Cycling/Bikes

Offshoot from the weight-loss thread:

Wondering how many others here have got the bicycle disease? -Share details of your rides:

I'll go first...

My daily ride: 2011 Madone 5.9, full carbon frame, Gruppo is a mix of Dura-Ace and Ultegra.



My backup bike: 2006 Madone SL 5.9, SUPER-LIGHT, full carbon, Gruppo is full Dura-Ace.



My son's outgoing bike: (He rode his last triathlon on it this weekend) Fuji 'Newest', Aluminum w/carbon fork, Gruppo is Tiagra.



My son's new bike: (He'll be competing with this in 2 weeks at the national qualifier) Stradalli Sorrento, full carbon, Gruppo is Sram Apex with Ultegra chain, cassette & FSA gossamer crank.



(It was a Christmas present... we both wanted something carbon and fast, with a nice Italian name!)

I am not a big bike guy, but have run/rode a couple biathlons, generally falling behind during the bike portion and catching back up during the run. I once had the local health club give me a fitness assessment using an exercise bike, and they declared I was out of shape...  At the time I was running half-marathons, and fitter than most... just not my bike boy muscles.  8)

A friend gave me his old steel finlandia 10sp to use in races and it mostly sat rusting in my carport for the last two decades. I tried to use it for exercise when I was recovering from bouts of plantar fasciitis (in both feed.. different times), but the back roads around here are not skinny tire friendly with narrow sloped and/or soft shoulders.

I will find out in a couple weeks when I get my knee checked out by an ortho. If my knee is permanent toast I may have to buy a bike. I'm inclined to go for a fat tire (mountain?) bike to better deal with my local roadways. 

Small town MS does not have bike paths... we don't even have sidewalks.

JR

I have an off-the-shelf GT Legato bike I got at Performance a few years ago. It's mainly a commuter bike so I use the Michelin or the Vittoria "City" tires. It's got panniers and a rack-mounted trunk on the back. I can fit my laptop and a change of clothes in the panniers and off to work I go. It's got the usual Shimano Sora hardware which is somewhat clunky but it works. Every so often I consider upgrading to Campy hardware but at that point I might as well get a new bike.

I installed Forte "Campus" pedals, which have the SPD cleats on one side and a standard shoe surface on the other. This makes it easy for me to just jump on the bike to ride up the block with my son without putting on the bike shoes.

Tucson has a nice bike path that's on the banks of the Rillito river (which is mostly dry) and I can do a ~30 mile loop without spending too much time on surface streets.

My father-in-law has a Moots bike, which is quite nice but out of my league. He does centuries without much effort. I can do the 42-mile El Tour de Tucson but not the longer rides.

-a

I have a bike with wider tires also... This one I bought brand new 19 years ago, when I first came to the states...



-With a name like "Multitrack", I knew I had to have it!

The wife has been nagging me, asking if I need all of these bikes...



...My solution was to buy one for HER to use!

I have a guitar collection that count? I doubt if it make any good to my health...  ;D

If your son got the bike for Xmas, who got the Ferrari?

I'm shopping for a road/hybrid/commuter type bike right now. I have a single speed mountain bike for running errands, but I want something with wider tires and without dropdown handlebars for riding on trails - just faster & more efficient than the single speed. I want to start biking to work soon, ~7 miles.

My road bike, prior to putting on pedals and other stuff. I also have a Cannondale mountain bike. Love them both, so nice to ride.

dmp said:

If your son got the bike for Xmas, who got the Ferrari?

Click to expand...

Beat me to it

I went bike shopping with a friend once who - somewhat annoyingly - kept picking up each bike and hefting it. A few minutes later the salesman came by and after a short chat looked at my friend and putting his hand on my belly said "...better to lose a little weight here...than here." pointing to the bike.

For years my work ride was an old Schwinn mountain bike that used to go up the mountains in California. But now that I live in the big smoke where drivers are antagonistic and riders do little to help the situation I take the train. Would love to ride again so thanks for the thread.

dmp said:

If your son got the bike for Xmas, who got the Ferrari?

Click to expand...

What...? -My son gets all the fun and I get nothing???     

Over the last few months, have changed a few things on my daily bike, so on tonight's ride I took a photo of where she stood this evening:



From memory: New wheels (tube OR tubeless, Race-Light), new tires (Michelin pro 4), Placid-blue (color-matched) bottle cages, Color matched chain-drop guard, white brake hoods, Also replaced the saddle with newer version of the Affinity 2... also color matched white & placid blue. Newer short-drop handlebars, also slightly thinner. That's all I can think of for now.

In my youth, I stripped-down a Schwinn Varsity from 40 pounds to 36 pounds (but sometimes carried 7 pounds of water). Only the alloy rims made a "wow!" difference. I rode a lot. On that thing I could keep-up with the light-bike cruisers out of Philly, but in the end I boojered my knees.

These days I don't have the stamina (or the roads!!) to go anywhere. I do occasionally bike *for exercise*. That being so, I do not care about bike weight. Only posture and gears.

