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Another day another broken pile of parts Pads a solid millimeter and a half below their minimum threshold. When these pads are spent it'll be time for rotors.  Chain is shot, S-beater's tires are bald, Niner's tires are badly dryrotted. Better bang all that out.  Chain so worn its nearly a solid half link longer than it should be. Front chainrings will be due when the chain is worn again. I'll probably throw a nicer crank(if I can get one) at it and do bottom bracket bearings at the same time. I'll do rear hub bearings then too. Converted both bikes back to tubeless. Twin wall rims make this a really easy prospect. My little compressor is barely enough to seat the bead on the Mavic wheelset. Running the s-beater rivals my 950 in tire costs. This is awesome. Some time later, another spacer cracks. I probably should do something about this. I do run a small beam torque wrench as this bike does have a carbon frame so its not like I'm going full gorilla.  Kept slipping off the pedals on technical trails so new pedals with studs would be nice. The local bike shop is out of every single loud fun color there is, so composite in basic black it is, ugh.  These own. They totally transform the bike even though they're just cheap Bontrager pedals. It took me almost a week to tattoo my shin, and only when I whacked the crank to wake up the cadence sensor. Dug out an old Garmin800 from forever ago, updated the maps on it and threw it down a few trails only to replace it with a Fenix 6 Pro Sapphire. installed a cadence sensor too.  New wireless cockpit, bonus 3d printed Mavic spoke wrench for the husband's bike. Now I can better train and track rides.  On the topic of 3d printing. Two chain link tools, two Mavic spoke tensioning tools, rotor truer, a chain checker, and a chain strap. The chain strap I think can do double duty for spinning oil/fuel filters off.  Cura is being a shithead, ignore how poor these look. It took four days to get my printer inline enough to print mediocrity like this. Luckily they're field tools so they're gonna die anyway. And a couple trail pics of the ~150miles I've ridden on Bend's trails in the last couple weeks.   
cursedshitbox fucked around with this message at 19:20 on Jul 10, 2021 |
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Jul 10, 2021 19:08
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| # ? May 13, 2024 03:17 |
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cursedshitbox posted:Another day another broken pile of parts That's so cool, the riding in Bend is terrific!
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Jul 10, 2021 22:26
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casque posted:That's so cool, the riding in Bend is terrific! The trails are so good I would move here. Its just that good.
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Jul 10, 2021 23:50
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Hello thread! Way back in 2017, my ex broke up with me and I decided, gently caress it, time to get a bike. So I did, I got a Kona Sutra from my local worker-owned collective bike shop (Box Dog Bikes) and thought "hey I can ride this to work" Then I found myself suddenly funemployed for a summer and proceeded to ride the gently caress out of it every day, losing like 40 lbs in the process. In true spirit of this thread I managed to scuff the paint trying to impress a girl (who i'm now married to, so that worked I guess) and rode it with mismatched tires for the longest time. It took me up the hills past Golden Gate Bridge and survived being left outside the bar unlocked more times than it should have. Really one the best bikes I've had - steel frame, triple crank to get my fat rear end up hills, rack for commuting, fenders for rain - my primary mode of transportation in SF. Nothing makes me feel like a badass more than climbing Hawk Hill with panniers full of extra clothes and a lock.  All good things come to end it seems. We moved to LA last july and I rode it zero times between then and labor day. We headed up to SF to see some family and i was like "hell yeah let's put the bikes on the car and we can ride around". Well not only did the sky turn orange then, like a dumbass I parked with the bikes on the car overnight and mine got stolen off it. Fuckers even sawed through the rear strap for no good reason.  Sourcing a new bike in the quar was not easy. I knew I wanted to transition into gravel biking, since living where I did in LA I would have to drive to go biking, and there's loads of epic fire roads in the area. I also felt that after how cops acted before/during/after the summer protests I didn't want to give money to companies that actively courted law enforcement customers. Sadly that meant that another Kona Sutra (which honestly would have probably perfect for what I wanted to do) was not an option, and a couple other brands I might have considered as well. There's a lot of bikes out there that check the "steel frame, drop bars, can put wide tires on it" like a Surly Cross-Check or a Salsa Vaya, but nothing really spoke to me since they were just gonna be slightly different than the Sutra. Until I found this one:  Golden Saddle Cyclery in LA managed to source me this wonderful beast: an All-City Gorilla Monsoon. Steel frame, lot of lugs for mounting racks, bottles and stuff, 1x11 Shimano GRX drivetrain, hydraulic disc brakes and a dropper post. Plus hilariously wide (2.4") tires. This thing FUUUUCKED on the fire roads in the Santa Monica mountains. On my first major outing on it the route took me into single track that i wasn't ready for and I could just drop my seat down to get my center of gravity back. While the gearing isn't as wide as I'd like it (and the GRX drivetrain can only go 11-42), I still don't regret going with a 1x setup.   