Mist Green and Monstertrucking

So, having been pretty satisfied with the performance of the new forks in a wide variety of situations, and becoming pretty annoyed at how quickly the current weather was rusting things up, I dropped the frame off to my favourite powdercoating outfit on Monday. I checked in on it halfway through the week and while it was definitely coloured in the manner I wanted, it wasn't as industrial as I required, so we decided on another coat of clear matt.

This morning I picked it up and this is the result;

Green Mist is the colour of choice...

I forgot to tell the chap to keep the logo clear, I carefully removed this during the assembly

2 coats tends to smooth out my lumpy welds pretty well

Lit by the last sunshine of the day - 10.30am approx.

Clearly things couldn't stay in such a bare state for long, so a couple of hours later I had this result, and to be honest I am pretty stoked with it. It needs to be significantly dirtier than this but no doubt that will come about soon;

Deeply satisfactory.

So while the fatty was out of action I was hankering for a wee bit of off road action, and the nearest thing I had to a serviceable steed was my Surly Disc Trucker. The Trucker is my go-to bike for pretty much anything, and tends to be the one that goes on holiday with me as it is so versatile. I have done a fair bit of trail work on it in road trim and it does a pretty good job.

Last weekend I took it up the hill and on a few light trails, and it performed pretty well, given I had 60psi in its essentially slick Continental touring tyres. I got a few amusing comments from the people riding the same trails on mountain bikes.

I took the guards and panniers off for my hilltop excursions...

Now I have had a bit of a thing for cyclocross bikes over the last couple of months, there is something about the do-anything, go-anywhere attitude that they have that works for me pretty well. I am even sort of planning a new commuter/cx bike for some point in the future. In the meantime I got to thinking that the main problem with the Trucker off road was the skinny tyres, and apart from that it was pretty much already a cx bike. Inevitably I started measuring clearances and this happened somehow;

That, in my humble opinion, looks the absolute tits.

The tyres are WTB Nano 2.1's, and there is very, very little clearance to the frame. Still, my initial impressions of its off road capability are extremely positive....

Frame Rate

I must say that fillet brazed frames go together a lot faster than lugged frames. I have spent a good few nights and weekends working away at this, and apart from the twin top tubes which have proven to be a bit of a pig, this have moved well. I have also decided that I should care more about photography so have been using my fairly nice Nikon rather than my cellphone. This means I have taken far too many photos, many of which are in focus;

Two lovely tubes, I have finally nailed the bending process probably

The start of many, many fitups of those bloody top tubes

The wheels arrived - yay!

I started the forks using Paragon dropouts, unfortunately my TIG skills are not yet that great and they ended up too untidy to use, hence;

The start of my fully custom front dropouts.

Fork legs

Brazing the chainstays

More chainstays

The outside fillet on both of these had a bit of porosity, I had to grind it all out and redo that bit, I am not sure exactly why this is so as I made sure things were clean. Maybe not clean enough...

Rear dropouts from Paragon, I silver soldered these in.

Check out the mad photography skillz - depth of field yo

Fitting up the rear wheel to see if it fits at all

Hard to get lots of clearance with Big Fat Larry 4.7" tyres!

I checked the brakes all lined up as well

I got this laser profiled for the seat plate

I bent it up and jigged it in place, it was immediately apparent that the tubes were sitting too wide, so I rejigged it all with a fair bit of width taken out.

Endless fitting up and checking before I made the first cut of those hard won tubes

But then I bit the bullet and mitered in the front

Now just the back bends to do

Back bends achieved.......but

I am just not happy with how the lower bends ended up, I wanted them to tuck right around the tyre, but through a slight (yes again - I know) miscalculation they ended up there. I am sure they would be alright, but I suspect I will be allowing Leanne to retire just that bit sooner on Monday.

So I cracked on with the forks...

TIGged the dropout tubes - not yet perfectly tidy but I am getting better every day.

TIGged the crown tubes.

I made sure there was a good overlap of all the fork joints as burning away the edge of the tube end was my downfall when welding the Paragon dropouts.

1000km Running Report

Long time no blog...


Not too much to report to be honest, except that sometime in the last few weeks I passed the 1000km  commuting mark on the Pogward - I have no idea exactly how far it is due to the lack of cycle computer, but it is definitely between 1000 and 1500kms...

The only niggles to speak of have been a squeaky crank and an annoying tendency for the left hand rear axle nut to come loose, the crank being the most annoying because no matter how tight I got the crank bolt it started loosening off almost immediately. I have never had problems like this with square taper cranks before, so I am guessing that the tapers on the dirty old Campy cranks must have been worn. I solved the problem by buying a nice set of Shimano 600 cranks and a new bottom bracket to suit - this has been totally sweet for a good few weeks now. One extra benefit of the new cranks is that I was getting a wee bit of heel strike on the chainstays with the Campagnolo items, this has now been eliminated which is a pleasing side effect of the change.

A filthy commuter, today.

