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Prologue. This is my bike. A 2016 Specialized Diverge Elite DSW. Black and red. Cheap Tiagra aluminum frame (but a carbon fork with elastomer inserts, how fancy!). A "gravel bike", 'cept it only clears 36mm tires (if you're lucky and there isn't any mud), and anyway, I have Armadillo tires on it. Rode my first century on it, and for that matter, my first 10k-of-elevation-in-a-day on it. Beat the poo poo out of this guy; I took it down Canyon Trail (up in Montebello Open Space Preserve). I was riding the 28mm Armadillos at like 90psi trying to impress a girl who liked riding dirt, and it spat me off, because I'm a sucker who actually has no gravel skills. (Subluxated my left rotator cuff. The next day needed ibuprofen.) Dropped it off the roof of a car once after a long day once. Oops. Aluminum frame ain't care, though. Put the wheel back on and ride home.  Well, I guess I should be more clear. That was my bike. Now it belongs to some crackhead. Or maybe it belongs to some sucker down in LA who doesn't know that they bought a stolen bike. Ok. Well. Let's try that again. Enter stage left. I had been dreaming about some custom titanium for years, but kept thinking that I wasn't really a good enough or serious enough rider to really merit it, and anyway, the Diverge worked just fine. But when the Diverge walked away at the beginning of the pandemic -- March last year, or whenever it was -- I figured that that was my chance. I figured that for about 12 whole hours, until I realized that the lead time on some titanium was going to be like six months, and my housemate's carbon road machine was way too nice for me to be riding around until then. So I did the only reasonable thing: I looked around and found the cheapest road-like machine that would take a rear rack that I could buy, put a mask on, went out to the shop, test rode it, and picked it up on closeout. (Funny thing about March 2020: it was still possible to buy a bike back then.) So here you have it. This is my bike. A 2019 Cannondale CAADX SE 105. Eye-fuckin' shiny blue. Cheap-rear end aluminum frame, this time with 105 R7000, still a carbon fork, no fancy elastomer inserts. This one will clear 38mm tires, with some mud.  Thing is, over the last year, I've discovered something about this bike. What I've discovered is that every single component on it is the absolute cheapest pile of poo poo that Cannondale could get. Anything that wasn't ruthlessly penny-pinched, too, I found, was misassembled either at the factory or at the shop that built it up. The chainrings are made by FSA ("Find Shimano Alternative"? "Faulty Shifting Always"? "loving lovely Aluminum"?); the front derailleur was installed at the wrong height, which I finally decided I needed to fix when it spat the chain off the big ring three seconds into a full-power standing sprint doing 30mph on Highway 9. It goes on. And if I fix everything that's wrong with the components, it'll still be a cheap aluminum frame with kind of sluggish handling. The front wheel is thru-axle (great!); the rear wheel is quick-release, despite having a disc brake; that's never gonna change, since I'm sure not welding in new rear dropouts. (Hope it doesn't spit the wheel out under heavy braking one day.) The order of business here is to spend as little money as possible on it, since one day, I'll get an actual nice bike, and any dollar I put into this thing is a dollar that I might as well be lighting on fire. So why you posting in AI? Here's what we're doing in this thread: we're gonna send it until it breaks, then keep sending it anyway. I've put a little shy of 6,000 miles on this in the past year on the road, and another hundred or so hours on the trainer with it. In that time, I've taken this piece of poo poo to Yosemite and hosed around on forest roads that nobody goes to (kill count: two tubes, and one taillight that got shaken out of its mount); shredded a set of brake pads doing a half-Everesting on On Orbit Rd; covered myself in tubeless shmoo by the side of the trail; starved on the back side of Mt. Hamilton; strapped a pair of skis to the bike for a day on the mountain; and I'm sure a handful of other adventures that I've forgotten to write down. I do not give a poo poo how I look on the bike, either. I run SPD pedals and wear MTB shoes (they're easier to walk in). I have a mirror on my helmet, since I commute with this thing too. Sometimes my kit matches, sometimes it doesn't. There's a rack on the back of my bike all the time, and usually I'm the one who gets to pack mule around a pannier full of stuff. I weigh 165lbs on a great day, so the weight of the bike does not matter to me. I have a feed bag on the top tube full of trail mix, a saddle bag on the back with some repair stuff, and a multitool in a cage under the bottle cage. (Well, I did, until the multitool got spat out somewhere along a bumpy trail.) I forgot that my rear gravel tire is a tan wall, so when I replaced the front, I got a black sidewall, and my gravel wheelset is mismatched now. At the end of the day, though, you can call me Fred if you want but the 2 liters of water on the rack will save your rear end at the end of the day, and when I tuck in and stuff my dad-bod belly on the saddle to get ~omg~aero~, that extra weight will haul me past you on the descent. What am I gonna do on it? Now that the world is starting to open up again, I took a crack at racing my first criterium on this bike; I've been training all pandemic long, and I wanna see if those watts are good for anything. My friend Robin (a cat 3) told me that I very clearly had the shittiest bike there, and she also said that some guy on a Cervelo was glaring at me in the starting area. (Probably didn't help that I didn't clean the mud off my bike from the previous weekend. Anyway, Cervelo guy and I both got dropped.) I'll take a few more spins at racing, because why not? And I'm gonna keep going on adventures. So why AI? Well, you see, it's a project thread. I was thinking of putting it in TGO, but TGO doesn't really seem to Do project threads. AI does. And I kind of have a special love for AI, where I've been lurking all these years, and anyway, something just seems kind of AI about this aesthetic. It'll be a mundane project thread where I do stupid poo poo to the bike to maintain it, and then occasionally go on adventures: the way a good project thread ought to be, I guess. (I'll backfill with updates over time from before I started writing this.) It's an open project thread -- if anyone else has a bike that they're loving around on, you can post here and we can all find out together.  Let's play stupid games and win stupid prizes. The Linux Fairy fucked around with this message at 05:42 on May 12, 2021 |
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May 12, 2021 05:18
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For some odd reason at least one AI mod approves of thread and wishes to follow
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May 12, 2021 05:39
