Soma Delancey Build

I've decided to build a fixie. I decided early on that I'd probably build it from a frame set. I always want to do this but the last time I tried it turned out to be much cheaper to take the stock bike. Parts are very overpriced and bike manufacturers get much better deals.



So I'm spending the money (too much) and building a Delancey. Since it has silver lugs I'm doing all silver parts: This is expensive.

I'm going with soma's pursuit bars.



Other than that it's all pretty boring. I actually have to get a cane creek S-3 to get a silver headset. I pretty much have to buy Soma's levers to get silver. Silver cranks are easy.

I'm gonna throw a honey B17 on there and I'm probably going to find the closest to light brown cork tape I can find. I'd spend the money for Brook's bar tape but I know I will find it uncomfortable. I'd hate to have to wear gloves all of the time because of my bar tape choice.

All in all my fixed gear is going to be my most expensive bike. Mostly because of the $650 frame set.


Hopefully this will help me stave off my desire to build a bike based on Soma's Speedster frame :D. If I were smart I'd take advantage of the current exchange rates and buy a Bob Jackson frame.


All of this makes me realize: I'm becoming a frame snob. As I looked through Bicycling's buyers guide edition today I found very few bikes that I liked. They either: Weren't steel, had an odd geometry, or they had shimano equipment.

I feel like the high end bike market is being taken over by low end carbon, super cheap aluminum, and shimano. I'd feel better about it if Shimano would rework their STI levers to be ergonomic.

I find myself recommending Konas and Surlys to people and realize: There's almost nowhere for them to ride one! It's a sad day when people want to buy the whole bike for what I consider to be reasonable for a frameset. *sigh*

Flats and Tires

Monday night I had a random blow out flat. The tube was toast: There was a centimeter diameter hole in it that had ripped into an even larger tear.

I swapped that tube out and went to the bike shop to refill my supply of spares. The shop informed me that I was using too large of tube by using the tube which says it fits my tire size: Life is so straight forward. So, now I have about a billion tubes for 32-35c tires.

On Tuesday night I discovered the same tire had jumped up over the rim in one spot. I found this out on my way home as the tire rubbed on the brakes: Shockingly I was able to go quite a way like this before I realized that vibration wasn't from the road.

So I got to use my frame pump twice this week. I hate frame pumps!

I can't wait for those new wheels so that, at least on dry days, I can ride with decent tires!

Dish Detergent Makes a Bad Degreaser

I learned something today: Dish detergent won't cut it to clean your chain. I ran it through about 4 times with two different detergents and got murky water. Then I sprayed some finish line degreaser on the chain and ran plain water: Black.

The lesson: Clean your dishes with chain degreaser. That'll take off that stuck on grease :).

Warning: It burns.

Custom Commuter

Well, I've kind of had it with my current commuter. Here are my complaints:
* I can't put regular fenders on it
* It's really heavy (I carry it up two stories every day)
* There's a tick in the bottom bracket, and I've had it rebuilt once so it looks like replacement time.
* The chain rings are a bit scarred up, but mostly good.
* It's a mountain bike: Heavy, front shock, back rigidity.

So it looks like I'm going to get a new commuter and sell the old one. Hopefully I can get $100 or so out of it.

I have two choices: A trek 7.3 FX, or a custom surly. The custom Surly is a lot more expensive, but I think it's worth it. And hey, I'm not strapped for cash so let's build the bike I really want!


Here's what I'm thinking:
* A Surly cross check frame. I can't use a Long Haul Trucker (well I can) because in my size (54) it doesn't come with 700c wheels.
* Bar end shifters.
* Drop bars, obviously.
* Probably a Brook's saddle, my butt needs to feel good in jeans.
* Double sided pedals: One side is a platform, the other is SPD.

Everything else I'm less worried about. I've got a source for a very low cost 9 speed cassette, rear derailleur and crankset. Low end stuff, but I'm not looking for a racing machine I'm looking for a good commuter that I can still park. The cassette may or may not be satisfactory, I despise large changes in my cassette. I still dream of a cassette with decent range and only steps of 1 tooth. Maybe these new 11 gear cassettes will realize my dream in 6 years when they're cheap. 3 tooth steps suck. That's a small complaint I have on my current commuter, and on the 7.3 FX.

I rode a Cross Check at Monkey Wrench on friday, and it was a nice ride. I'll probably give it another ride and start ordering parts sometime this week. Should be fun, I've never assembled a bike before :).

