Renegades of Dirt!!!

Who are the Renegades of Dirt? Crusty and I are the Renegades of Dirt. Well at least we were in 2004 and 2005 when we won the RIM (Rapure in Misery) 12-hour DUO Mountain Bike Race.

In 2005 I rode a Bianchi Grizzly to victory. I'm now going to rob the parts off it to put on the frame I just built.


One interesting note. When put in the BB in my new frame, then put on the right crank arm, and put on the left crank arm, only to find the left crank arm pinned against the BB Ring? My immediate reaction is . . . WHAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaat! . . .

Unlike the rest of 99% of mountain bike frames, I guess Bianchi decided to use 68mm bottom brackets on their frames. For those that don't know 68mm is for road, and 73mm is for a MTB . . . typically.

. . . typicaly 73mm for a MTB. So I had to shake down Midwest Cyclery looking for a Square taper 73mm x 12omm Bottom bracket. I found one. . . Yea1
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Here are some other pictures. "Alex can I take Curvy seatstays and chainstay for $100?"

Hmmmmmm

The DISC Brake tab is intersting .

Yea I'm not sure what to say.

Gotta love the 3rd bottle cage mount. Not that I'd actually use it. The problem for me is it puts the water bottle right behind the front tire, thus catching all the dirt, mud, & What-not from the front tire. However it make a good place to mount a Blackburn mini pump I guess.

What it's made of. Bianchi Spec'd, Dedaccia, Zero Uno. When it's all said and done, it's a really light frame.

Paint!

The inspiration for the build. The SE, STR-1 (Stu Thompson Replica)

I thought about all kinds of paint schemes, but I stayed true to the vision. I can't see it any other way.

For $2 for and paper, $3 for primer, & $4 for paint ($9.??), I thought it came out pretty good. Some people would have had it powder coated. Like I have alway maintained, it's just a project, practice, an experiment. So why waste $100+ painting an experiment. also I might not be done building on this frame yet. That right building, not working, but building . . . you'll all have to use your imagination.



Now you can see with a DISC tab how building it with a loop tail would have complicated things. I would have had to put the mount on the chainstay . . . or who knows.
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I still have to cut and slot the seat-tube. Hopefully it will be done tomorrow . . . as in assembled done.

The frame has no cloths?

I thought I'd take some pictures before it got dark. I'm still in the middle of going over it. Over and over, and . . .

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A picture from the back. I probably didn't need that cross brace on the seatstay, but I put it on anyway. Can never be too stiff . . . Right?

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The water bottle braze-on braces. This was and endless source of entertainment.

The bottom of those tubes

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The bottom Bracket. With all these tubes you have to get creative when filing down the brass.

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Seat Stays, Seat-Tube, and my home made hydro brake cable mounts. I didn't have my camera when I was making these. A set of 4 took me around 3 hours. I took 2 pieces a square stock and started filing. It's a lot easier to just buy them. Not only that it's a lot less work you have to do. To say I'm burned out on working on this is close. Every detail you add is just more work you have to do. Take for instance the braze at the top and seat tube. Sure i could have spent more time making it look nicer, but It's just getting painted over, and as long as it make a smooth transition who knows. It's like to get to the point I'm make brass rings, but I'm sure it'll come as long as I keep practicing.

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Ahhhh . . . brake tab.

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The Bottom bracket and the chainstay brace. You thinking witht the clearance so tight how did he get a brace in. I had a problem. With 2.7" tires the front deraileur would hit the tire in the small ring, so I had to make the stays longer putting the rear tire all the way behind the front deraileur.

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This was the best Bottom Bracket I've done . . . Progress

The brass on the downtube look funny.

This is what the inside of the headtube looks like after reaming it out. My guess turned out to workout. I thought I was going to have to take a lot more out.

All in all I've learned to be a bit more patient. Sometimes less is more, and what I mean is making more work for yourself is just making more work for yourself. or maybe put another way is . . . Sometimes you find yourself wasting time working on something cosmetic, instead or working on something that could really use your attention.

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I think my brazing still has a ways to go, but I think it's better than some production frames I've seen . . . believe that or not.

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Well . . . Time to paint.

