What's new?

Been busy being busy. Hopfully I'll get on track with the road frame soon.

However I have been finding time to sneek in a few rides on the MTB.


I'm not going to say I have better luck either way. I was riding up the street when some debris with my back wheel, and popped my tire. I looked back and there were 2 razor blades. Did 2 razor blades blow from the side of the road right into my tire? Don't know, either way I've got a flat tire.

Not a lot a spare tube can do in this situation. Because if you put in a tube, and air it up, the tube will come right through that hole. To prevent the tube from going through the hole, you can put a dollar bill inside the tire over the hole. The dollar bill is strong enough the prevent the tube from poking through. Depending on the size of the hole, you might need to protect the dollar bill from the road. So you need to take the old tube and cut strip covering the hole, and covering the dollar bill.

That looks like the inner tube is poking through, but that just the old inner tube strips. under neither is the dollar bill that is holding the tube in. Yea it's not perfect, but it made it 8 miles home, and maintained 90psi.

A day for the Snow Bike

What am I wining about the snow for? I have a snow bike! I mounted the 2.7" tires and hit the road. I found 2.7" tires at 30psi do everything I want them to do. On the snow I was even able to learn into the turns. If you have ever ridden on snow before you know how sometime the snow will grab your tire. I didn't experience any of that. I was able to ride where I wanted. I might get wider rims
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However ice is still ice, and snow is snow. to get traction on ice you need studs.

http://www.peterwhitecycles.com/studdedtires.asp
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While I was out, a passing neighbor was so enamored with my riding skill, he allowed me to pluck one from his case of Heineken .

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A thin line between Snow and Ice.

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Ice Train!

In the snow you would think I would get more honks from motorist because I'm "Riding on their Roads". But I found a lot of people will cheer you on. Usually if you pass people who are standing off to the side of the road you will hear "Go bike Man"! This was the same way this summer when gas went to $5 a gallon when I was "Sticking it to the man".

Ass . . . embled

Have you had enough of this bike yet? I know I have. I thought I post pics of the bike assembled.

Plenty of seatstay tire clearance.

Chainstay clearance is right at tolerance. I still might dimple them to give some more clearance. Good this it's painted with Krylon.

More than enough rotor clearance.

Too much crank clearance. That's because I could only find a 120mm spindle instead of 110.

But will bringing the crank in 5mm cause a problem with the granny/Chainstay clearance? . . . I did mention I was going to dimple the chainstays right?

The disc tab is in order.

Downtubes . . . that's right plural . . . tubes!

Midwest Cyclery . . . Where the magic happens. Well at least all the facing, chasing, aligning, and checking. I should have made that a blog entry, maybe next time.

Just enough fork clearance. Like I said, I might have gotten lucky by not being able to get 3.0" tires.

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.

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

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

Slowly but Surely

With the Holidays and all it's goings ons, work on the frame has been slow. Today I got the seat stays on. I still need to add the cable stops, some braces, and Brake Tab. Then the clean-up begins. I started doing some of it to get a good look at what I've done. So far so good.