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You know how I said that every single part on this thing was the cheapest piece of poo poo that Cannondale could possibly come up with? That's because it is. The shifting on this was never great -- even after I fixed the lower limit screw that the shop set up wrong (found this one out by shifting into the spokes after cutting off the dork disc...). One day, it got bad enough that it was just not possible to tune it at all. On this day, I was going to make a discovery about a piece of bike anatomy that I had always really considered to be a black box. I found that the lock nut on the bearing cone on the rear axle had backed itself out. (No pictures of this one, sorry. Apparently I didn't bother to take any then.) The whole freehub and wheel was walking about on the axle, with a few millimeters of play. Turn left, the wheel walks around and pushes towards upshifting. Turn right, the wheel walks around and pushes towards downshifting. I tore it down a little ways, tightened it up finger-tight, and periodically remembered to re-check it. Better now. Bike shifts good. A few months later, I found that although the axle was still decently tight, the wheel was definitely dragging pretty badly. I adjusted the brakes, to no avail. Give it a light spin, and it'll stop in a handful of turns. No good. Found that if I loosened the cone a little bit, it didn't bind quite as bad, and I got to balance it between having too much play and too much drag; if you turned the axle by hand, it definitely felt gritty, still. This is apparently a common phenomenon with these cheap Formula CX-22 hubs (OEM only, total crap), and if you look around the internet, you hear of a lot of folks with this problem. At some point, I picked up a spare wheelset from someone else who was getting rid of theirs -- in fact, an exact identical wheelset to what I had, so now I could set up one as a gravel wheelset and one as a road wheelset. Well, a few months after that, my new road wheelset started acting up in exactly the same way. In January this year, I gave in to actually cleaning the drivetrain; while I was doing so, I tore down the freehub to see what was going on, and found, well, this:  Welp. The bearing cone had pitting around about 160 degrees of its surface; the pitting was probably around 100-300µm deep, using my patented Eyeball-O-Meter. A little more Googling found that someone else had also done some failure analysis on this thing; theirs went to hell identically, and when they put it under a metallurgical microscope, they found that instead of being made of case-hardened steel, the bearing cone was actually made out of extra-sharp cheddar cheese. That explains that. Of course, there are no replacement parts for this hub. So what we gonna do about it? Well, replacing the wheel is out of the question. No way I'm going to spend money on a wheel for this bike, especially one with a quick release axle that I won't be able to take to a new bike that will assuredly have thru-axles. And I'm not gonna rebuild this wheel either. Whatever. Send it until it gets so bad that it can't be tightened at all, and then we'll figure it out. * * * A week or so ago, I came across these guys: Wheels Manufacturing. Turns out they make replacement bearing cones. I called up Robin and asked to borrow a pair of calipers, tore down my gravel wheel, and got to measurin'. Good news: the part was 14.1mm long x 17.0mm OD. This one, and maybe a 0.5mm spacer, oughta do it. I ordered the part last night. This morning, I had the realization that the bearing cone might not be the only hosed up part. Kicked off a build for work, went outside, pulled the balls out and measured those -- might as well replace them, they're cheap. 1/4" balls. We've got the biggest balls of them all. And, shockingly, the bearing cup seemed to be intact. Good news: that's basically the only thing I can't replace. Went back to work, pleased with myself, about to make a repair that nobody else had succeeded in, for only $10. Sat back down at my terminal, and had a moment of clarity. Joshua, you fuckin idiot. Axles are held in by two bearings, not one. Pulled the axle out. Sent the balls in the other bearing flying balls flying. Son of a bitch. The other cone is pitted to hell too -- and it is weird. Griped some on IRC. Frankenstein thought he had a chance of being helpful -- surely you can find any bearing cone that you need out there somewhere?  Good luck with that, buddy. I ordered myself one of these and a handful of spacers. We'll see what happens when it all arrives on Saturday or Monday or whenever. Either I'm gonna be a genius who has managed to repair the impossible, or I'm gonna have spent a bunch of money on shipping for two separate orders that really should have been one order if I were a little less impulsive and will have a handful of precisely-machined-in-the-USA doorstops.
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May 12, 2021 06:06
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Nice thread. I did a rebuild with wheels mfg parts awhile back and it worked out great.
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May 12, 2021 06:11
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I despise loose bearing hubs for the exact reasons you've unfortunately discovered here. The day I got wheels with sealed cartridge bearings was the day I felt truly like I had found the meaning of life...  Once you notice the bearings have decided to eat the surfaces on the hub itself is the time to have a little cry and spend some money. Hope this doesn't happen.
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May 12, 2021 13:57
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Cool, a bike thread! I don't have one but my dad uses an old piece of crap (it didn't start that way) to go to the gym daily. By estimate it probably has like 50k km on it by now and some shops refuse to work on it The whole thing is kind of a pain in the rear end, the last place had to be booked a month in advance even. So it really seems like the perfect candidate for DIY. Some stuff seems to require weird tools but overall if I managed to pull and rebuild a transmission then this should be a walk in the park.
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May 12, 2021 16:28
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mobby_6kl posted:The whole thing is kind of a pain in the rear end, the last place had to be booked a month in advance even. So it really seems like the perfect candidate for DIY. Some stuff seems to require weird tools but overall if I managed to pull and rebuild a transmission then this should be a walk in the park. Yeah, there's only one thing I'll refuse to do myself: pressing bottom bracket bearings. Here's hoping I don't have to do it. Everything else, I can do here. I do have a crappy torque wrench but I don't usually see the need to use it... the handlebars are aluminum and so is the seatpost, so the torque specs for both are 'Eergh!'.
