A weekend of fatness

The courier gods were indeed smiling upon me, because a fat package was found in my letterbox on Friday morning containing the single speed tensioner. I had already decided to take the day off so after a quick trip to one of the many bike shops I frequent for a brake cable and a new seatpost clamp, the kit was fitted, tested and the bike was clearly gagging for a shakedown. I wasted no time and drove out to Mcleans Island for a burn. I have been out there fairly regularly, but I had to ask someone where the track started because the main track appeared to be closed off due to logging. Once I had been put right I set off around the now very bitsy 10k loop. The bike performed flawlessly though, and after a time I forgot about the forks breaking etc and just fell into a sweet rhythm. The bike pretty much disappeared from consciousness, leaving me to enjoy the ride, which I took as a sign of great success.

A dusty The Fatness, last Friday

I had 20PSI in those tyres, Dave suggested I halve that pressure, which has actually increased the awesomeness

So all this effort to get the thing rideable was so I could honour Global Fatbike Day. I texted a chap I know called Kevin who has a Surly Moonlander to see if he wanted to catch up. As it turned out he had already organised a fatbike ride starting from Chain Reaction in Riccarton - stoked!

I grovelled to my wife for an eternity, even offering to give up rights to my usual Sunday ride in return for leave to tag along with the other Fatty boys. I had to make myself cry before she relented, but she eventually did, so at 10 am sharp on Saturday morning I was there.

It was awesome fun, bombing around the city for a couple of hours finding interesting things to ride over and playing Fatbike bingo, which you play by shouting bingo when someone asks what they are for or says that they have very big wheels etc etc. We had many many bingoes. We also played Fatbike Wife Swap, where we each rode everyone else's fattie and compared characteristics. A great day out and it inspired the creation of a Fat Bikes Canterbury facebook page.

A collection of Fatbikes, yesterday. The white one has custom front suspension and one other had a dangerous looking lefty suspension setup.

The Fatness leaning up to Kevin's Moonlander. Kevin has every possible accoutrement on his bike, it weighs quite a lot. The Fatness was almost worryingly light in comparison

Stopping for an iced coffee at the St Asaph Street Kitchen

I have been using pretty much any feeble excuse to take this for a ride now, I sneaked out this afternoon for a bout of sub-urban off roading in the rain. As I get used to it's handling things just get better and better. I am genuinely stoked with this machine.

Also according to the internets my wee package of drivetrain components has arrived in Christchurch and is waiting to be dispatched to my house bright and early tomorrow morning. I hope it all fits ok...

The Fatness

I have been cranking through the work on this as fast as I can in preparation for World Fatbike Day on December the 7th. Young Dave mentioned this when I went in to pick up the bits for the 2x9 drivetrain I intended to fit to the beast. I took this on board as I figured what better way to celebrate than with the birth of a new fatbike. Not a finished fatbike mind, but hopefully a functional one.

I have hit a couple of snags though..  mostly involving my utter noobness when it comes to dérailleur setups. Initially I had thought I would just fit the standardish 3.8" tyres, but fairly early on in the build when I saw just how awesomely fat the Big Fat Larry's are, I decided I needed to have them. Unfortunately the last time I paid any real attention to trivial things like chainlines was before this decision, so when it came time to attach the driving bits it was immediately apparent that the tyre was going to hit the chain for nearly every useful gear when in the small front sprocket.

I was a bit put out by this failure of Shimano to accommodate my requirements, but after a modicum of thought and calculation of ratios I decided that a 1x10 setup could be made to work, and as long as I didn't use the bike for land speed record attempts I would be pretty much ok. I then ordered a 32T downhill front ring, a 11-36 cassette and a nice dérailleur-shifter combo. This gives me a lowest gear pretty much equivalent to the Disc Truckers second lowest gear, which should be enough for getting up hills. These bits may take a week or 3 to arrive and I wanted to be mobile for the 7th, so I bought a single speed Kit off a very pleasant TradeMe chap called Dan. I suspect I could have talked to Dan a lot longer that would be appropriate for a supposed work day I was bunking off from, plus I was scared he would show me other bike parts and I would be powerless to resist, so I made my escape. I am now waiting on a single speed tensioner to make the thing actually rideable. Fingers crossed for this week.

