Even smaller than before

I've been held up for the last week, but have made some decent progress on the re-do of the tiny commuter bike project.  Looking good!

Ideas

I've been toying with the idea of some different ways to decorate my bikes and came up with the idea of some paper decoupage on the joints. Maybe even put it in under a layer of fiberglass.

Canondale Evo Fix

And fixed!

After a bit of sanding and a bit of filling, the patch looks pretty good.  I'm really happy that I found an orange that matched closely enough.  I just did a quick highlight with some metal flake paint, and it looks pretty good to me.

Specialized fix

Since I forgot to take repair pictures of the Teschner once finished, I'm doing the same with this orange and blue Specialized Tarmac repair.  I can't match the paint exactly, but I'll give it the ol' college try.

The crack: nasty ding in chainstay

Remove all the shredded carbon fiber bits down to the base layer

Add back first set of plys

Disc brakes

In an effort to stay ahead of the curve of technology, I added disc brakes to my cyclocross bike.  A lot of work, but seems a lot nicer than rim brakes.  Also, they tend to work in the rain which is a big plus!  I'll post pics shortly.

Step one

Sand off any offending paint and expose the fracture.

Next fix

Fixing a cracked top tube in a Teschner.

Whole new fit

Richie at Breakaway Bikes just re-fit me as a trade for a repair I did for him earlier this year.  According to his measurements, which seem just as accurate as any I've ever endured, I had myself all screwed up.Compared to 'normal' fitting philosophy, I had my seat about an inch too low and my stem was 1-2 cm too long for the new seat height. According to him, I looked like a gigantic child on a bicycle.  I had lowered my seat that extra inch 2 years ago after emailing back and forth with Steve Hogg, a bike fitting contributor to Cyclingnews.com.  He was an early proponent of the mid-foot cleat position, and I followed some of his fitting protocols when setting myself  up on my Cannondale.  My main goal with such a low position was to protect my knee, which seemed to have worked for a while. As Max, the other fitter at Breakaway said,"You really have no idea what caused you to heal, it might have simply shifted the strain elsewhere in your body, which eventually resulted in your current problems.  By simply accomodating whatever problem you have physically with a bike fit, you're basically guaranteeing that your body will never get better, you're just putting a band-aid on it."
After much consultation and cajoling, Richey finally got me to raise my seat the 'required' inch and sent me out the door with a new philosophy on bike fit, some new insoles and a shorter stem.
Fortunately, when I designed my new bike I gave it just enough head tube height and seat tube length to accomodate my new fit.  Close one though, as I'm about 1 spacer away from needing a new fork.I'm not sure what I think about the new shape I find my body in, but it does seem to actuate my knee and hip muscles in a better/more open way. We'll see if it is enough to make some improvements on my stupid knee.  Thus far, I'm not convinced that the new fit can help me, particularly since my knee and hip have started hurting off the bike as well as on it, but hell, at this point it can hardly hurt. In other news, I really like many aspects of the new bike. It definitely has the best acceleration of any of my bikes to date.  I think that the different downtube layup plus my improved layup technique is responsible.  I got a lot of the torsional aspect of the joints licked a bit more easily with the addition of some spread-tow carbon fabric, which basically cuts a lot of the annoying aspects of guessing how many layers of unidirectional carbon I've got to use going in each direction.  I also think that my new 'daruma tube' technique may help a bit up front.  I'll post some pics of that shortly. It's basically an innovation spawned by the untimely cracking of my last really suitable section of bamboo.

My bike, take 2

So, somehow one would think that after 10 of these bikes, I would have figured out the whole alignment riddle.  Well, turns out, not so much.  For my updated road bike design, I wanted to make it a bit better balanced than my current road bike.  The goal was lighter, stiffer faster, more confident handling.  Not that I dislike good ol' number 4, I actually have grown really fond of it over the two years I have ridden and raced it, but I just thought I could do it one better with an ENVE tubeset and some more experience with manufacturing the joints.

I was going for a bit more traditional road geometry and, having liked my pink Cannondale a lot, decided to set up my jig to match that bike's geometry.  I'd match the angles and then tweak as needed.  With my mid-foot cleat position, I like a bit longer front end, and I also use 177.5mm cranks, so need to make sure the bottom bracket is the right height.  I also have a lower overall seat height and so can do with a shorter seat tube.  Anyway, moral of the story is, "Just because it's a factory bike from a reputable manufacturer, and just because if feels good, doesn't mean it's straight"

When I got DC 10 complete and put together, it rode pretty well.  Definitely lighter and stiffer than DC 4 and seemed to have a bit more relaxed handling.  The only problem that it seemed to relax a bit more to one side than the other.

Shit.

So after MUCH measuring, I determined that the head tube and seat tube had somehow gotten out of whack: 8-10 mm off to the right, depending on how I measured.  Well, that was annoying as hell, and, after some consternation, I decided that the best way to go would be to hack all but 1 of the joints apart and try again.  The head tube/down tube joint stayed, the rest had to go.  Hours of sanding, measuring cutting, re-gluing and more measuring later, we have the pieces back into the appropriate alignment and all is well with the world. Only another 20 hours of work or so before I can ride the bike again.  At least my knee has been screwed up this whole time (6 f'ing MONTHS unable to really ride!!) so I at least haven't been pining for my new bike quite as much.

Cervelo fix

Done a couple of quick jobs recently. Most recent has been a cervelo frame for a guy racing for MIT.

I know that bike!

 
A couple of months ago I worked on a fixie-conversion of a Scott CR1 with a broken dropout. Since the owner had already purchased a new carbon bike, he wanted something light and fun to kick around town on. I took some Surly hooded steel dropouts and welded on some tangs with Brett's torch, then bonded them all together. It's cool to see your work actually riding around town.

Familiar dropouts

 
When I'm working on a bike I'm always looking at things up close, and therefore am acutely aware of the slight imperfections. I'm always glad when they get put together into a bike, and all of the little problems fade away. This was one of my first welding projects and it was a great combination of steel and carbon work, and pretty challenging!

Bike parts

 
In an insane and probably foolhardy effort to save a few grams on my next super-bike, I've decided to carve my own dropouts out of some carbon plate that I purchased. It's a lot of work for marginal gains, but hopefully the result will be worth it. The nice thing is that the older style Cannondale derailleur hangers work splendidly with this setup: super rigid and replaceable.

Before

My teammate Ross had the misfortune of T-boning a guy who crashed in front of him at the Greentree training race in early August. Ross plowed his front wheel into the other fellow's back, and did a full somersault, emerging almost unscathed. Not so for his bike. It was broken in 3 places; the fork crown, the downtube joint and then 2/3 of the way down the top tube. SMASH! He was pretty sure it couldn't be fixed, but I was pretty sure it could. This was probably my most extensive repair to date.  

 

After

I'm pretty pleased with the results. Luckily the bike held itself together well enough for me to simply repair joint by joint. Ross got a good deal on the replacement fork from our club sponsor, Breakaway Bikes and I painted everything to match. I probably could have done a Giant logo to replace the original, but I kind of like the stealth look of the new paint. Ross came over on Monday night and we got Circles take out, had some beers and put his bike together.