Since moving back to SF, I need to commute to the office every now and then, and parking is hilarious by the office - $20/day, $300 for a monthly pass. So bike commuting it is, which means it needs a rack:  Finding a rack that fit this thing was not easy. I settled on a Blackburn Outpost, which is very adjustable and can fit a number of different frame sizes and tire widths. Super finnicky to get it installed in a way that would clear the tires, have the panniers fit well but also keep the center of gravity low, but I made it work I thinkl.  Not only good for commuting, you can pack extra clothes on rides where the weather can shift, like Mt Tam. 90 degrees climbing up the Old Railroad Grade gravel ascent up to the summit, 55 degrees descending through fog on the other side of the mountain made me appreciate the windbreaker. Next up on this thing is trying to figure out a way to mount the Garmin radar/rear light to the back of the rack instead of the seat post, and maybe get a top rack "trunk" bag. Also trying to source a "road" wheelset for getting around town, and pricing on that combined with wanting to swap to a front ring that would get me a lower climbing gear is making me just consider getting a road bike...
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Jul 12, 2021 21:57
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I regret to interrupt from the excellent bike content in this thread, but I hope you will forgive me. It is for a good reason. So I have been delinquent on posting More About The Integrale, because 1) other stupid bike poo poo got in the way, and 2) well, uh, frankly, I'm a little embarrassed about the story. It's a little too Silicon Valley, but I can't not share it, because this place is too loving weird to be believed. I was about to get in the car to go pick up some bike parts from a friend. I opened the garage door and found outside... well, an unusual car in my neighbor's driveway with the hatch and hood open, and some cursing from underneath the hood, and a table set out next to it with some dinner and drinks on it. Always a good sign. I heard grumbling about not enough leverage on a wrench; I wandered over with a breaker bar, and asked them to drop it back in my mailbox if they were done with it before I got home. Indeed, when I got home, the breaker bar had come in handy, and I took to chatting with them some; it turns out that the owner of the car, Mr. Integrale, had parked the car in their garage for a few weeks to bring it up to operating condition after having just bought it, since he didn't have garage space at the moment. The homeowners, Yogi and Italian, were all too happy to oblige the opportunity to have an Integrale in their garage. They said there was plenty more work to do the next day before it was ready to drive down to LA for emissions homologation, and why didn't I come over for dinner the next day? I was only too happy to; I went out for a ride in the evening, and came back just in time for some homemade pasta. Around the table was Yogi and Italian, Mr. Integrale, and two new faces: Vanlife, and Instructor. Vanlife had shown up in a fully kitted out Sprinter that he lived out of, which had quite the variety of wrenches; when I said that I used to work for nvidia a few years ago, he asked me if I knew two people. I was prepared to say no, but the answer was that in fact I did know both: #1 was a friend of my housemate's, and graduated the year before I went to undergrad -- and #2, I had traded e-mails with a few hours earlier, for the other left nvidia around when I did, and is my primary contact at one of my clients (a small startup) now. It turns out, bizarrely enough, that Mr. Integrale's name was quite familiar, and in fact I'd been on a call with him before, too: he was, in fact, the technical advisor for that client! Vanlife noted that Instructor was on a Lemons team with nvidian #1. (In fact, I had gone to spectate at a Lemons race that nvidian #1 was racing in quite some years ago!) Now that the round of introductions -- and dinner -- was done, the final tweaks were going on the Integrale. The throttle position sensor needed to be set up. The ECU had just had a brand new EEPROM blasted to it, and was a little confused: it was pretty sure that, as I recall, it was an Alfa 164, but you know, you gotta do what you gotta do. I was instructed to sit in the cockpit and romp on the gas pedal back and forth while Mr. Integrale turned the adjust screw, and I read out the values on the tuning screen:  The inside of it, of course, is exactly as Italian as you might hope.  There were a few other things to do, but eventually, Mr. Integrale fired it up. It started on the first go, despite all the electronics having been left on for quite some time as we were poking at it and Mr. Integrale was installing a new head unit. The Italian was impressed. He is an older Italian man, and he really leaned into it. "Oh my God, it is the first time-a that has ever happened! An Italian car has started on the first try! Mr. Integrale is trying to make this car not hosed up. It is not-a possible! Lancia have gently caress-a it up from the factory, and you think you can fix it!" To prove the point, he walked around to the back; Mr. Integrale, as you can see from the picture in the previous post, had just replaced the left brake light, but now the right taillight was out. The Italian looked at it, gave it a solid slap with his palm, and all of the lights were subsequently in working order.   As the night came to a close, Mr. Integrale said it was time to leave; he was driving to LA first thing in the morning. We had a few unusual cars there, though. Maybe mine was the least unusual of the three, but we lined them up anyway for a few pictures.   It all feels a little embarrassingly Bay Area-techie-scum. But also, when was the last time you got to hear an Integrale give a quiet Silicon Valley neighborhood an evening wakeup call? The Italian, the Instructor, and Mr. Integrale have offered a hand and some wrenches when it comes time to replace the clutch in the Golf -- a necessity if I want to flash it to make more horsepowers (and, importantly, more torques). Some day. Some day...