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May 12, 2021 18:37
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The Linux Fairy posted:Yeah, there's only one thing I'll refuse to do myself: pressing bottom bracket bearings. Here's hoping I don't have to do it. Everything else, I can do here. I do have a crappy torque wrench but I don't usually see the need to use it... the handlebars are aluminum and so is the seatpost, so the torque specs for both are 'Eergh!'. one stiff grunt will do er' BB bearings aren't too bad. My covidbeater is gonna need em at some point too. They're getting kinda sloppy. Also sendin' it on a shitbox bike. Prior to taking the composite box out I was after a MTB/gravel bike to ride around. With short covid supplies I snapped up the first thing that was in my size, within my budget, with a seller that wasn't a yuge bag of cheesy tools. Ideally I wanted something with a steel frame with drop bars to build a monstercross bike that I can't possibly ruin. I break everything, it is inevitable, but I can also fix it. Sooo naturally I brought home a fallen from grace dentist bike that had been sent at least once to live amongst the burnt forests and muddy trenches of the desert. It had been sent once, it can get sent again. I want to learn more composite work anyway which makes this a great bike to have around.  I promise you it is never kept this clean. It gets washed once every 2 months if that. This was one of those times.        The frameset is a 2012 Specialized S-works Stumpjumper 29er in Flo Red with uhhh basically none of its original dentist class light weight bling. (it was sold as a bare frameset maybe?) Groupset overhaul sometime in 14'-15' with an absolute grab bag of random parts then not really ridden by the last owner which is an insult to the bike. I'm gonna put this thing to work till it or I breaks, then keep sending it. It has its normal nearly decade old CF frameset wear. couple small chips and no shortage on the scratches. I'll clean it up at some point by filling in the chips and scratches but eh, it's a badge of honor. Wheels: Easton EA70XCT, X2 hubs, TA front, QR rear, tubeless ready twinwall aluminum, quiet af cassette, (this is from 12', TA became a thing out back around 15', with boost superseding both). Rear hub is a stupid design with only two bearings so there's a little slop in the cassette body. I can't get a new cassette body and I currently don't care. Flip side when I set the machine tools up at the next haus I might be arsed to machine a few parts for it. Right now? meh. Fork: Rockshock SID in 100mm flavor. The Brain has been lobotomized. Upper stanchion is chipped, the seals leak at times. Air bladder holds air and its not pogoy sooo send it. I might source a new upper for it due to the chip that's within the area of the lowers' travel, I may not. May be better off with a newer fork. Its fine for now.  Brakes: Avid Elixir R SL with excessive travel, worn sintered pads and now warped 160mm rotors.  Engagement is excessive but firm. good modulation. Its my first hydraulic disc system and it ooowns. My husband's bike has 180mm stoppers and there's not a whole lot of difference in modulation between the two. Its unlikely that this bike will get a 180mm upgrade. Drivetrain? oof. 2x10. loving SRAM. X7 shifters, GX rear derailleur featuring a spent clutch, X7 front derailleur, X9 crank, Shimano XT cassette on an Ultegra chain. Yes. Ultegra.  Eat your heart out, SRAM.  It all surprisingly works as it should though it took me about 100 miles of ridingsuck to get it all dialed in. (it threw the chain on the test ride, which I haggled $100 off and that's definitely some foreshadowing here). The BB30 needs a little nudge on its preload spacer every couple weeks. It lets me know it needs that through chainsuck. The cassette hub is kinda lovely and has some play in it but it generally just works. A road bike chain on a mtb constantly gripes about every piece of grit and poo poo in it and I can't stand chain noise, chain suck, or failed shifts so I am indebted to keeping the chain too clean for its own good. I've considered a 1x11 or 1x12 conversion. I've grown to really like the 2x system. We'll see when it breaks, the front chainrings and chain have some wear. They could stand to be replaced, lol goodluck with parts sooo we're gonna send that too. There's no dropper post, clipless pedals, or carbon parts outside of the frameset. Has a cheap Specialized saddle with some wear but its acceptable for shorter rides. Its numbingly annoying for anything much over an hour and a half and that's a cause for swapping it out. I recently grabbed its cheap af carbon replacement from storage that I've used for the last 3 years on a stationary bike without numbing issues. It gets absolutely zero upgrades unless it breaks. I've yet to even spoon on a new set of tires because nope, I have not sent it enough to earn new parts.  Seriously. Puncture? nope. Seal the ancient Specialized tube, pull the thorn out, throw it all together and send. Parts shortages mean I can't get the right size tires atm, and I grabbed the last tube from the LBS (and tubeless parts). I've had it since September/October of last year, and since taking the composite box around its ridden everything from 100 degree days in death valley to 7000' up in the Sierras riding through snowfall. I'm somewhere between 5-600mi(800-950km) for 2021 and 200mi for 2020. With the sun actually hanging around for 13+ hours a day and I get a little more confidence in this old bag of parts, mileage over time will increase. I don't care if its fire roads, tarmac, single track, hogged out mining roads, or equestrian trails. I'm also very Fred, I don't shave, I don't properly train anymore(and really should again) or really log my performance on the bike (this will also change), my kit doesn't match the bike, my equipment is aging and dirty, my fucks army is loving defeated. I'm all of 170lb (+/-5lb) at 5'11 with a 33" inseam. Functional power of .05HP and 2 goony foot pound of torque. I climb like a dumptruck and descend like one. Hot, slow, and loud up the climbs, and scream down it on the turbo with the go pedal smashed down so hard that toes sticking out of the grille. Right now its only spin it to win it, rack those miles and gained altitude. 2 wheels is how I sort my poo poo and right now there is sorting happening. Goals? Plans? I might enter a few races, donno, I suck therefore I should train. Also Covid, etc. We'll see. 100 miles per month has been my goal, May is here, time to double it. I saw this Niner in CF prior to this bike with 20 something thousand miles on it, bags, etc. That's where I want to go. Mile and climb this bike to hell and back, it deserves to be ridden. It may get framebags and poo poo as I run on carbs and my truck will sometimes fart parts out. Part of me wants to show up to a road race with a huge rear end ring up front, slicks, a framebag on a muddy frame with hairy legs and smash rear end. I'll rebuild the bike as its parts wear out with modern counterparts to that of its former life. Till then... Send it.
