Bruise Report

Last Sunday I bailed pretty hard on the single speed, and ended up taking the handlebar end to the chest with full momentum. I knew as soon as it happened that it was the kind of injury that hurt then, but would hurt worse and look worse later.
Day one there was no bruise at all.

Then by day three it reached the initial development "yellow stage"...

 

By day 6 it had fully developed. 

 

OUCH!

 

GIRO Privateer Cycling Shoes

 

Just got these awesome GIRO Privateer cycling shoes. This is my first pair of cycling shoes with the ratchet tightening mechanism. I had been wanting the white versions of these, which were Performance exclusives, but then I saw the black versions at REI and decided they would be a better choice. The thing is, I really wanted to wait until they dropped under $100. The suggested retail is $150. I watched and waited and they eventually popped up on REI Outlet for 69.00, and I had an outlet 20% off coupon. All told I got them for around $55 with shipping included. Yeah man I'll take it! I have done about 3 rides with them so far and they...are...awesome!

The Contraption + Single Speed Mechanism Upgrade/Repair

My buddy Jay built up a rad bike for me which I have dubbed "The Contraption". Super rad Fuji aluminum frame w. carbon fork, done up as a single speed cyclocross with funky mustache bars. We met up at Haw Creek for a test session and thrashed it pretty good. I love this bad boy...so fun and different!

 

 

Jay brought one of his bikes to the test session done up with the same single speed mechanism, and while we were working out the intermediate section of the trail we both had troubles with chain poppage and gnarly noises coming from the units. It made for some sketchy moments but overall we had a blast. Once back to the car I checked out the unit a little more closely and found something interesting.

 

The mechanism is pretty simple, but to me the actual bolt holding the whole rig together just didn't have enough surface area to keep it from slipping. 

 

You can see here that there was only about 1/16th" of the head of the bolt on each side of the plate holding the whole thing in place. Also, the in the top right you can see that the secondary pivot point was being held in place by the quick release nut. Additionally the bolt only reached about 1/4 way through the dropout threads. I decided that it could use a little more burly approach.

 

 

First step was getting the parts. Finding the bolt at Home Depot was a challenge, mainly because all of the stupid bolts they have are iin plastic bags. How are you suposed to test the thread pitch when they are in bags? It was actually funny. they have a display that you can thread bolts into to test, and for this application my bolt only went about 3 threads in and stopped. I basically just risked it by eyeballing the thread pitch and eventually pushing just the threads out of the bag the bolt was in to test it. Sure enough the new bolts only went three threads into the tester as well, so I knew I had the right size. In the lower photo you can see how much larger the new bolt is than the original.

 

 

I don't have any kind of miter for sawing bolts, so I came up with a different solution. I threaded the bolt through the dropout backwards and stacked a few washers on it to give a little bit of room for the bolt to go all the way through the dropout with a single flat washer and lock washer once completed. The idea was to keep the saw blade as flat against the dropout as possible to get a nice clean cut. Unfortunately the hacksaw blade was old and busted, which, ater about 30 mins of sawing resulted in this...

  

I headed back to Home Depot for some new blades and ended up finishing the cut in about 2 mins.

 

It may not be the most beautiful cut ever, but when I backed out the bolt it came out relatively easy and did not damage at all to the dropout threads. Once it was out I could easily thread it through from eaither side. I thought I was going to have to file it down or grind it down to make it easy to start, but that wasn't really necessary. So then it was all about reassembly.

 

 

If I had to do it over again I would probably opt for larger lock washers, but I was sick and tired of going to Home Depot and I think that the ones I chose will do the job fine. You can see that I also used a lock washer under the quick release nut, and I clamped the QR down good and tight. Plus the new bolt goes all the way through the dropout so there are a lot more threads holding it tight.

On my initial test ride, there were a few little knocking sounds, but I think that may be because I actually have the chain -reaaaalllly- tight. By the end of my test it had stopped protesting so much. I only took it up and down the driveway though. The real test will be next time I can take it to a trail, which I want to do as soon as possible. I'll try Gainesville College soon, and if it passes the test I am not afraid to take The Contraption to Chicopee. Can't wait to see the look on the MTB Freds faces when I roll around the the loop on some 700c's.