CABLES. Have you got GEAR SELECTION problems? Is your steed standard or have you altered the cables/routing/handlebars/shifters/derailleurs at all? Five of us have just come back from our Easter trip to Dumfries, right in the middle of all that
amazing Scottish Forestry Commission greenery. Fantastic weekend. It could have been more fantastic for me, though, if I had paid more attention to the cables on my modified Kona Bear. Cleverus Dickus decided a week before the ride to install a fully enclosed rear gear cable to keep the crap out. I'd fitted a
SRAM X-9 rear derailleur and X-7 trigger shifters. The reason behind the change not that I had gone off Shimano, but that whenever I land after a 
I seem to knock the front shifter down to the granny ring and end up with spinning pedals going nowhere. An ex-Cycle Speedway rider should be used to this, but I stopped a long time ago and it's just downright dangerous at times,
especially over 20 mph. I think it's just fear making me grab as much handlebar as I can for the descent
back to earth, and clipping the downshift lever almost every time.
Anyway, the SRAM double-thumb shifters get around this
wayward forefinger problem nicely. Trouble was that my brilliant idea of a fully
covered cable had one annoying side effect. When I turned the handlebars a
reasonable distance like when negotiating 7Stanes hairpins (switchbacks to the
posh), there was just enough movement of the cable to either tighten or loosen
the inner, and that was causing either:
- unwanted/unexpected gear changingmisalignment of the jockey wheels with the cassette
causing chain slip
- chain jumping off altogether
All had the result quite often of inducing pain into
various parts of my ageing anatomy. Because the whole team at is
dependent on each other I didn't bother trying to put this right out on the
trail, and laziness coupled with their eagerness to get into the local hostelry
after every ride prevented me from fixing it back at the digs. So it cost me a
lot of enjoyment, lost power and some blood loss.
Back home I checked the SRAM instructions and they are
reasonably precise in their use of a measured piece of outer cable at the
derailleur. So I stripped off the extra covering and a few minutes later it was
changing as sweet as a nut. An extra bonus is that after what felt like a second
broken scaphoid in my right wrist at Mabie Forest following a big downhill get-off, the
shorter, easier movement of SRAM triggers over Shimano means my thumb hasn't got to move
the lever so far, and it needs less force than Shimano's triggers.
GRANNY. We had a problem with John's Saracen Awol while out
on the rough at Thrunton Woods just north of Rothbury in Northumberland
before Easter when his Granny started acting up (got bent). No, not his Grandma, his inner chainring. Somehow it got
very badly kinked while the other two rings were OK. Impossible to straighten
without a lot of hassle as the whole steel deal is riveted together for life. So
I set about replacing it with a spare Bontrager chainset from David's Trek which
now runs Shimano Deore. Problem here was that, as with most cheapo "swinging
arm" designs, the inner ring is deeply dished by design to tuck inside the
swingarm for chain alignment. These are pigs to get hold of (tried for Michael's
Claud Butler CBR last year) so I turned to the spare Bontragers. However, this is a
flat chainset like most normal MTBs. In this case the solution was dead easy.
Swap the 122mm bottom bracket spindle for a 108mm model. This moved the flat
chainset into the BB shell perfectly and the chainline was hardly affected at
all. The only thing to watch was how close the driveside crank got to the
swingarm. In this case, it reduced its clearance from 20mm to 15mm, and felt
absolutely natural as of course the nearside had also moved in a fraction, but
still left tons of clearance.
This begs the question "Why do Saracen, Claud Butler and
others use these dished chainsets at all?". Answers on a tenner to .
ANCHORS-A-WEIGH!
Here's a load of Bottletops. It's a
segment
from Orange's web site, I quote
 |
How much does a specific model weigh? |
 |
We never quote weights in our brochure, we prefer that you visit a
shop and compare bike for bike rather than what someone has decided the
brochure weight of their bike should be. Factors affecting bike weights
include size, stem length and even colour. Some paint finishes have
three coats of epoxy powder and at approx. 80 gms per coat a bike with
three coats will weight 160 gms more than a one coat finish. |
This is a wonderful British company based in Halifax suggesting that 80 grams
difference would have you buying a Santa Cruz instead of their stuff. Eh? In
other words, they don't want you to know how heavy their bikes are. Why? Of
course they aren't the only ones. Lots of the big makers manage to hide this
information, but lots of us bike buyers want to know. Get real, bike makers.