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May 12, 2021 21:58
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So I was worried that I would not have enough content for this thread, and was going to have to start off with older stuff -- replacing bar tape, upgrading brakes, you know the drill. I wandered out to grab lunch today, and found something ... disturbing. Usually I do not give a poo poo about most parts wearing on this bike, since parts are cheap. But... well, I looked down, and saw this. Ok, that cable seems to be routed a little close. Let's run a finger behind it and see how bad that housing has been eaten away over time... well, the housing feels fine, but...  Ohhhh, god damnit. Not only has the housing eaten away the paint underneath it, but it looks like it also ate away 500 or 600µm of carbon or so. (Of course, the aluminum frame did not give an eighth of a poo poo, just the carbon fork.) What to do about this?  Well, uh... put a gummy on it to keep it from getting any worse, I guess. (Shoulda had one from the factory, of course. But that would have cost Cannondale another $0.10!) I'm surprised that it wore this much in only 6,000 miles or so, though probably the grit all around it doesn't help any. Most of the load on this part of the fork is compression, and there's plenty of material all around to eat it up (and the bearing pressing down on top of it should distribute the force pretty evenly), so I'm not too worried. But just another reason to dream about something better... In less pleasant news, I just got the following e-mail about the training criterium I was going to have a go at racing this thing in on Sunday: Bikereg posted:Not our year (still):  loving Californians, man. Anyone who tells you California is cyclist-friendly should be reminded that this place talks a big game, but the execution is by far worse than the places that just shut up and put in infrastructure to let cyclists ride. I'll edit the video from the May 2 Early Bird and upload it when I get a chance...
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May 14, 2021 07:38
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At the cable length you have here, I would have wrapped it further along the bar or clipped it to one of the other cables to lift it up and away from the headtube entirely. That or let it rest on the headtube and just do the usual helicopter tape protection.
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May 14, 2021 07:49
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Alternatively get some stick on cable guides and route them gently out of the way. The 'old' fix was buy some PACE carbon fibre patches and put them anywhere a cable sat against the paint. Then I found clear duct tape. Several years later the MTB world then discovered helicopter tape and now probably brands it as something else for 5x the price.
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May 14, 2021 10:08
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New cone is here. Looks like a perfect match, without even needing any spacers. Of course, it oughta be: I measured it. It threads nicely onto... one side of the axle, anyway. The other side seems to bind a little bit. I probably should have picked up a new axle while I was at it. Oh well -- I'll have a complete parts list when it's time to overhaul the other wheel, and I'll add an axle to that when I do. In the mean time, the one that I'm less confident about arrives on Monday. We'll see how that one goes... that one will need some spacers to shim it up.
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May 14, 2021 21:55
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Is it thread engagement or some kind of bend in the axle that's the problem?
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May 15, 2021 05:22
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Seat Safety Switch posted:Is it thread engagement or some kind of bend in the axle that's the problem? I believe thread engagement. The original parts thread on fine, but the threads look awfully chewed up. I think it is because the lock nut was originally tightened to "BAP BAP BAP BAP BAP BAP BAP BAP" ft-lbs. I'm gonna run by the shop and get some new balls tomorrow. I'll see if they have an axle for me while I'm there. Probably not. Mike's Bikes is useless.
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May 15, 2021 09:51
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The Linux Fairy posted:Mike's Bikes is useless. I think i've only been to one once and they kinda treated me like poo poo when I rode over glass and needed a new tube. Like your store is in the middle of SoMa, SF ("Home of the auto break-in!"), don't give me the hairy eyeball for replacing a tube outside your store.
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May 17, 2021 01:24
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The Linux Fairy posted:I believe thread engagement. The original parts thread on fine, but the threads look awfully chewed up. I think it is because the lock nut was originally tightened to "BAP BAP BAP BAP BAP BAP BAP BAP" ft-lbs. Can you chase it, or are bicycles standardized on some Victorian-era bullshit?
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May 17, 2021 02:10
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Seat Safety Switch posted:...are bicycles standardized... Thank you friend, this was the laugh I needed today. It's probably M10 X 1, but there's a bunch of other sizes out there. Definitely worth getting the threads running freely in my opinion, I might just be poo poo at it but the range of 'correct' adjustment on cup and cone bearings is vanishingly small.
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May 17, 2021 13:00
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cursedshitbox posted:loving SRAM. I have many bikes and do many things with them but this is my most important takeaway from a lifetime of BIKES!
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May 17, 2021 14:28
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I like a bike (repair) thread in AI, even if it's a dirty roadie.