The seatpost was another wee snag, I assumed that the ID of the seatpost was going to be 27mm according to the specification, which meant a simple job of reaming it out to 27.2 was going to be the go. Upon inspection the seatpost tube actually measured 26.6mm and it seemed a shame to thin things out too much, especially as Canyon flips will soon be part of my repertoire no doubt. I could only find a second hand Thompson Elite Inline seatpost on Trademe that was smallish enough at 26.8, so I grabbed it figuring it would do for now, and if it is too rough I would find something else later. In the mean time Dave leant me a vintage MTB post that at least allows me to get a seat on the thing.

I also had a wee beg on Vorb and borrowed some useful bits from a chap called Gumby - I can't tell you how useful that stuff has been - I owe that man a beer. I also did the same from an old workmate called Mike, and between the two suppliers I have sorted an acceptable cockpit sizing.

So anyway, today I decided I was going to ride it no matter what, even though I had a droopy chain, so I chucked the seat from my single speed onto it, checked everything over and rode it up the road. It was hilarious fun even though the chain meant I couldn't put any real power down. It feels pretty good, with no obviously bad handling characteristics or waywardness. It is a bit hard to say though so I shall wait till I have used it in anger. The main thing I notice is the incredible thrumming noise from those tyres...

I dub thee 'The Fatness'

I am sure I could ride across the Cook Strait without pontoons on those tyres

I am gagging for that chain tensioner to arrive

The offending drivechain area

A probably illegal use of the local currency

That vintage Brooks actually looks pretty good on The Fatness

So there is still quite a lot to do, I have ordered many many brazons from Ceeway that will allow me to tidily zip tie the cables to the frame. This system is on the disc trucker, and as I am using full length cable sheathing it makes a lot of sense. Then sorting the drivetrain and after that some testing is in order, and then many hours of cleanup before I get it coated. I am not sure exactly what this will be yet, but a decision is getting closer...

Mostly the gunblued bike...

Things continue apace at Pogwards Large Emporium of Bicycles, the frame jig is finished enough to hold the main bit of the frame in place, and as such I have mitered the top tube and intend to start the downtube as soon as my shedweek is allowed to begin. This has been hampered by my eldest child's birthday party and the accompanying doting grandparents coming to visit. Even now I shudder at the thought of ever again having to endure in the same room a dozen 9 year old girls screaming the words to some dreadful One Direction song at the top of their lungs. Or for that matter having to constantly explain the workings of my Fathers Samsung Galaxy SII to him, ie the difference between an operating system and an app....He is the only person I know who still remembers all the phone numbers he needs, and this is simply because he cannot learn how to make a speed dial shortcut or use the search function. I am not sure how things have come to this sort of pass but apparently spending several hours machining brass in the garage rather than trying to cope with all this is frowned upon in modern society...

Framebuilding progress has been hampered by many other bicycle related nonsenses, ie getting the devastatingly handsome Bob to face the bottom bracket shell of the Gazelle for me (the shell being 70mm wide I had faced it back to 68mm with all the precision that can be had from an angle grinder - ie, not much precision). During the visit Bob also started handing out old 28" guards with a feverishness that can only come from the sure knowledge that doing this sort of thing can be bartered for extended shedweek. All this meant that the Gazelle now looks like this;

I am now working on getting the drum braked hubs up and running. Last week I stupidly totted up the probably cost of doing this (spokes, rims, tyres, replating the hubs etc), and I found myself breaking out in a cold sweat and talking in a squeaky voice for a while. After my testes had descended again I reasoned that I could simply sell every other wheelset I had, and when I needed to use a particular bike I could swap the wheels into that. Problem solved.

In other exciting news, a present arrived in the post for Gunmetal Bike - a NOS Campagnolo crankset in a very desirable (to me) 175mm crank length;

Gunmetal bike started as a pretty rough Tarini Tange 2 frame that I got for $20 off TradeMe, which I decided had to be gunblued. Due to the fact that I was excited by my success in so easily sourcing a pot of bluing compound, I slapped the stuff on without really reading the instructions..... this *kind of* went badly as a result, so I ended up doing it all over again. This means the colour is more chocolaty brown than blue, but I like it a lot.....

I really like how you can see the brazing beneath the finish, and the sweet Porteur bars, and the saddle, and pretty much everything... It is also ridiculously light, so the big gearing doesn't hurt my knees so much.

This bike is still a bit of a work in progress, as you can see there are a couple of areas that could do with improvement, and I might even build a new set of forks for it sooner or later.....