35. A BOX OF METAL STUFF...

I am conscious of the fact that my titles may be getting a tad unimaginative....

I got a box in the mail yesterday that was chock a block full of this..

....look at all that stuff. Mmmmm – stuff.

Before you ask – the blue handled thing to the left is not actually going to be a part of the bike, but is required to attach other bits that will be part of the bike, to the bike. This is obviously an area that could easily have caught one not so prepared as myself unawares – it turns out many of the things you need to do in the construction of a bicycle require tools specifically designed for that job and that job alone (though I suppose I could re-task this one as a makeshift club or something...).

I am assuming this is part of some frightfully well planned plot on the part of the Bicycle Mechanics World Wide Brotherhood to ensure their services are not easily done away with. There are a couple of tools I have come across that go into the $400-$500 mark (that it is not my intention to purchase by the way). Trick for new players.

I ordered all this stuff from an online outfit in England who were considerably cheaper than any of the other places I had a look at and even do free postage if you order over $99.00 worth of gear (something I’m outstandingly good at co-incidentally).

This is a practice that is the subject of quite a lot of discussion in the bicycle press currently, with the argument being put forward by many, that we (by which they mean – ‘I’) should be giving our business to local bike shops instead of feeding the insatiable and growing appetite of the ravenous beast that is online retailing. I do feel a little bit guilty about this (my wallet less so) which is convenient as it allows me to utilise the discussion of that guilt as the subject for another blog - everyone is a winner....except the local bike shop.

One of the downfalls of online shopping is that you don’t get to check the thing you’re buying before you leave the shop with it. A risk that has unfortunately been illustrated by the inclusion of a chain ring in my box o goodies that is different to the one I ordered. As a result I have two 34 tooth chainrings instead of a 34 and a 36.

So now I get to find out how good this particular online retailer is at customer service when it doesn’t involve me giving them money.

Should be a hoot.

Next: The ethical quandary that is online shopping.

34. PEDALS. COMPLICATED? WHO WOULD OF THOUGHT?

I know. Flat things that you stick your feet on and go round and round. That’s about as complicated as putting on a shirt right?

Well thankfully, for the sake of this last minute Monday morning post, the wonderful world of cycling has endeavoured to make it a bit more complicated than that. Please observe.

...now that I look at it, I could have labelled these in a more logical sequence but as the overall effect is to increase the confusion you all might feel, I will go ahead and pretend that it was my intention from the beginning to allow you to feel some of the ‘what the hell’ I got to experience when I started to look into what I thought would be a comparatively simple part of the bike assembly process.

The pedal at ‘B’ is what I have had on my various bikes since the first road bike I got back in the 80’s. Manually tightened toe clips that hung down whenever you took your foot out and were quite often a right pain in the arse to get your foot back into when pulling out at the lights or whatever. While they did anchor your foot to the pedal allowing you to pull up a little on the ‘up’ pedal (a phenomena I have since read is a load of bollocks) they also made it difficult to remove your foot, especially if you did them up tight, leading to some quite comical - 'Ooh look at him. Is he going to fall over? Yes he has!!' – moments.

At ‘C’ we have the pedals the rest of the serious cycling world moved into quite some time go. They are somewhat bizarrely called ‘clipless pedals’. I say bizarrely because the deal with these is that you actually clip your foot into the pedals via cleats screwed into the bottom of your shoes as illustrated in picture ‘A’ with an allegedly effortless, once you get used to it, twisting motion...I am assured.

Road cyclists with any kind of self respect whatsoever would not be seen dead without a pair of these and biomechanically these things give you all sorts of advantages and there’s physics and graphs and all sorts of shit to prove EVERYTHING baby LOOK just put them on your bike or you’re a total loser.

Despite those well put arguments - I have some issues with these pedals.

Firstly – it still seems to me I am nailing my foot to the pedal and I am not yet good enough on unstable terrain to give up my God given option to put a foot down really quickly. Secondly – using these means wearing the fancy shoes and clicking about everywhere whenever you aren’t on the bike like a dirt covered, entirely lost, tap dancer and I’m not sure that’s entirely me.

So I have elected to pay attention to the one or two articles I have found that say riding with flat pedals like these...

Shimano Saint MX80 flat pedals (I assume you get two in the box..)

 ...is entirely the go if you want to perfect your pedalling technique, gain more confidence in tricky situations, become less reliant on the fact your foot is nailed to the bike when bunny hopping etc and be able to walk around quietly in the relatively normal shoes you get to wear (though I should point out you still get the excuse to buy shoes with special ‘sticky’ rubber soles to maximise your flat pedal effectiveness).

Next: Hopefully – attaching the bits that surely have arrived by now....

33. WHAT THE **** IS A CHAIN DEVICE?

I know, I know. Sounds a bit weird and despite all the magazines and forums and websites telling me otherwise I was initially dubious about the need for me to get one of these. But apparently, if you’re going to have a single chain ring up front then you need to get one of these..