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May 18, 2021 01:34
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luminalflux posted:I think i've only been to one once and they kinda treated me like poo poo when I rode over glass and needed a new tube. Like your store is in the middle of SoMa, SF ("Home of the auto break-in!"), don't give me the hairy eyeball for replacing a tube outside your store. The thing I truly despise about Mike's is how the sales floor is all 1) obviously on commission, and 2) does not know the first loving thing about what they are selling. While I was there, I wanted to pick up some more shorts for the trainer. "Have you considered bibs?" Dude, I walked in with a bike with custom bar tape, asking for ball bearings, and you think I do not know what I want? Ok, show me the bibs. "Well this one here is the best you can get, for $350..." "My butt does not care that much" "Well, for cheaper, these Velocio bibs [a perfectly good brand!] are not as good, but only $250" "Do you have any... reasonable priced bibs?" "Oh yeah they're over there go have a look see you later". As soon as he realized I was only in the market for Specialized's cheapo bibs -- and hence his commission was going to be quite small -- he could not be bothered to give a poo poo about helping me size stuff up. I don't like buying online, and would rather support a local shop, but if I'm going to get the same experience, and worse than that, if they're gonna rip off people who don't know better... (Thank you for coming to my  TED talk on bike shops.)jammyozzy posted:Thank you friend, this was the laugh I needed today. The other new cones did arrive today, but I got my second round of the 'dern today, so I've desperately been trying to get work done tonight before my body shuts down for a day. So it'll be a few days before I get to rebuild the hub (again). But anyway, that brings us to the meat of today's update. * * * Suburban Dad posted:I like a bike (repair) thread in AI, even if it's a dirty roadie.  And a little like this:  And, shockingly, something that never happens to a shitbox bike, a little like this:  But don't get your hopes up too much for me taking care of this thing. With it at eye level, and with the dirt cleaned off it, I finally got a look at the rear rack. It's, uh, had enough of my poo poo. Had enough being overloaded well above the weight limit and being bounced around on choppy roads.  Oh well. You know the rules. Send it 'til it breaks, then keep sending it. You'll hear that one again, I'm sure.
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May 19, 2021 08:53
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The Linux Fairy posted:The thing I truly despise about Mike's is how the sales floor is all 1) obviously on commission, and 2) does not know the first loving thing about what they are selling. While I was there, I wanted to pick up some more shorts for the trainer. "Have you considered bibs?" Dude, I walked in with a bike with custom bar tape, asking for ball bearings, and you think I do not know what I want? Ok, show me the bibs. "Well this one here is the best you can get, for $350..." "My butt does not care that much" "Well, for cheaper, these Velocio bibs [a perfectly good brand!] are not as good, but only $250" "Do you have any... reasonable priced bibs?" "Oh yeah they're over there go have a look see you later". As soon as he realized I was only in the market for Specialized's cheapo bibs -- and hence his commission was going to be quite small -- he could not be bothered to give a poo poo about helping me size stuff up. I don't like buying online, and would rather support a local shop, but if I'm going to get the same experience, and worse than that, if they're gonna rip off people who don't know better... I had a similar experience with what was at one time 'the best MTB shop in the UK' Stif up in Leeds. At that point I had been riding a good few years on really tech stuff and my only real 'issue' was destroying my shins with pedals. So after buying a cheap pair of Fox knee/shin pads and eventually getting tired of them fitting poorly and looking incredibly shabby I decide to go to THE BEST MTB SHOP! which was a few miles from my house. I walk in, nobody acknowledges me, I go upstairs to the clothing section (the shop used to be in what was basically an old converted Yorkshire stone house, it was pretty cool) and note everything I want to look at is attached to the loving ceiling on hooks and there's no way to get them down. I go and get the attention of one of the guys in there and ask his advice and that I'd like to look at a few, try them on etc. He kinda hesitates and gets a few down for me and I set about trying them on. I ask about the Raceface ones they have and he remarks something like "those are expensive". I make this prick get them down for me anyway and I try them on and of course they fit PERFECTLY, far better than any of the others. Yeah the price difference was 'only' about £30 but come the gently caress on, where's the quality of service? It's just disappointing, y'know?
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May 19, 2021 10:33
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So dad didn't feel like DIYing the repair so I took his bike to the service place. They replaced the chain, chain rings, the pedal axle and crank arms. Everything seemed clear enough but why the hell would you replace the crank arms? It was by far the most expensive part.
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May 19, 2021 11:18
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mobby_6kl posted:So dad didn't feel like DIYing the repair so I took his bike to the service place. They replaced the chain, chain rings, the pedal axle and crank arms. Everything seemed clear enough but why the hell would you replace the crank arms? It was by far the most expensive part. Depending on the bike itself it's possible the cranks he had were ones where the chain rings were riveted to them from factory so weren't salvageable in terms of using them to upgrade. Also did they replace the cassette/freewheel at the same time? If the chainrings are worn to the point they need replacing and you're doing the chain it makes sense to do the cassette/freewheel too. There was a few times I had to refuse a guy who came in to ask for a new chain because his rings and cassette were worn to a point where replacing the chain without the rings/cassette would cause more issues than using what he had until he physically couldn't anymore, they were just that well worn to each other. I didn't need the hassle of doing what he requested despite him not listening to my advice and then have him moan that the chain skipped constantly.
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May 19, 2021 11:49
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The chain rings I just replaced were worn down to a quarter of what they should have been. Not complaining, over 50,000kms would do that.
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May 19, 2021 12:04
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So sure enough, round 2 of the 'dern hosed me up pretty bad today. Last night was fine... this morning, I stood up to go check my temperature, had a vasovagal response, and narrowly managed to get back to bed before bailing out. Didn't get any work done today, and my brain still isn't really firing on all cylinders, but I figured I could at least turn a wrench. So off came the old cone. And, well, there was a problem. Almost. Not quite. chrisgt saw the snap I sent of it being wrong and came up with the right suggestion: a socket, and ye olde swing press. Fair enough: indeed, that dust cap did look like it was press-fit on, and not glued or anything.  Much better. Add some washers, and...  Looks like it'll fit.  Threads on the axle were pretty torn up, and threading the new part on took some doing. When I fix up the other wheel, I'll replace the axle at the same time. All in, the whole thing ran me $28 in parts -- two new cones, a handful of spacers, and a set of balls. Spins pretty good. Not perfect, but... tolerable. Way better than before. And much cheaper than a new hub, which is the important part. I guess I should write up which parts I used somewhere so that other people looking to rebuild one of these miserable pieces of poo poo can save themselves some grief...