As can be seen I also treated myself to a set of Shimano Saint pedals - I have these same pedals on the Surly now and they are very nice indeed, and should take the mountainous weight of yours truly with aplomb. There is also a sneaky Surly 42T Stainless Steel chainring hiding under the dirt and grime, this should also take many miles of punishment.

The axle nut comes loose over the course of a month or so, I might just double nut it for now, I just need to check it every couple of weeks at the moment...

This lack of exciting problems is really quite pleasing as the Pogward has had to deal with some fairly extreme conditions; snow, sleet and epic amounts of rain, so yay for me.

I have added much reflective shiny stuff in an effort to make myself more visible as you can see from the flash. This is probably pointless as Christchurch drivers are almost wilfully blind and/or careless when it comes to cyclists. I am not dead yet though, so there is hope it is doing something.

I have caved to peer pressure and replaced the BHT™ with some black electrical tape. I also bought some black brake pads, but these are to go with a set of old DiaComp brakes I just won off TradeMe, so total colour coordination will occur sometime later this week I would say.

You can see another quick and dirty project of mine in that pic, a 5 space angled bike rack. Unfortunately I have 10 bikes to find space for, so I shall build another the next free day I have. The angled thing is pretty good for minimising the space required while still allowing reasonable access, and my lovely wife appears to be pleased that they are not all draped around the garage as usual. Not as pleased as she would be if I dumped some of them at the tip I would venture, but still.

A motley collection of bicycles. I like how my wife's bike is the only one without a Brooks saddle.

I am just getting back into my weekend riding again, these rides have been pretty sparse of late due to our house getting earthquake repairs - we shifted out for 6 weeks, and the whole place was completely gutted and redone. It looks nice now, but many weekends have been filled up doing the many little jobs that have needed doing since the workmen have left. The actual work done on the house was of pleasingly high quality, although the cost of the extras we asked for was eye-wateringly steep. All I can say is; Get A Quote. Also for the record I must say that Canterbury EQR are a pack of lying, thieving, two-faced bastards whose mothers probably only bought them home from the hospital under duress.

So this morning, to the obvious displeasure of my wife who had somehow got the impression that I had agreed to spend the day in the garden helping her tidy up, I decided to ride the rail trail down to Little River and back. This was exceedingly pleasant, as only time spent avoiding something tiresome can be. The track was a bit bumpier than I expected but the Surly took things in it's stride like a true champ. Together we showed our heels to a surprising number of people on mountainbikes, which should have been more suited to the terrain...

The weather, temperature and views were just perfect;

Now with added Randonneur

A few weeks have passed in a blissful state of commute, the weather has been pretty spectacular and the winds kind. I have also gradually increased my fitness levels such that atop the trusty Surly I made it to the top of Dyers Pass without stopping once, and even passed someone! Admittedly she had a good decade on me and admitted that she was quite hungover, but still, take the victories as they come I say.

There have been many small changes to the bike, and it is now getting where I want it to be give or take a few bits here and there. I had already decided that the bullhorns were not doing justice to the classic look of the frame, so on a whim I bid on a set of Salsa Short and Shallow Cross Bars on TradeMe, mostly because they were very cheap and the right diameters for what was wanted.

This turned out a mistake really as the ergoness looked faintly ridiculous on such a classic looking frame. The reach was also a bit short for my stem, so I then decided to find the perfect bars, and an extensive internet search gave me this result;

The Velo Orange Randonneur bars along with the very similar Nitto 136A. I thought to myself that both of these would be pretty hard to find in NZ, but then I looked to see if there was a local distributor for Velo Orange, and lo! Contact Dave at Velo Ideale..... as it turned out Dave had the perfectly sized set in stock right there, so I snaffled them pretty sharpish.

They were put on last night and I am really quite pleased with the look;

A burgundy leather sofa, today

As much as this bike lends itself, I have observed correct etiquette with bicycle photography; valves at the bottom, crank aligned with downtube etc.

I painted the guards black as well, it looks much cleaner...

I love the slight upward curve of those bars

To clean up the look some more I did away with my cycle computer and relocated the light to the head tube. I also purchased those quite sexy little Tektro canti brake thingies from Dave as well, god I spend some money with that man.

My by now signature Blue Handlebar Tape (BHT™)

The stem has not broken yet, I am pleased

I reworked the Jtek Mount to be adjustable for both height and tilt, it is still slightly awkward to pull it back into 1st, and kind of in the way until you get to 5th, but I cruise in 6th and is dead easy to get there so it is an acceptable compromise.

The other slightly disturbing thing that has happened is this;

Fresh rust on a handbuilt bicycle frame, today

I fully expected it, but maybe not within 2 weeks of getting it coated. This just confirms my belief that paint is for mugs. I guess it is because the clear coat does not have an etch prime like paint does. I don't really mind as long as it does not get structural, but I am now toying with the idea of electroplated coatings. There is a particular one I have in mind, but it would mean sending the frame up to Auckland, which I am disinclined to do. We shall have to see.