 ...attached to your bike or as soon as you hit a bump your chain will fly off the ring, club you repeatedly about the head, empty out your bank accounts and strangle your entire family. That seemed like a bad thing so...yeah. On a normal bike with more than one ring and a front derailleur and everything the chain is kept from wreaking this bloody havoc by the derailleur cage as seen here...

That's the derailleur sitting up above the round thing with lots of teeth on it. Really should clean my bike more often...

Once you get rid of that (the derailleur I mean) you need something else to guide the chain onto and off the chainring. So – chainguide. Which, when attached, will look something like this...

Except mine is black (see above). There's a little wheel in the white thing down the bottom that helps the chain run around without hassles..

 It’s just pictures galore today. There are other options of course. Some are bigger and have bashplates for ‘soaking up the hits’ which sounds quite worrying if you ask me. Some are smaller. A company call SRAM (pronounced um, SRAM) which is quite the major player in the bicycle world, has recently released a dedicated 1x11 drivechain (as in 1 ring up front and 11 out back which of course means all the cycling press get to make absolutely HILARIOUS Spinal Tap references all over the place) that claims not to need a chain guide at all, but it costs an absolute SHITload more than I am currently willing to fork out.

And if, once I get it all going, it seems to me that I don't need a top and bottom guide, I can just remove the bottom bit. Which is a preferable option to buying a top guide only and finding out I really needed the whole shebang.  

Plus. I've never been accused of not overengineering the hell out of everything. Check out our 70 ton solid hardwood cubbyhouse if you have any doubt.

Next: Pedals: More complicated than you would think....

32. TELL US WHAT’S BEHIND THE DOOR KEN....

500 words on Chainsets and ring sizes.....GO.

Right. This....

...is the drivechain on my current bike. If you look closely (or alternatively click on the picture so you can see it in all its slightly larger glory) you will see that it has 3 sprockets (or chainrings) up front and 7 count ‘em 7 on the back. This gives me a total of 21 gears with which I may either grind my way breathlessly up the mightiest incline or propel myself at breakneck speed in the direction opposite to that.

Sounds impressive yes? But wait. Most modern mountainbikes of even half decent quality have at least 9 rings on the back and up to 3 on the front for a total of 27 gears. Stick a 10 ring cassette on the back and it’s 30.

You should take a second to be suitably impressed by this...

The front chain ring I have just ordered is this one...

...a cursory examination of which will reveal it has 1 ring up front. Now it is my plan to have a 10 speed cassette on the back but this still leaves me with only 10 gears to play with.

While recognising that most of my usual readership are even NOW saying - 'Whatever. Please return to posting embarrassing photos of yourself as a child?’ - at this point, I feel I need firstly, to post an embarrassing picture of myself as a child

...and then to explain – I do have a rationale.

See 30 gears sounds like a lot, but in reality you only really end up using a few of them most of the time. As an experiment, I have been riding around for the last month using only the middle ring up front to simulate what it might be like to run a 1x10 drivetrain and haven’t found it that difficult. The only time I’ve felt the need to slip down into the very lowest gears (aka the Granny Gears) was on my most recent unsuccessful attempt to climb the first hill on the way up to Finchley Trig. I still didn’t make it and frankly don’t think the use of any gear that isn’t located in a car towing me up that particular hill would have made any difference.

Which still doesn’t explain why I wouldn’t just go for a triple or double ring setup anyway and have the gears just in case, especially since they don’t cost that much more than the single ring I’ve ordered once you include the price of a chain device (explanation COMING SOON to a blog near you) and the extra ring I ended up buying to give me a 34 teeth option that more closely matches what I currently use on the Mongoose (teeth - as in the number of teeth on the chain ring – less teeth up front = easier lowest gear).

So why? I will tell you. It means I can do away with a front derailleur (the thing that moves the chain up and down the front chainrings) plus it’s associated cabling and levers. Likewise the 2 extra chainrings. It should reduce weight (though admittedly I could achieve more efficient weight loss by not sinking quite so many beers and/or cheesy toasted sandwiches). It eliminates the need to be shifting up and down the front rings which is more efficient and less traumatising for the poor chain. And I’ll be a man about it – I reckon it’ll look cooler. 

If it means I have to work a bit harder getting up the hills then that’s kind of the point of doing all this exercise in the first place and I should just HARDEN UP and get on with it. Right? Right.

I suspect it works in my favour that my current bike is so old I’m kind of used to working with less gears than the total wussbags that are used to 25 gram bike weights and 87 gears anyway.

Next: Explaining more shiny bits....

31. ENTIRELY NOT BRAIN SCIENCE.

Pedals and stuff. Keen followers of the Blog (that’s 6 people that I know and a whole lot of people from Russia according to the statistics supplied to me by Google) will know that I recently took possession of the frame that will form the skeleton of the bike it is my intention to build.