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May 20, 2021 05:01
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Wednesday night, I was overjoyed. I reassembled the wheel, and it ran smooth. I was the first person, at long last, to successfully overhaul a Formula CX-22 hub. Well, that is what I thought, in my still-febrile haze that evening. I took it out for a ride today. This is my dirt wheelset, so I figured I'd shake it down with a lap around some local trails. It did not go so hot. The good news is, well, I got home under my own power, and the bearing cups survived (again?!). I think the tire survived. Frame might have survived -- I'll take a look in the light of day, but given how the rest of this evening's teardown has gone, I don't even want to look tonight. Bad news is that the new cones are trashed. Rotor is trashed. Pads are probably trashed. And my legs are definitely trashed. On the way to the meeting point for the ride, I heard a suspicious occasional clanging from the back of the bike. I came to a stop at a light, and when I got on the power on the way out, it seemed to get a little worse. Stopped at the pastry shop and asked Riley to have a look at it while I grabbed myself a croissant; the 6'4" cat-2 crammed himself onto my 54cm frame to hear it for himself, and down the block went a loud banging sound under (plenty of!) power. I ate my croissant. Riley came back, and we stared at the thing for a while. Bottom bracket? Nah. Spokes? All seem tight. Hub? Pulled the wheel, and no play in it to speak of, so what's the deal? We found that one of the bolts holding the rack on had backed itself out a bit, and the rack was moving about. We tightened it down and got moving. The noise went away. Up and over the first dirt climb, with a little singletrack descent along the way. The noise came back. There was now an occasional knocking, and it definitely was coming from the rear wheel. Sometimes it happened under load, and sometimes just coasting. Braking, I noted, was also not quite right: it seemed that some grease from the hub had spun itself out onto the rotor, and the rear brake was more effective at changing the tone of the knocking than slowing the bike. I grabbed a handful of rear brake to descend with, and did my best to burn off whatever grease had made its way onto the rotor. Soon enough, we were at the next pastry shop. Things were getting a little worse, but probably not worse enough to call it yet. And anyway, I was going to be in cell service for the whole ride, so if something went wrong, I could hoof it until I got to a road, and call for a pickup. There was a little bit of play now in the rear wheel. Up John Nicholas Trail, bouncing along up to Skyline. By the time we got to Skyline, the situation was quite bad indeed; the hub was knocking like a kastein Subaru's rods, and the play had gotten bad enough that the small clearance on the tire had evaporated to none, and was periodically rubbing against the chainstay. Descending from Castle Rock, I found that it was quite bad indeed, and there was really quite a ruckus! Periodically one of the knocks turned into a bang that I could feel through the frame, and the bearing shifted into just the wrong position for the frame rub situation to get serious. I think I was doing threshold power to do 18mph on flat ground. Something was definitely not right. I figured that it was already toast so I might as well not compromise the rest of my ride, and took the singletrack along Skyline instead of the road to Page Mill. Good call. It was fun. I only almost ate poo poo twice. It would have been nice to have some rear braking available so that I'd have a half a chance of turning while I was on the brakes, but a general goes to war with the army he's got, not the army he wants... Once I got to Page Mill, I decided to break with the group rather than riding Canyon Trail down, and limp it home. Also a good call. 250W or so to maintain 12mph on the flats (the frame rub went away when I coasted, though!). When I got home I tore it down. I wondered what I would find; Riley suggested 'a lot of grey grease'. He was right. There was a lot of play in the axle. I pulled one of the cones, and found myself with a very shiny finger indeed.  This was not a good sign. The cone was not in good shape. Most of it -- the bits where I would have expected the balls to mate -- seemed fine, but the very end of it was badly chewed up. I guess this tracks with it not being tightened down... but, oddly enough, both lock nuts and cones were still quite snug?  This was the first what-the-gently caress moment, but definitely not the last. I didn't pull the dust cap last time, choosing instead to wipe around it, but I figured that this time I'd better give it a more thorough look. On the underside of the dust cap, I found not just some grey grease, but what was indeed a very surprising object: a... chunk of a bearing ball! This was extremely unsettling.  I carefully removed each ball from the cup, and inspected it. I did not see any with missing pieces. I have no idea where it came from. It was probably a bad thing to have floating around in there. I pulled the cassette, and then removed the axle from the other side. All the balls on that side seemed intact, too. Looked at the cone on the other side -- it was beaten up a little, but not as bad as this one. Then I took a closer look at the axle. Wait a minute, isn't the whole axle supposed to be grey? And that's pretty surprising to see some threads missing in the middle -- did I overtighten the lock nut and stretch the axle or something?  By the way, all the images are links to bigger versions. You'll want them for the axle. Trust me. God drat that is some hosed up poo poo right there. My best guess is that all of the banging was the inside of the cup bouncing off each thread on the axle, and each CLACK was some material getting ablated away. Anyway,  time, ordering a new cone and a new axle (sigh...). This time I've cleaned everything out a whole hell of a lot better, and this time I'll readjust the preload after a mile or two; I'm guessing that is what went wrong. I'll take a look at the frame tomorrow and see how bad it is.Then again, here's the thing: it got me home in one piece (barely), after tearing itself to pieces. I swear, this thing is like a mid 90's J-body: it'll run like poo poo longer than most bikes will run at all.