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Jul 15, 2021 05:52
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luminalflux posted:In true spirit of this thread I managed to scuff the paint trying to impress a girl (who i'm now married to, so that worked I guess) Also, double-posting to say that I loving love this, and I'm glad it worked for someone!
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Jul 15, 2021 06:02
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bicievino posted:I wish you had a power meter so we could estimate how much wattage was lost to your garbage wheels. The time has come. When I was going out to grab some bike parts and saw aforementioned Integrale, as it turned out, I was heading over to a friend's house, who had plucked a Stages power meter out of the 'free' bin at Stanford for me. FSA crankset, half carbon, half alloy. Today, I did the Bike Hut Classic, which is a self-timed time trial on Tunitas Creek Rd. -- 8.3 miles, 1900ft, little roll at the bottom, big oof in the middle, roll at the top. The results are... well, it's hard to believe just how bad it was. I put in a decently strong effort, according to the power meter, and was *very* slow -- I held 310W (4.16W/kg) to do it in 42:05, and my buddy, Julien, held 220W (3.71W/kg) to come in at 39:45. Well, I did some math. Something is horribly wrong. Something on this bike -- the bike, or the rider, or both -- is unimaginably lovely.  I don't understand how it can be this bad. The bike is heavy -- weighing in at 25lbs -- but not as insanely heavy as it would take to eat up all that power. So where the hell is it all going? One obvious concept is that the power meter is overreporting, but my heart rates were at least in the ballpark of what the trainer would put me at for that power in erg mode (actually, I would expect my heart rates to hang out at 170bpm or so for that power, and I was hanging out at around 178bpm). And also, around those power settings, my power meter seems to track tolerably closely to the trainer, based on monitoring both at the same time. I zeroed the power meter just before I started today, too. What gives? Are *both* power sources overreporting? if you do the math, I'm losing somewhere in the ballpark of 50W somewhere (!). That''s a crazy amount. If it were in the drivetrain, we'd see it in an offset from the power meter to the trainer. If it were in the wheels, I'd feel it on the flats, presumably -- and, I'm using my friend Catherine's rear wheel for now, which does seem perfectly fine, so if it's happening, it has to be in the front wheel. I have to imagine I'd notice losing 50W in just the front wheel, especially at speeds as slow as 7.5mph (on the steeps, where the "gravity" numbers are calculated). I do not get it. After ruling that all out, ... what's left? Anyway, for the week prior, I was in Boston, visiting family. As it turns out, I also made another stop while I was there... 
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Jul 19, 2021 08:29
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A free power meter sounds incredibly suspect.
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Jul 19, 2021 18:00
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My dude, if you were losing 50W from your janky bodged front wheel at 12mph, you'd be losing >100W at 25mph. You'd get dropped from every group ride ever and your hub would be drat hot after a short while. You would not be able to spin the wheel freely in your hand and on a flat road you would have to do 110W instead of 60W to average 12mph. Your bike is kind of a POS I don't doubt that a combination of bearing friction, lovely drivetrain maintenance, slow tires, racks/weight, body position, etc. are making you waste power. e: What is your OLH time? That would be a more consistent benchmark. TobinHatesYou fucked around with this message at 18:26 on Jul 19, 2021 |
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Jul 19, 2021 18:22
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Does your w/kg math include the bike weight or just the rider?