I'm excited!

Repair Stand

http://trekstorecincinnati.com/itemdetails.cfm?id=1888

There's a picture in the link.

This is my 1st anniversary present from my wife, a bit early. So I took the opportunity to use it and did a more thorough cleaning of my road bike. Cleaned most of the grit off the frame. Degreased and washed the chain (on bike). Removed the cassette and washed it (although I didn't disassemble it, I don't have the tiny allen wrench). Put her back together and re-lubed.

I waited a few hours and took it for a short ride. She rides better than the day I bought her. The shifting is perfect. I didn't even mess with it, I just cleaned it and the shifting got better (I think I had it pretty well adjusted already, it was just dirty so it tended to slam the chain around). Pretty good for a road bike with 1700 miles on it. Let's hope for another 17,000 :).

The repair stand is pretty nice, works quite well. Kind of makes me wish I'd got a smaller frame and set it up more aggressively so as to avoid changing my seat height. Oh well, the seatpost was getting a bit stuck so it's good I moved it.

Commuter Work

I lost a spoke on my commuter last week. It was a joyous occasion (lie). I ended up riding the bike back home on the broken spoke (mistake). I then waited a week to do anything, because I was about to leave town for a few days.

When I got to working on it I ended up discovering how many tools it takes to change a spoke. Let's go through the purchases:

First Trip, bike shop:
* 3 spokes ($3), two for the broken spoke I knew of, and one for the future on the other side
* 2 park allen wrenches ($20), these had nothing to do with the spoke, I just needed them for other things

After this trip I discovered I had three broken spokes. Oops. I also discovered I'd have to remove the cogs to get to the broken spoke, *doh*.

Second trip, bike shop:
* 1 free wheel tool ($8)
* 1 chain whip ($22)
* 3 spokes ($3)

Then I realized I didn't have a wrench to grab the free wheel tool. I also didn't have an adjustable wrench (Okay, I'm 23 I don't have many tools!).

Third trip, Lowe's:
* 2 adjustable wrenches ($30)

So I finally got the free wheel loose. Yay! I then proceeded to work with spokes. Well this didn't go so well. I overtightened the first one and stripped the nipple. The guy who cut the new spoke gave me lots of extra thread, I assumed (wrongly) that I needed to get most of the thread inside the nipple before it was even close.

Fourth trip, Home Depot:
* 1 pair of bolt cutters ($15)

So I cut the spoke out, fixed all three, and trued the wheel against lines on a piece of duct tape (on the bike). This bike has disc brakes, so I couldn't use the brakes. The wheel is true enough, but I'll probably have it trued this summer. Or wait until Christmas, when I'm going to beg for a truing stand.

Then I decided it was time to do other work on the bike. I took some parts off my childhood bike (a tiny frame on standard 26" wheels and other parts, a Specialized Hard Rock from about 1995). I stole the kick stand (commuter bikes need kick stands, it's a fact of life). That was easy, although sadly damaging to the paint job: Oh well, Giant does a shitty job of painting anyway (Don't buy a Giant, they're cheap for a reason).

Then I decided to steel the handlebars from my other bike. They're regular straight flat bars, about 3-4" narrower than the up curving bars I had. They also had slightly rusty and banged up ends: I had to hammer my shifter assembly over the ends! Handlebars should be aluminum!

Fixing the Wife's Bike

My wife inherited her bike, it's about a 10 year old Schwinn hybrid. It's the old school WSD: Two down tubes, no top tube.

Other than the obvious structural and aesthetic deficiencies this design presents I've been noticing other things: The rear brake cable is a mess: It bends around corners cables shouldn't bend around, especially not on a bike where they're exposed to dirt, mud, water, snow, etc.

It also features cantilever brakes with plastic housings for the pullback springs. Of course, one was cracked. That's okay though, the springs are too weak anyway: I'm going to try to find decent brakes to put on this bike. The frame and forks have mounts for caliper brakes, but I'm not sure if I can use them with the wheel it has.

The tires are rotten. Oops, shouldn't have bought tubes for them before looking at the tires!

The derailleurs were still well aligned though! And the chain was good as new, with only minor damage to one sprocket.

Oh, and the rear wheel isn't true. I guess I get to learn how to true wheels now. I figure by the time this bike is in good working order we'll be out about $150, probably a third of its original price. A lot of that would disappear if the brakes weren't ... below my expectations.

Oh well, can't complain about free, right?