Done brazing . . . Finally

. . . but first, David Belle the man of action.


To do the braze-ons (Cable stops & such) I'm using Silver. Silver melts at a lower temperature. It's also more expensive. but flows so nice . . . So I've heard. If your going to experiment for the first time, why not let it be on a frame your working on for the last 3 months


Water Bottle bosses fluxed and ready to go


Gone and went. I got it a little too hot. A little goes a long way. and it does flow nice.

January Ride Report by Proxy

In the 30's and 40's for a January Night . . . Not bad. Rather than reinvent the wheel on the ride report. I'll direct you to Crusty.

http://crustyspov.blogspot.com/2009/01/ze-rideland.html




. . . and to answer K's Kwestion.
1 Let It Die Foo Fighters
2 Pretender Foo Fighters
3 Learn To Fly Foo Fighters
4 Wake Up Rage Against the Machine
5 There there. Radiohead
6 Be There (Feat Ian Crown) Unkle
7 Keep What Ya Got [Album Version] Ian Brown
8 I Will Possess Your Heart Death Cab For Cutie
9 Thinking About You Ivy
10 Worry About You Ivy
11 The Carnival Is Over Dead Can Dance
12 Gravel Road Clutch
13 Step Up Drowning Pool
14 Peace Sells Megadeth
15 Wire U2
16 Disarm The Smashing Pumpkins
17 Bloodstains Agent Orange
18 I'm Tired Of Life T.S.O.L.
19 That's When I Reach For My Revolver Mission of Burma
20 Understand Your Man Johnny Cash
21 Jackson Johnny Cash, June Carter Cash, Johnny Cash, June Carter
22 Follow Your Bliss The B-52's
23 Ventura Highway America

The Tab is on

After a week or two I have something thats going to work. It's not perfect, but it works and I can live with that. This is the 4th tab I had fabricated. The other three I tried to design, so if you got a flat tire, you would not have to take the caliper off. However I decided to stick with the 40mm, 78mm, 51mm triangle. to do that the slots have to run parallel to the dropout.

Notice one bungle. The caliper could hit the top tab when push all the way forward. In fact to get it to work with the wheel all the way forward in a dropout, I had to file a contour giving the caliper about 1mm clearance. The caliper is not all the way forward in the slots, and I guess it doesn't need to be to clear.

Notice one bungle. The caliper could hit the top tab when push all the way forward. In fact to get it to work with the wheel all the way forward in a dropout, I had to file a contour giving the caliper about 1mm clearance. The caliper is not all the way forward in the slots, and I guess it doesn't need to be to clear.

Well nothing rubs, the brakes work, and nothing makes noise. . . . On to the next

Ride January 17

Start at Benetti's
http://www.benettiscoffee.com/
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Ride to here
http://rheinlandrestaurant.com/
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Then back to here
http://www.benettiscoffee.com/
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I figure we won't really leave till 4:30 or so, I have high hopes.Then we'll have Dinner in Independence Square at the Rheinland.Experience Sausage, Beer and Tubas. Yes a real German band will beplaying Polkas and such.Who's in? I think it's only a 12 mile ride from the coffee shop to the restaraunt. So coming back won't be that bad . . . You've all had worse I hope.

Good Grief! DISC Tabs!

Talk about reinventing the wheel. You would think fabricating a DISC brake tab would be easy. It is if you are planning a frame for just gears. However I have chosen to have a frame to accept gears and go single speed. Single speed with horizontal dropouts. The ideal mount will allow you to remove the wheel without taking the brake caliper off. After a week of plotting and planning I've come to the conclusion sending $10 to http://www.bikelugs.com/ for one of these

is well worth the headache. Also I anticipate $150 for The Anvil "Feng Shui Baby" ISO Rear Disc Brake Tab Fixture

will be worth it if I had more than one frame to build. Heck I might even have to break down for this frame.

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I don't remember where I got this picture, but I think this might be where I'm heading when i'm do. Right now I've got to go get some plate and start again.

Good to know I'm not alone. View the angst

http://frameforum.org/forum3/index.php?topic=1019.0

Also here's all you need to know about the DISC Brake standards
http://www.hayesdiscbrake.com/support_downloads.shtml