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May 24, 2021 08:12
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Now that's something I've never seen before, congratulations! This is why I always hated cup and cone setups, a bearing would inevitably try to escape despite you gluing them in place with grease. Was there supposed to be 10 bearings in here or 9? And then actually adjusting them so they run smooth without binding, the true dark art of bicycle maintenance. Like you say you can have them absolutely perfect and then they just decide that no, it's time to tighten or loosen up. Too tight and then the tiniest turn back on the cone into the locknut worked for me. There was a reason as mentioned previously that I became sealed bearing gang.
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May 24, 2021 09:51
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Olympic Mathlete posted:Now that's something I've never seen before, congratulations! This is why I always hated cup and cone setups, a bearing would inevitably try to escape despite you gluing them in place with grease. Was there supposed to be 10 bearings in here or 9? And then actually adjusting them so they run smooth without binding, the true dark art of bicycle maintenance. Like you say you can have them absolutely perfect and then they just decide that no, it's time to tighten or loosen up. Too tight and then the tiniest turn back on the cone into the locknut worked for me. Yeah, these motherfuckers. There were supposed to be 9, at least -- a 10th won't fit, and I just counted 9 out of the other identical wheelset (foreshadowing...). The thing that gets me is that this freaking thing uses a 28-hole, 135mm quick release, disc brake hub. Shimano makes, as far as I can tell, any two of those, but not all three -- and Shimano hubs are good and cheap ($70-ish) and plenty maintainable. If I want to just replace the hub, the closest I can do is a $250 DT Swiss hub. It's almost worth buying a whole new wheelset at that price. In the mean time, this loving thing continues to fight me at every god drat turn. When we last left our heroes, we had one gravel wheelset in a million billion pieces lying on the ground, and one road wheelset that was made of the same parts, and failing in the same way, but at least hadn't been taken apart yet. I hadn't taken a crack at reassembling the gravel wheelset yet. Yesterday, I went out for a nice long ride over the Santa Cruz Mountains, and the bike behaved just fine. Except 90 miles into the ride, Alex said "your back wheel is way out of true!", and sure enough, a spoke had backed itself out. Shrugged; I have disc brakes, and it'll get me home. I got home and looked at the spoke, and went to pick up the bike, and got a handful of... sealant. I decided to eat dinner and go to bed, for this would be a problem for Tomorrow Joshua.  In the morning today I looked at it. Noted that the tire was still slightly oozing sealant, but somehow was holding pressure. Well, tubeless works, to its credit, it got me home with 45psi still in the tire. Tightened the spoke up, and plugged the tire, and pumped the tire back up. It hissed and spat sealant at me, and very nearly spat the plug out, but it seems to have held eventually. Well, ok. I don't exactly trust it, but... Put it on the stand and gave the wheel a spin. It is *way* out of true. Spent a while with a spoke wrench, and got it somewhere close to tolerable. Found that... it was dragging quite badly, really, when I spun it up. Are the new brakes the problem? No, I don't think so. Pulled the wheel again. The hub bearings on my "good" wheelset are... no longer good. Pulled the (non-drive-side) cone; it was pitted around 360 degrees, way worse than the other one was. I didn't want to tear it down all the way and try to put in untested parts, so I grabbed the other "bad" one (pitted only around 120 degrees), removed the balls and cleaned everything out, loaded it full of grease and new balls, and put the less-bad cone on. Put it back up on the stand, and gave it another spin. Spun okay for a few turns, and then rapidly turned to sounding like the proverbial two skeletons loving in a metal filing cabinet. I'm at my wit's end. I have no idea what is wrong here. This should, at the very least, not be worse than it was before. And in the mean time, I've gone down from two sort of working wheelsets to one barely working wheelset to zero working wheelsets. And I'm supposed to be racing Copperopolis Road Race. It'll be a loving miracle if I have a bike to ride by then.
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Jun 1, 2021 07:29
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The Linux Fairy posted:
If I come across your desiccated remains, I will inform your next of kin / emergency contact. Copperopolis is a hell of a race to go into with mechanical issues. e: For everyone else to reference ... https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dWXwPvrZESU&t=678s TobinHatesYou fucked around with this message at 08:21 on Jun 1, 2021 |
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Jun 1, 2021 08:08
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Managed to cobble together enough parts to put together one good wheelset. Took it for an hour shakedown, and brought a cone wrench with me just to be sure. Did have to tighten the bearings once, but it seems solid. Only problem is... currently, I have my gravel tires mounted on this wheelset. Not sure I want to pay the 24W penalty to run Pathfinders in a road race. (On the flip side, given the condition of the pavement, maybe I do want that...) Tomorrow if I have some time I'll swap a Turbo RapidAir back onto this wheel -- and hope that I'm not looking a gift horse in the mouth by loving with a known good setup without time to shake it down...
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Jun 3, 2021 07:41
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Surely swapping tires isn't going to affect the shape the hubs are in?