I haven't found another Schwinn. I did find, in trash, a road-bike I remember as the "hot" bike of 1972, a 'Vista'. Real Steel, the tapered Cro-Mo stuff. Light for its day but feels like a Varsity next to the power-puffs they sell now. Being over 18 (several times over), I've had to install raised bars, headrest seat, and a giant (low-geared, Shimano 5 speed 14-34) rear sprocket. I probably have over $50 invested.

Uphill is serious work-out. Downhill that "lively" old Vista frame is a real thrill. (It WAS a fast bike in its day; it still is but I aint.) Being forced into the sand-shoulder is survivable (I did a LOT of dirtbiking on the Varsity before dirtbikes were invented).

I now have four shift levers. The puff-bike store has a back lot of old parts, that's where I got a straight bar instead of the drop-bar. The new bar came with combo brake/shift levers, fine. But the levers are for some kinda V-action center-pull calipers with a lot more leverage than the Dia-Compe side-pulls on the bike. Which I'd already replaced for good reason. The hard old pads didn't help neither. I looked on Amazon and found a set of pads where reviewers said "very grabby!". Put them on, it's no Porsche, but it stops controllably. I'd also changed the rear cog-swapper cuz the road-bike's little dangle wouldn't cover the large cog. I remembered Sun-Tour as good but they wear and are rare cuz ST expanded and collapsed. But Shimano was always my second pick and Shimano has flooded the low-end of the market with very fine parts. So now the shifters and rear cog-swap are the same brand, oughta work together, but I need longer cables. The local bike shop really prefers you bring the bike in; they don't get customers who were snipping and filing bulk cable-sheath long before their mechanic was born. And I figure the Vista's stem levers are an upgrade from the Varsity's frame-levers (an upgrade I did to my Varsity, and Schwinn did the year after mine was made), so good-enuff for me. However the new shifters are "semi-auto" ratchet and I would like to see how that works.

they used to have a schwinn commercial where they thru the bike off a 100 foot cliff and the guy could still ride it,

a varsity was the bike to have for delivering the sunday paper which loaded everything down to about 568 lbs,

what ever fits you is the best bike, had an SR Japanese 10 speed that was low dollar but after a few upgrades, it was the best bike i ever had, the frame geometry was just right, 50 miles a day to work and back after the cops took my license for 3 years, after dinner i would hop on the stumpjumper and pound hills for a few hours, morning meal was a huge chocolate malt with two eggs cracked into it, dinner was pasta and bread, and more bread, 
getting to work  was a race because of the time clock, 5 minutes late was a write up, but coming home was a leisure cruise, avg speed was about 24 mph,

LeMond gave out the "secret number" for seat post height for racing, from his coach Cyrille Guimard, i think the number was .867 times your inseam,

OT: here is some stuff from the LeMond training camp thingy>

page 2>

mnats said:

A few minutes later the salesman came by and after a short chat looked at my friend and putting his hand on my belly said "...better to lose a little weight here...than here." pointing to the bike.

Click to expand...

TRUTH!

-a

and a few pounds of frame weight can actually be ok as you will be transmitting more power into the wheels,

Andy Hampsten won  Alp De Huez on a heavier Merckx frame, he complained to Eddy about the extra weight 1.5 to 2 lbs heavier than everyone else, but Merck told him to ride the race and it worked out OK,

@PRR:
I absolutely understand the bit about bike mechanics who prefer you to bring things in... -At the local bike store (where I prefer to shop over online, since advice and 'rescue' doesn't come as readily over the internet!) they occasionally get a new mechanic-fella in. That happened a couple of months ago, and when I went to re-lace a wheel (bent rim...long story) he was insistent that THEY would have to re-build the wheel, and that wheel-lacing and truing is 'not something for amateurs'. -It's taken a while, but now he knows my name, and that I buy the tools to do a job each time a job needs doing. -It's funny, but they sell you the tools, then still want to do the job! 

Since my son is only just double-digit years old and races at various locations all over the state, I may *NEED* to be able to diagnose, assess and repair a bike issue in a hurry. -For that I have an organized toolbox, and plenty of spares... eg: chain, cassettes, tubes, hub/freehub, etc. -Most races in Florida are billiard-table flat, but around Clermont and Tallahassee there are some rolling hills which benefit from a wider range of cogs at the back wheel. -I also have a 53/39-tooth crankset for his bike, since I switched his to a 50/34 with slightly shorter cranks... -I think it might be a couple of years until his legs grow to fit it.

His Stradalli is the lightest bike in the house, at just under 14lbs... My SL 5.9 weighs in at somewhere under 15... I remember in my school years when I used to drool over the Reynolds 531-framed bikes at ~21lbs... Seriously, these days if you put two water bottles on and a couple of tubes in the saddlebag, you almost double the weight of the bike!

The 'V-brake' are simple and provide massive leverage, but they do have to be matched to the mechanical advantage of the brake levers. -The 'Cantilever' brakes can use the exact same mounting points, but have less mechanical advantage. -I actually have a spare set (front AND rear) exactly like the ones on my commuter 'Multitrack', and you're most welcome to them, if you want to try and see if they're a better match. -The only reason I replaced them was that the plastic 'cap' over the return springs aged and split.