So I’ve now gazed lovingly at its beautifully formed lines and curves for a couple of weeks, dealt with the inevitable nagging guilt that is associated with any purchase over a certain amount that cannot be eaten, employed in the creation of income or the completion of the house and finally started to realise just how far from a complete bike it is.

As it’s not my intention to buy all the bits at once on the grounds that the arrival of it all in one chunk would possibly make my head explode in shocked horror, the question is – which bits should I get first?

The temptation here is to go for a set of wheels, purely on the grounds that the addition of said wheels would go the furthest towards making the two triangles of steel I currently have, look most like a bike in the shortest amount of time. Of course it would be a bike without a means of steering, stopping or propelling which is not much of a bike at all, but still. I eventually decided against this option on a number of grounds (besides the inability to steer/stop/propel I mean).

Firstly, it would cost a lot. Not just for the wheels, but for the fork and headset that I would also need to get to attach the front wheel to the frame. I do note that this is a cost that I will inevitably have to outlay at some point and that my reasoning here is not something I want to shine the bright light of logical thought onto. But right now, I’m having enough of an issue dealing with the reality of my expenditure up to this point so I reckon psychologically I could use a break.

Similarly, the sheer size represented by two wheels and a fork is a bit intimidating. Just the box it would no doubt arrive in would just scream ‘Oh this is fully serious now you idiot! What were you thinking?.....Moron.' I get enough of this kind of thing from actual living organisms and do not need it from an inanimate box (however large and well built) as well.

I suspect the main reason however is the hack sawing. See, an inevitable part of the attachment of the forks to the frame is the cutting of the fork tube to fit (assuming I don’t want to go for what would be a fairly absurd and impractical extreme dragster look that would entail the use of a seriously ridiculous number of spacers). And that’s not something I can afford to screw up. So I’m thinking I might get into that once I have convinced myself, even a little bit, that my mechanical aptitude is up to the task. So not right now then.

And that’s why I ended up buying this lot....

Next: What exactly ‘this lot’ is....

17. SHOPPING LIST....

Special bonus post (which is why it’s appearing on a Tuesday night instead of on the usual release schedule) – Below is a list of the bits and pieces that I need to get to build a complete bike.  As I get the bits it is my plan to expand on the basic descriptions that you will find below....so I guess this post could get pretty big.....stay tuned.

FRAME

Stanton Slackline 853

CHAINSET/DRIVETRAIN

Crankset

Chain Device

Pedals

Bottom Bracket (BB)

Rear Mech

Cassette

Shifters

Chain

WHEELS

Front

Back

STEERING

Forks

Grips

Stem

Headset

Handlebars

BRAKES

Front

Rear

Rotors

THE SITTING DOWN ON IT BIT

Seatpost

Saddle

Seatclamp

Chapter 8: THE KNEE BONE’S CONNECTED TO THE...ISCG 05 MOUNTED E THIRTEEN LG1 TRAIL CHAIN DEVICE....

I like living out in the sticks. I really do. You won’t even catch me bitching too much about the complete lack of mobile phone reception or the two, count ‘em two satellite dishes I need stuck on my roof to ensure I can watch TV and access the internet (at the glacially fast speeds and ridiculously uncompetitive prices supplied to me by the Optus Satellite Broadband division). 

I knew where I was moving when I asked the bank for the money and I would like to think I am not the kind of person who, for example, might buy a unit right next to an iconic Sydney family entertainment landmark and then demand they pull down the roller coaster that was sitting, right there, underneath my balcony when I did my final inspection.

Does make it difficult to shop around though. See, while you can’t walk a hundred meters along Clarence Street in Sydney without stumbling over a bicycle shop, the most you’re going to stumble over walking a couple of hundred meters down one of our roads is a dead and rapidly decomposing piece of the local wildlife.

Happily for me (not so much for the local retail industry) we have – The INTERNET. Seriously, you can buy just about anything on that baby. And not just buy either. There are literally hundreds of people just waiting to help you out with any questions you may have about just about any aspect of just about anything.

Admittedly, there are quite a few more people just waiting to call you an idiot and compare your intelligence to that of prehistoric oxygen generating bacteria for having the temerity to be unaware of the difference between a 1 1/8’ and a 1 1/8’ to 1.5’ tapered head tube but fuck it - it’s not like I’m ever going to meet these people in the street right? And besides, if you don’t feel comfortable asking the questions yourself you can be pretty sure that someone has asked the question before you did and that someone else has already answered it.

Putting aside the unfortunate ease with which it is possible to make sometimes ill advised impulse purchases at 4 in the morning, the whole thing is just genius.

The short version goes – I need to pick a frame. ClicketyClickClick. Readread....read. That looks cool. Short email discussion with the very helpful Dan at Stanton Bikes in England (anyone who says the internet is killing customer service is shopping in the wrong part of the internet). I present to you – The Stanton Slackline 853 in Electric Blue...

 



as soon as I save up just a little bit more money.

NEXT: Bikes I have known No.2.