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Jul 19, 2021 18:40
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TobinHatesYou posted:a combination of bearing friction, lovely drivetrain maintenance, slow tires, racks/weight, body position, etc. are making you waste power. What tires do you have What pressure are they at What wheels How aero is your bit fit and kit When was the last time you lubed your chain, replaced your chain, and what lube e.pilot fucked around with this message at 19:06 on Jul 19, 2021 |
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Jul 19, 2021 19:03
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BeastPussy posted:A free power meter sounds incredibly suspect. If you have a TrainerRoad account, here's the log from them, and if not, here's the data available on Strava. Blue line is commanded power in erg mode, yellow line is measured power from the cranks. In general, what we're seeing is:
And the general conclusion is that the data might be 10W high compared to what I put into the road, but not, say, 50W high. Unless we want to say that the KICKR is suspect also ... which it could be, but that would be very surprising. TobinHatesYou posted:My dude, if you were losing 50W from your janky bodged front wheel at 12mph, you'd be losing >100W at 25mph. You'd get dropped from every group ride ever and your hub would be drat hot after a short while. You would not be able to spin the wheel freely in your hand and on a flat road you would have to do 110W instead of 60W to average 12mph. My best OLH, by the way, is 22:02 ... which, you know, is also a little suspicious, because my second best OLH was 22:50, on the Diverge, in 2019, when I was, in theory, substantially less fit. bicievino posted:Does your w/kg math include the bike weight or just the rider? TobinHatesYou posted:Your bike is kind of a POS I don't doubt that a combination of bearing friction, lovely drivetrain maintenance, slow tires, racks/weight, body position, etc. are making you waste power. e.pilot posted:This can easily add up to 50w I'm running 28mm Specialized Turbo RapidAirs, front and rear, tubeless, 90psi-ish. The front is a WTB ST i19 rim that came with the bike with some garbage Formula hub. The rear is a DT Swiss alloy wheel of some kind (both DT Swiss rim and hub) that seems to be in decent condition. None of bike nor fit nor kit is terribly aero. But remember that the 'gravity' calculation is as calculated on the steeps -- 7.5mph. So aero should not matter... at all. The chain was replaced 790 miles prior, was lubed the day before (using Rock N Roll Gold), and measured today at below 0.5% stretch, according to a Park Tool feeler gauge. And anyway, the direct-drive-trainer-vs-power-meter test should have sussed out drivetrain losses. So that brings me back to where I was... as noted above, I would definitely feel it if I was losing that much power in the wheels. The drivetrain isn't it. The aerodynamics aren't it. So... having ruled everything out, where is it all going?
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Jul 21, 2021 08:09
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Ride one of your friends’ bikes, and if it feels about as efficient, borrow it to test on your trainer and log their PM. It should then show that your trainer happens to be overreporting the same as your PM. If any of them have pedal PMs, you could also borrow and compare to yours on the road.
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Jul 21, 2021 08:42
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that PM is really suspect. I would not be surprised that the free bin in the cycling club room had a defective PM (usually it was just bernardo/coach dan's/pamela's random stems/bars etc.).
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Jul 21, 2021 18:22
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kimbo305 posted:Ride one of your friends’ bikes, and if it feels about as efficient, borrow it to test on your trainer and log their PM. It should then show that your trainer happens to be overreporting the same as your PM. If any of them have pedal PMs, you could also borrow and compare to yours on the road. Development posted:that PM is really suspect. I would not be surprised that the free bin in the cycling club room had a defective PM (usually it was just bernardo/coach dan's/pamela's random stems/bars etc.).
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Jul 21, 2021 20:00
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You need a known good power meter to compare to both the KICKR CORE and the Stages. Many KICKR COREs read slightly high, so you can’t assume that the difference isn’t recorded power is down to drivetrain losses. In the meantime, make sure ERG power smoothing is turned off in the Wahoo app, create a ZwiftPower account, record TrainerRoad workout on your KICKR CORE and concurrently record the Stages to a bike computer. Upload both files to the analysis tool. My OLH is something like 18:12 at 293W. 62kg, 8kg bike, probably 3kg in gear.
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Jul 21, 2021 21:33
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Ok, "you asked for it"! HERE COME SOME FUCKIN  A friend of mine is traveling this weekend, and I got a chance to borrow her Fuji Supreme (from the TIBCO sale, no less -- I'm riding Alison Jackson's race bike!). I took the afternoon to put in an all-out effort on Old La Honda. The results were... extremely surprising. First off, here's what I expected going into it, and what I'd hoped to measure. I had believed that this power meter would read lower, but how much lower I didn't know; my friend said that this power meter read lower than her pedal power meter. (It's a 4iiii non-drive-side-only power meter.) So I had hoped to measure: 1) reported power vs. heart rate / RPE, and 2) time vs. heart rate / RPE. An explicit anti-goal was to measure time vs. power, if we believed that power numbers are not comparable to what I've recorded before. Here are the data:
Anyway, what can we conclude?