These are the exact same ones on my Multitrack:


My personal "white whale" bike would be a metallic blue "Harry Quinn" with half-chromed stays and fork, preferably a Campagnolo build. -If I ever found one, I would lavish enormous amounts of time and money upon it...

> wheel-lacing and truing is 'not something for amateurs'.

IMHO, the average bike mech is an amateur. Lacing is a complex art, but in my years in a bike shop we never laced a wheel (even though I was hired for that skill), the salesman always sold a new wheel or a new bike. So the average mech is doing "tune-ups" 10 an hour, badly, cuz the average owner hardly knows what the bike should do.

Or replacing one perfectly good part with another more-sexy up-sell part.

(Your favorite shop is probably a grade up from the suburban and vacation shops I have known.)

> The 'V-brake' are simple and provide massive leverage, but they do have to be matched to the mechanical advantage of the brake levers.

I was mildly surprised how poorly V-pull levers worked against sidepull brakes. And there are leverage-multiplier pulleys for this situation. However I have never liked the poor coefficient of friction of bike brake pads. It isn't like brake wear-costs are a large part of cycling. Most pads never get half-worn. I found those "grabby!" pads, which had a nice feel, and they DO stop the bike. A very-high finger effort will either lock the front tire on pavement or throw me over the bars, which is 110% of all I can ever use.

> 'Cantilever' brakes can use the exact same mounting points

They need paired lugs on the fork/frame, plus a cable bracket, right? Dia-Compe center-pivot side-pulls only use one hole for everything.

Essentially my calipers on someone else's bike.

Ahhh... I see. -I misunderstood, and I had my mental calibration backwards. -I thought you had V-brake calipers and non V-brake levers... In fact you've got (single-pivot) 'side-pull' calipers and V-brake levers... -I get it now.

Newer "side-pull" calipers are similarly high mechanical advantage, achieved by means of their "dual pivot" design. -The cable end of each moving arm is longer and the brake pad end shorter. The mounting hole is no longer a pivot... it holds a center 'yoke' with two pivots at each end, changing the leverage ratio... That MAY work nicely in combination with V-brake levers, I'm not sure...

http://www.parktool.com/blog/repair-help/dual-pivot-brake-service

In case I'm missing something with such a small tire contact patch, having the brakes too effective will just lock up the wheels and scrub off tire rubber. Too much front wheel brake alone can cause interesting dynamics too.

The skinny tires are a double edged sword.

JR

PS: A similar trade-off occurs with car tires. They could deliver gas mileage improvements by going skinny and high pressure, but the reduced traction would be too high a trade-off penalty causing horrible handling in curves.  We can't be too far away from cars that can pump up tire pressure while on the interstate for the long straight roadways and reduce tire pressure before the off ramp. What could go wrong.  8)

PPS: If someone wanted to be clever they would invent a tire that converts the flexing sidewall as the wheel rotates to pump air into the tire. Similarly a smart mechanical valve could open and release pressure when it detects side forces from turning.  ;D ;D

wheel building is not that hard, the biggest problem is getting the spoke lengths right, it is almost better to lace up a wheel at the bike shop so they can exchange spokes if needed, usually they have a book with rim/spoke data but even with that you end up a few  mm short or long as rims can vary a bit,

these aero rims can be a pain as the spoke nipples sometimes have to reach farther or shorter,

use locktite on the nipples instead of grease and the wheels will stay true,

just use another wheel for an example to get the pattern right,

some people use weird tweaks, like using 14 ga for the "pulling" spokes on the rear rim and 15 ga for the trailing spokes, this saves a little weight and makes truing a bit weirder,

do not tighten the spokes in a circle, but go 180 degrees, back and forth and you will get a rounder wheel,

we used to glue monocoat airplane wing plastic over the rims to make "disc" wheels, kind of weird in the wind,

the joint of the rim is always a problem as there can be some runout there,

Spence Wolfe of Cupertino Bike Shop was probably one of the best wheel builders in the world, you never had to true his wheels, tied and soldered the spokes, let the wheels sit for a week before final truing, used to return stacks of rims as he could tell when the fork lift guy rammed them into the wall, the rims would come in slightly out of round,

Spence sold all custom framed bikes, Cinelli, Hetchins, fit them to your body, usually a 6 month wait, worked out of his garage, gave you the right gears, i remember trying to buy a 40-52 crank set from him when i was 15, he would not sell it to me, made me go with a 32-47, as a junior rider you want to spin more, this keeps you from blowing out your knees before they develop, we had steep hills around there, 14% grades and stuff, some of the Hetchins had bent rear stays for shocks on the touring bikes, Spence used to take a Campy Nuevo Record derailleur, and splice on an extension for the bottom pulley, this made it possible to use alpine gearing, 32-28, this was back in 1968, way before mtn bike derailleurs, he would drill and tap a Campy crank set for a small chain ring to make triples, he also sold these 1/4 inch thick neoprene rubber pads that you would tape over to make padded handlebars, sew up tires were popular back then, Clement Corsa CX were fairly cheap, Fiame Red Label rims, Universal brakes, TA cranks, handlebar shifters, fun times,

lot of pride, those Brits>