Sunday, December 15, 2013

5 speed again

Re-fivespeeding a bud's bike. The bike had been a single speed towie for years, but he got his hands on an old 5 speed rear wheel, we added a cable stop for the shifter, a rear der, and a homemade chain watcher up front.
 The brushed on Testor's paint touch up came out pretty well, I mean for a bike that is pretty thrashed that is.
 This is the second one of these that I've made, but they've both been janky. No finish on it, just a little Boeshield T9.

Thursday, December 5, 2013

Tam overnighter

I got out with some buds and camped on Mt Tam this weekend. The next morning we rode some new dirt into Fairfax. It was the first camping trip for the new bike and it worked out pretty well.  I changed the crankset to a 165mm to try and ameliorate my pedal strike problem, and it mostly worked out. In fact, the toughest climb which has some integrated stairs (Miwok from Tenn Valley) was not an issue on the pedal strike front and the bike felt better than others I've tried up the same hill. I suppose it could have just been that awesome burrito tho...

Gear set up was a little funky. I tried tying a stuff sack to the bars which cluttered up the top bar grip positions a bit. Still I dig seeing how others are figuring this stuff out and my set up is ever evolving. I'd need more storage if I was going for any longer; for this trip I carried no cooking gear.