This post is going to catch a lot of little things. I usually post on a single topic but a lot of small things have been piling up.
I just ordered some very odd sized allen wrenches. In larger increments, 13, 15, 16, 18, 23mm allen keys are next to non-existent in the US. Needing one of these sizes can really screw up your life. SRAM recently committed this sin on me by designing a 16mm nut in the crank extraction mechanism on my X9 crankset. I needed to tighten the nut in place but was out of luck and had to monkey it up to get by. I hate that…a lot. Facom wrenches, from France, are one of the only name brand importer that I know of for these and they aren’t widely distributed. I got these from Ultimate Garage. One or two other sources exist. These are cheap tools, buy them when you can.
On a ride this last weekend, I saw this crazy eccentric hub. It was designed and made by Devin Lenz of Lenz Sport. It never went to production. This is a prototype. It allows a 29er wheel to be used in a 26″ fork. Kinda neat, but at the projected cost ($500), it starts looking like a fork purchase is a wiser option. Pretty cool though. From what I understood the bearings are very rare and used only in a military helicopter propeller component.
I broke my master cylinder for my Saint brake on a ride that weekend. I was lucky not to brake myself. It’s pretty rare to see this so I figured I’d post it up. This is the first failure of a Shimano master that I have experienced. Rarely, a lever will go but still, not that often.
I saw the remains of a broken u-lock at the Richmond Del Norte BART station. Nice to see what you can do with enough leverage and desire. I’ve got better, faster ways of getting through these locks but where I’m a surgeon these guys were gangsters.
My old friend Jeff Buchholz of Sputnik Tool sent me a mail. He needed an emergency ‘vectorization’ of a logo he had only a raster of. I guess he had some media to produce prior to the NAHBS. I produced this pretty quickly for him. The font is slightly off for now. As time allows I’ll figure out what it should be. The rest of the graphic is spot on and clean for reproduction. Just goes to show what you can do when you know how to use the software in front of you. PS. If anyone knows off hand what the original font is, drop me a note.
