Bicycle

With all the buzz lately on carbon fibre long travel bikes, 650b wheels, and enduro racing, the lowly singlespeed has fallen to the back of the cool kid pile. Recent rain has got me to dust off my singlespeed bike. Thus, I’ve got some stuff to say. Singlespeed bikes are my more hated bikes. They hurt … Read more

Mary Moncorge is a great friend of ours here in Fairfax, CA. Besides being the reigning Strava Queen of the Mountain on pretty much any patch of dirt you’re going to end up rolling over (50 pages!), She’s super nice and takes care of her folks. Jake Harrell, Bryan Harrell’s son, needed a squishy bike … Read more

What the fuck is this? How is this even possible. This comes out of a $10,000 bike. It was ridden this way for over 500 miles, probably a lot more. This wasn’t a college beater. I just don’t know what to say. I’m absolutely appalled. I’m not an inocent. Not by a long shot. I … Read more

I recently set a bike with an X-Fusion Velvet fork. The wheel diameter is 704mm so I had the fork set up for 650b and 80mm of travel. That choice proved to be poor as it increased the length of the fork more than I designed for (478 vs 467mm) and I actually had plenty of … Read more

Here’s some nice stuff for bleeding Shimano brakes. This allows you to push fluid through the system in both directions. Each method has advantages. My preferred fluid is Pentosin CHF 7.1 (BMW# 81221468879). It’s nicer than the Shimano fluid. Waste oil goes into my chain lube bottle because it’s also my favorite chain lube. Another … Read more

I’ve been riding mountain bikes for over 20 years. In that time I’ve had to walk out of the woods, run from weather, try to start a fire to avoid freezing, ride a bare rim for 20 miles, and do a host of other crazy fixes on the trail. Things will go wrong. Things always go … Read more

This is good. From Repack to Rwanda: The Origins, Evolution, and Global Reach of the Mountain Bike. From July 2012 to February 2013 an amazing exhibit of bicycles and their development was shown in the international terminal of the San Francisco International Airport Museum at (SFO). The curator of the show worked very closely with Joe … Read more

These cranks are for Jake Harrell’s PodRacerOne. Bombshell Velocity 155mm cranks drilled to accept 64mm rings so that he could have a 2×9 drivetrain on his bike. The little man needs some gears to get up those hills! It’s hard to get high quality 165mm cranks for multi speed mountain bike. Hell, it’s even harder to … Read more

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 … Read more

This is a fun little bike. An interesting exercise in design. After participatin in all five of the Bay Area Prestige Cyclocross races in series and the first of the mixed-terrain Grasshopper Adventure series, a need truly arose for a different kind of bike for me to use. I had been using a well converted 29er bike, but that still … Read more

The other day, Steve Garro of Coconino Cycles posted an image to his Facebook wall that got a bit of attention. This probably isn’t a new image for some people to see but it got a lot of attention. Specifically, it got my attention. I was in the mood to really think about some bike design … Read more

Saddle Setback is often referenced when transferring a rider fit from bike to bike. There is a danger to generalize this setup dimension and get religious without paying attention to true details. The point of this post is that a rider and fitter need to pay close attention to the details of this saddle placement. … Read more

Fairfax is the cycling epicenter of the Bay Area. A perfect combination of road riding and mountain riding close to a lot of people and the San Francisco Bay Area. Of course, it’s known as the birthplace of mountain biking. I’m lucky to live there. A lot of folks in town have participated in changing … Read more

The road bike was finally completed. A nice comfortable road bike. Solid. A note on seat tube angle. Some will instantly comment on the 71 degree seat tube angle on this frame. This frame was designed for use with a 0mm offset seatpost. Using a traditional 25mm offset post would have resulted in a 73 … Read more

I found someone’s old Nikon Coolpix P2 while cleaning up the other day. It was missing a battery and charger that would have been far to expensive to replace on an old camera that I didn’t even need. What to do……? HACK! Hacking into something for fun is a great way to learn. You learn how to … Read more

Daniel needed a nice adapter for his fancy new bike. He’s running fixed LSD with Profile type cranks. Needed adapters to the PF30 we built into his frame. Simple stuff and problem solved. On most bikes these adapters could have been made of delrin. The issue is that Daniel does a bit of crank and … Read more

Over the years, I’ve had the luck of being able to meet, know, and work with some of the best people in the hand-built bicycle industry. It’s very cool being able to talk with peers about how they see the bicycle and what they want to do with it. I hope to be able to … Read more

Daniel came by the shop today with a nice little job. He’s starting to build up the fixxie freestyle frame he built in the shop. He needed a left side drive 135mm spaced fixed hub with 14mm axle for pegs. Not the easiest thing to find. It would be even nicer if it had a … Read more

This month, I’ve broken two Shimano XT cassettes (11-32, CS-M771-10-bL). The smaller cog carrier, #Y1YR98040 (18,20,22), has failed in exactly the same way both times. This is something that is very rarely seen and even rarer to see it the same way so soon for one person. This is certain to be an engineering or manufacturing … Read more

Healing up from my wrist injury last September has been quite a journey. It’s been very discouraging but giving the situation I’m glad that I got out the way I did. Things could have been much worse and I am grateful. Still, I miss cycling well. The past month has seen a bit of improvement … Read more

The box. People talk about it. They talk about being outside it. It seems that they often fail to even understand the box or it’s bounds. Usually, those claiming to be outside of it are firmly planted deep in the darkest depths of the box. I try to always keep my work inside the box. … Read more

My friend Donald Reni has a problem. He owns a Bridgestone bicycle. Other than that, he’s got another problem. This is supposed to be a shit bike. A shit bike is what I call a bicycle that you can ride and lock up around the city worry free. It’s not fancy, it’s not worth much, … Read more

Thanks to Sean Walling at Soulcraft and Una Pizza Napoletana, San Francisco has it’s own custom bicycle show. For the second year, I figured that I would spend my time looking at the people. Those photos are posted on my Facebook page so folks can share more easily.   Two bikes stood out from the … Read more

Shimano has recently issued the new Zee line of parts. Essentially, Zee is just SLX for downhill and gravity bikes. Zee is a very nice line of parts and essentially makes up for the problems with the Saint line of parts – cost and weight. Don’t get me wrong. Saint is awesome. I use many … Read more

This post was inspired by a conversation that I had the other day when I bumped into my friend Cameron Falconer at Java Hut in Fairfax prior to the each of us leaving on a ride. I was on my neat Firefly 29″ bike and he was on his road bike. Somehow the discussion of gearing … Read more

Here’s a cool thing. I was having a discussion with Chris Ioakimedes this past Sunday. He had a tube in his pocket, still in the box. It turned out that we both usually leave them in the box so that they don’t get damaged. It seemed like such a bulky awkward way of dealing with this issue. … Read more

This is true for a number of reasons but here is one that you probably haven’t heard of. THEY LISTEN. I deal with lot’s of technology and meticulous setups on bicycles. I find problems and issues with bicycles and components often (but not in this case) long before others even know it is the case. … Read more

The Firefly/PVD Serenity. After designing the new titanium road and mountain bike dropouts for they guys at Firefly Bicycles in Boston, it was time for my payback. A nice titanium mountain bike. Of course, the design of the bike would be as specific as the dropout designs. I had a vision of exactly what I … Read more

My new bike is going together. More on that later… Working on PF30 for the first time is not going well. I’m a known BB92 guy. I know it’s the best way of doing things. The world, it seems, doesn’t agree with me. Thus, PF30 is taking over. Grrr… The new bike has a PF30 … Read more