Before and After-- Scott Scale

I just did a repair on an odd little crack that may have been precipitated by a rock strike, or just some massive quadriceps, on a Scott Scale. Certainly not a huge break, but one that could have led to a long walk home. 

I'm really pretty happy with how this one turned out.  I was able to vacuum bag just the joint, which requires a lot more sealer tape than I've been using in the past with my 'giant ziploc' approach.  The extra stretchy green vacuum film along with some more stretchy release fabric provides a bit better appearance with fewer wrinkles in the finished product. I basically overbuilt the entire brake area since it's a fairly high-stress zone. 

Swing and a miss

So, turns out my shoes were a good try, but not good enough to wear more than half an hour. The arch is hugely supportive, but supportive like a brick, not supportive like a good friend in a time of need.  When I took the cast of my feet, i did so in a fully relaxed position; basically I put on a sock, dunked my foot in liquid plaster of paris and let it set with no pressure on it.  This did create an accurate representation of my foot, but didn't account for how my foot works under pressure.  I've got super flexible arches, so much so that my footprint is basically a ski, rather than the traditional bean shape.

Rather than re-cast my foot wholesale, I decided to do some editorializing with a bit of bondo, lowering the arch, widening the heel, and making a bit more room for my toes.  We'll see how this next one goes.

Fancy Feet

Ever since I got my first set of orthotics back in college following my first round with Achilles tendinitisI have wanted to make my own custom footbeds. I guess that turned one thing into another and I finally ended up completing (mostly) a set of custom cycling shoes. I made the foot molds a year or so ago, and the soles have seen fits of work every now and again, but I finally cobbled together the uppers and soles this week.

The uppers are a pair of Allen Edmonds Oxford shoes that I got on eBay. They were too big, but cheap enough that it wasn't worth relisting them. With a bit of trimming, they formed fairly nicely to the soles. I hope to try them out this weekend. We'll see if they wreck any of my body parts.

Ohanami

One always needs goals.  My goal with this bike was to get it painted, assembled and ridden before the cherry blossoms had all fallen.  In the end I squeaked by, but only just.  First ride was April 27th, and it was good.  Of course I had to take some gratuitous pictures in front of the cherry blossoms in Fairmount Park, and then do some loops through the winding park roads. Two awesome things occurred during the ride.  One, my bike didn't break, and actually rode pretty much exactly as I'd hoped it would.  Two, I got a flat tire.  What made the flat tire awesome is that it happened right across the street from a condo building on City Avenue that's undergoing rennovation.  As I pulled out my spare tube, wrenched around for way too long with the Michelin tire on the stupid deep section rims, and started to pump things back up with the cutest little pump ever, I noticed the security guard from the building winding his way down the driveway and across the street towards me.  I thought he was just headed to the convenience store to my back, but he was definitely headed my way.  

When he got about 70 feet from me (standard Philadelphia conversation distance) he yelled out, "Yo, you got a pump? Lemme see that?"  He was totally smitten with the micro pump that I was furiously employing to get the tire back up to pressure.  

I responded, "Yeah, it's awesome to carry, but it's a pain to use.  You basically have to pump it a million times to get the tire inflated."

"Right, I was over there watching you and it looked like you was jerkin' off!"

Yep, that's what I was thinking it must have looked like, and that's what he came out and said.  I replied, "Yeah, you know, just sitting here on the side of the road, enjoying the weather, jackin' it."  

Then he turned and went, "See ya. Have a good one." and walked into the store to get an ice tea.

Some progress

I finally got the tubes all tacked together and it's time to start the lay up of the joints. This is the first bike that I've ever done with full carbon construction, and honestly, it's a lot easier than working with bamboo. Things are straight, at least for the factory made tubes, and there isn't the concern about splitting.

A quick rundown of the geometry that I've settled on for my 'perfect' road bike.

All dimensions in millimeters.  

• Head Tube 182
• Seat Tube 570
• Top Tube 590
• Chainstay Length 410
• Seat Tube Angle 73 deg
• Head Tube Angle 73 Deg
• Rake 43
• Trail 58
• BB Drop 72

The idea here is more of a road bike, as in something for the longer steadier courses, than a criterium bike.  I'm hoping that stability will be good, and that it will just lean into a corner and stick it.  Even with my 177.5 mm cranks, I can get away with the lower BB drop because I prefer Speedplay pedals with their extra cornering clearance.   In the end, it works out pretty much the same as a 68 BB drop with standard Look or SPD pedals.  I have really liked how well the lower overall center of gravity felt on my last bike, though that was largely due to an incorrect fit.

Little something that I whipped up in my basement composites lab

I was recently inspired by a couple of different folks, most recently the folks at Guru in Canada, and thn some crazy kid in Slovenia who is doing amazing things with carbon.  There is something that I really like about working with carbon fiber.  I like that it's a flexible material, that there are almost limitless options for how it can be made, and that with enough time I could do almost all of the operations in my basement.  Sure a full-on prototyping facility would be grand, but just wait until I get the new basement set up.  It's going to be sweet.

Top tube and modified chainstays in anticipation of my new bike.

The chainstays are merely a modification of the ENVE stays that I've been using for years.  I added a sculpted block of styrofoam filler and then overlaid the carbon. to make what is essentially a giant gusset along the inside of both stays.  Should be stiffer, and not a whole lot heavier.  I can definitely tell that ENVE spent a lot of time working on their commercial products, but frankly not a whole lot of time engineering their framebuilder supplies.  It seems like it was basically just my man Carl Turner cranking stuff out to order.  Oh well, now it's on me to figure out how to make cool stuff.

The tube was all me though.  I dissected a Scott Addict top tube to figure out generally what goes on inside the layup of a good bike, and found that it went something like this:

From outside to inside the unidirectional plies were laid up in the following orientation (degrees):

+45
- 45
  90
+60
- 60
+45
- 45

So I just worked to mimic that layup with the various types of fiber that I have at my disposal.  I wouldn't say that it worked perfectly, but I would give my first top tube a B- all things considered.

Some inspiration and reconfiguration

Some good posts recently on Bike Rumor which have solidified my idea of making a full carbon bike for myself.  I'm even thinking that I'm going to take a stab at molding my own tubes around a mandrel.  I've done some dissecting of a Scott Addict top tube, and will delve into some other bits and pieces to get a better idea for what other companies are doing.

Also, I gotta give a shout out to my friends Richie and Max at Philly Bikesmith.  They took about 2 hours last night to fit me and go over all of the crazy details that go into bike design.  My current plan is to let them come up with a frame design for me and then build it up.  After picking their brains last night, I have utmost confidence that they'll come up with something that fits and handles well.  The rest is just up to me building the dang thing.