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Jun 4, 2021 07:43
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kimbo305 posted:Surely swapping tires isn't going to affect the shape the hubs are in? I know the cars you've owned. You know the rules. When it's working, you do not gently caress with it at all. The hubs were, well, as good as they were going to be -- you're right about that. But removing the tire from the wheel was asking for it. Since I don't have a blast compressor for seating tubeless, I had to remove the valve stem when I seated the new tires and intubate briefly to seat the bead on one side. Putting the valve stem back in to reset it for tubeless, well, was a peril-fraught process: the valve stem started leaking air immediately after. Anyway, I swapped the tire over the Thursday before the race, and then went to grab some donuts on Friday morning. Held air. Put the bike in the car to drive up to Oakdale on Friday afternoon. Tire was flat. gently caress me. Spent two and a half hours in the hotel room the night before loving with the valve stem, and had a bike to race the next day. It was hot as hell -- the third lap was pushing 100 degrees, and I was really hurting. The bike fought me at every turn -- valve stem dumped all its air right at the feed on the 2nd lap. (Good timing!) Shook the sealant around a bit, pumped it back up, and finished the race. Rotor was dragging on the caliper, since I've found that the self-adjusting hydraulic brakes seem to be only self-adjusting on one side. Hub bearing kind of turned into a hub bushing by the end, and was making a terrible noise. And you know what? I finished the race. 7th out of 19 people in my field. (Of the 19, only 8 finished.) I got dropped basically instantly on the first climb by a field full of cat5s who did not know how to pace themselves for a race and blew up in the heat later. Finishing was I think a pretty drat good result, given everyone else's results. If you just want the video, I edited together the video from my GoPro -- https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6nGpEDcCQJ8 Of course, since I'm a huge loving nerd, I wrote my own software to do the GPS data overlay -- here's what the output looks like, as I was busy getting dropped like a sack of bricks:  There's a lot of poo poo that is super questionable on this bike still. When I got home, I tightened the hub bearings again, taking another 3mm of play out of them, but it still sounds like there are marbles in my drivetrain when I put a bunch of torque into it at low speeds. Oh well... not much time to fix it, though. Got some riding to do next weekend. It's the solstice, after all, and that only means big rides. Later this week I'll see if I can dig up some pictures and videos of the worst of the hosed stuff after I tore it down when I got home...
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Jun 14, 2021 07:18
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I wish you had a power meter so we could estimate how much wattage was lost to your garbage wheels.
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Jun 14, 2021 19:08
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This is not a bike post, but it is an AI post. Well, it is a bike post, and an AI post. I went to pick up some parts today. As I was leaving my house, my neighbors had their garage door open, and had a dinner table set out in front. There was a car in there with the hood open on ramps, and I couldn't quite identify it. I overheard grumbling: "If only I had something I could get more leverage on this wrench with...". Handed them a breaker bar, and told them to drop it in my mailbox if I wasn't back by the time they were done for the night... I got home, and the car was (mostly) buttoned back up again. They had solved a mystery of their own ("who was it who drives the Golf R?"). It turned out that what they had in their garage was the 80s version of my R: a Lancia Integrale, in immaculate condition (and now with a brand new oxygen sensor). One of their buddies that was there introduced himself as the owner of the FlyinMiata swapped car that I didn't know I'd seen parking in the complex. I'll get more pictures of it when I get back from a ride tomorrow. And a ride report from this weekend, which involved more road rash than I really wanted. In the mean time...  bicievino posted:I wish you had a power meter so we could estimate how much wattage was lost to your garbage wheels. Funny thing, that. More on that soon. Both of those, actually.
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Jun 22, 2021 06:45
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Only one image of an Integrale you could've physically touched should be a bannable offense.
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Jun 23, 2021 02:10
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I've been enjoying the bike and your attitude about the bike and also, more pictures of the integrale please.
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Jun 23, 2021 02:22
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Ok, the people have spoken. There shall be more Integrale content soon. It's on its way to LA to get a CARB stamp, and will be back in a few months, I imagine, though before it left, I got some more photos. But first, some more bike carnage. So last Sunday (that's the 20th, not yesterday), the longest day of the year, I went out and decided to have a go at it. The thing about adventure, I guess, is that if the results are guaranteed, then it's not really an adventure at all! So you probably ought to be failing to meet your primary objectives about 5% of the time, and, well, on Sunday, I did: 175 miles into what was to be a double century, I pulled the handle, my housemate picked me up, we threw the CAADX on the back of the car, and that was the end of that. The day started off kind of inauspiciously. Since the last time I had ridden in that general direction, the City of Sunnyvale had put in an elevated bike lane. I discovered this when I tried to merge out of it six miles into my ride, over the white line and into the road. Well, over what I thought was a white line, but what was a curb. The results looked like this, spoilered for a little bit of gore. Damage report: road rash on left elbow, left knee, left hip; jammed right thumb; dislocated left shoulder; tore a hole in my bib; smacked the brifter on the ground hard enough that I had to unbolt it and put it back into place.  It was just soft tissue damage, and the bike still rolled, and anyway I didn't loving get up at 5:45am just to turn around at 7am and feel sorry for myself the rest of the day, so I decided to go at least to the commit point in Walnut Creek, and decide there. I felt pretty good when I got there, though I was running pretty late. It turns out that there are a shitload of stop lights between Walnut Creek and Napa -- and the headwinds into Petaluma were catastrophic -- so I ended up losing a huge amount more time. I'd planned to do the whole thing in 15 hours or so, getting me home around 7pm; I ended up getting picked up around 10pm (if I had continued, I would have gotten home around 1am). I guess the thing about adventures is that they're not guaranteed. Or, by the contrapositive, if the results are guaranteed, it's not really an adventure at all, now is it? I sort of half-heartedly believe that you should miss about 2-3% of your flights (otherwise you're wasting too much time leaving for the airport early), and you probably should blow it on 10% or so of your adventures that you think you're pushing the limits on. I was pretty upset about the outcome -- bailing an easy 30 miles from home is painful -- but at least I know I found the edge. More photos of hosed up poo poo and new parts coming soon. And, of course, a late-80s/early-90s Italian hatch that is still somehow probably more reliable than this pile of poo poo bike. But I oughta go to bed now.  Here's the video from last Sunday's mess: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9bn0kLxzkJk
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Jun 29, 2021 08:20
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The Linux Fairy posted:
Footage of your wreck. That's still a shitload of miles and almost more than I've ridden this year total. Kudos.
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Jun 29, 2021 12:08
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Well I'm hosed now.
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Jul 6, 2021 06:38
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gently caress you, buddy... ... and you too.  Bolt is still in there. Will pick up some PB Blaster tomorrow, and another ez-out, now that I know that I can at least punch an ez-out out from the back.
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Jul 7, 2021 07:01
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