has its OEM Kenesis aluminum fork and I'm running Paul Neo-Retros. Under hard braking from speed I do experience some front-end shuddering but it's not "scary" or "dangerous" as some other riders have reported.

Go here to read the full article on VeloNews:
velonews.competitor.com/2009/12/cyclocross/technical-qa-with-lennard-zinn-return-to-cross_101807

Good Stuff: Topeak SmartHead upgrade kit

So I finally got a replacement chuck (and hose) for my floor pump. The Topeak SmartHead.

#1 It's pretty nice that I was able to replace only the broken part instead of having to buy a new pump.

#2 It's pretty nice that the replacement part actually improves the performance of the pump as a whole.