Santa Cruz are probably the heaviest of the lot, but everybody wants one! We
have (and have had) a few Konas between us now (12!) and they are one of the
companies that DO give you their bike weights, EVEN THOUGH THEY AREN'T
LIGHTWEIGHTS! - see their web site here.
STICK OR TWIST? The Great Dispute rages on - hardtail versus
full susser. This really is a no-brainer, so ignore the clever-arsed who'll
deliver a day-long speech on the virtues of "keeping it neat" with a hardtail.
The name says it all. These things have a HARD TAIL. However, just take a look a
bit further north - can you see a HARD NOSE to go with it's hard tail? Nope.
What you see is a pair of suspension forks. Why? Again, Why? Because springing
gives you an altogether better ride. What would you rather drive around in? A
Formula1 car with less than half an inch of suspension travel or your 4x4 with a
foot? So then, oh wise Hardtail Person, why do you have springs on the front?
Why? Get real. We all started on hardtails because they were all you could get
at one time or full sussers were too expensive. Now you can get something off
the shelf for a few hundred quid that will glide over rocks and roots without
dislodging your brain from its gimbals. More is Better.
If you've got springs on the front and nowt on the back
it's because you're a half-way house type who can't make her/his mind up. Lamer.
If you're determined to hang onto your theories, why not be a real man/woman and
take your tyres and tubes off aswell? You know it makes sense. And Yes, we DO
have hardtails but we don't go into battle on them. Why not try
Upgrading?
Preach Over.
CHAINRINGS Here are a few shots of my "second bike's" (very cheap
Barracuda frame, self-built) middle 32 tooth chainring following its removal
from the bike after a couple of near accidents caused by a slipping chain
lately. I first had trouble about a month before removal when it had me
convinced the chain was stretched beyond use. Now I have to admit that I don't
normally measure the chain length to determine the level of stretch, although I
used to. These days I simply decide that the chain's been on the bike long
enough to be tired (6 to 9 months at 25 miles a ride once a fortnight - my
Coiler is used on the other weekends). So, I ordered a new SRAM chain from Chain
Reaction Cycles and it arrived an hour later. So for my next outing (see
here) I was confident of a smooth, and more importantly, safe (see
here) ride. However, it wasn't to be, and I ended up using the big chainring
to struggle up the inclines, after being almost maimed when the cranks twice
went spinning madly round middle clanger. I even took another full link (1
inner, 1 outer section) out of the chain half way through the day but it didn't
help at all.
Looks OK here, but below - wide, odd-shaped gaps between
baldy teeth! 
Two days after this dirty ride I decided I should clean
the poor Cuda so I did that, then set about finding the cause of my seriously
slipping chain. On closer inspection, and testing with just hand pressure on the
drive-side crank, I could see the chain just skating over the teeth of the
middle ring, yet it didn't look too bad looking through the outer. So off came
the chainset, a Truvativ Stylo, and I split off the two outer rings. It still
didn't look bald, but I was in the garage and my specs were in the house! On
comparing it face-to-face with a new 32 tooth ring from a Race Face Evolve set,
I could see, even without the bins, that there wasn't much aluminium left to
provide purchase for a chain being churned by Gollum-Power.
So, as usual, there's a moral here:
1. Don't trust your judgment
2. Wear your glasses if you're half blind
3. Don't stay in Middle Ring all day
4. Visit the Bicycle Dentist more often
DON'T FORGET to sign up for a NEW Wiggle Account BEFORE you use the link below to earn
us some pennies
www.wiggle.co.uk
/water bottle with ice cubes or fill it with water and freeze it
overnight before the ride - it will last ages if your hydration pack has a bit
of insulation, and it tastes much better in the heat of a typical British summer
(!).
ET. I'm half regretting ever mentioning walkie talkies to the Reivers, as those very
useful little devices seemed to have sparked a war amongst our Northumbrian pals
who just can't agree on their usage.