TobinHatesYou posted:You need a known good power meter to compare to both the KICKR CORE and the Stages. Many KICKR COREs read slightly high, so you can’t assume that the difference isn’t recorded power is down to drivetrain losses. In the meantime, make sure ERG power smoothing is turned off in the Wahoo app, create a ZwiftPower account, record TrainerRoad workout on your KICKR CORE and concurrently record the Stages to a bike computer. Upload both files to the analysis tool. Conveniently, I have a ramp test scheduled for Monday night. I think my plan is this: I'm going to do a factory spindown of the KICKR CORE, not just a regular spindown, to let it recalibrate itself. Then, I'm going to do a ramp test, with the KICKR's power input paired to my laptop, and the Stages paired to my ELEMNT BOLT. Since the Stages fairly closely tracks the KICKR's power in its current configuration, we'll know, more or less, what my 'original KICKR power' was if the KICKR's power output changes. I expect my reported FTP to drop very substantially, both because the KICKR will be better calibrated, and also because I think the atomoxetine is a primary cause of trouble (so I expect the Stages-recorded FTP will also drop). (And yes, I know that the ramp test doesn't measure FTP, and that it measures maximum aerobic power. I don't care. All I care is that I get a consistent reading.) I'll report back with my conclusions...
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Jul 24, 2021 07:40
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Oh, yeah, as if the above isn't enough FUCKIN ... I also have some squishier notes on the Supreme. I was very worried going into this that I would, like, fall in love with the carbon road machine, and start second-guessing the seeecret bike above that is long out in the build queue. Surprisingly, I found almost no such thing: the bike felt somewhat more responsive, but not dramatically. Some of the increased responsiveness felt like a function of the bike’s geometry, rather than of the bike’s material composition. The bike mostly felt like any old otherwise-unfamiliar bike. A lot of my trouble with it on the 84 descent was not having a good feeling for weight shift on brake inputs (and, to a lesser extent, weight shift in corners). But it did not feel like a beast waiting to be unleashed, or like it had any more grip than the CAADX had; it did require a little less muscle to shove it into a corner, but I've gotten used to that on the CAADX. I was not really enthralled with having a light-weight race bike, made of brittle carbon, with a $400 brifter that the owner had lightly tweaked in a fall and that no longer quite actuates the hydraulics right. Di2 was kinda cool but not cool enough to be worth the extra money -- and the idea that the firmware on my bike could cause me to not be able to complete a ride (and also, the button force was light enough that it seemed like I accidentally hit a shift more often than I wanted). The tubeless setup on the expensive bike sprayed me with milkshake just as good as the tubeless setup on my cheap-rear end bike. The race bike had 'big girl gears' (52/36 chainrings, 11-32 cassette), which just seems excessive for any mortal. The fit on it was slammed, which is great if you're a pro athlete who spends lots of time stretching, but bad for the rest of us. In general, today’s ride basically reinforced my thesis that the bike really does not matter beyond a point, especially for heavier riders like me. Being able to put power into the bike and command the bike appropriately is far more important. I suspect that nextbike will be a moderate improvement over the CAADX in a few ways, but just as this bike was not revolutionary, neither will be nextbike. It's just a machine. Same lovely V-twin engine powered by the same poo poo running like garbage... better bike ain't make it put down more power.  Aero, svelte, ~dropped seatstays~, and ... it's still a bike.
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Jul 24, 2021 07:54
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The Linux Fairy posted:Aero, svelte, ~dropped seatstays~, and ... it's still a bike. The aero benefit is pretty real, and while you make up a bigger chunk with deep wheels, it's still something you can appreciate and can't quite get with round tubing.
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Jul 24, 2021 10:09
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55F is basically the ideal temperature to put in a max aerobic effort, so I’m not surprised by your PR being in that range. By the time it hits 80F, my power will probably be down by 10% on a climb like OLH. I am quite positive my aero bike is slower than my lightweight bike up OLH. For me the break-even point is somewhere between 5-6% grade. It’s very close on Kings Mountain. The aero bike is far better suited for Portola loop or Cañada Rd breakaways, obviously.
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Jul 24, 2021 10:49
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