Sunday, July 10, 2011

10 @ Kirroughtree

Too old, too unfit, too slow. Any excuse will do.

Two of undertook 10 @ Kirroughtree and managed four laps. Poor. I can't even bring myself to go on typing...

I blame the midgies.

Stats
Date: 09/07 2011
Position: 76th out of 83
Pedaling time: 8 hours 22 minutes but much of that involved the timing chip sitting in the sun
Distance: Just over 10 miles per lap
Number of laps completed: 5 (although we can only remember doing 4 :p)
Fastest lap time: 22 minutes (ahem... dodgy timing chip?)
Slowest lap time: 2 hours 20 minutes (see above?)
Puncture count: 1
Bike shop: At the car park
Cafe: Excellent hog roast
Riders: AS and DH

Friday, June 10, 2011

Boing boing!


Old shox buggered, £90 to get them even looked at, and I need my lockout for the 10 at KT from nofuss events so.....these arrived today.
£180 2nd hand but are in really good nick.
Looking forward to fitting them when I get back from holibags.
W00t!

Friday, May 13, 2011

The price of it all...

funny how these things seem cheap at the time but soon mount up. Failed to keep it <£500, think it is about £530. Curses... Dont tell the wife.

frame £80
headset £20
chain £15
headset spacers £2.50
brake mount £6
saddle £22
gear cables £7
outers £7
pedals £20
shocks £50
rotors £13
seatpost £19
rear wheel £40
rear mech £14
brakes/gears £65
bar/stem £30
front wheel £40
xt chainset £80

Build a Bike - Part something

oooh, time marches on doesnt it?

sunny as well, and the garage isn't quite so damp and dark, to time to press on to the brakes.

Easy enough to mount on the handlebars obviously, then just route the cables to the mounts. So the rear kinda takes care of itself, however the front presented a bit of a snag. It appears (unknown to me) that there are two types of brake mount: post mount, and IS mount.

here is a wee picture


you know what is coming next, my forks were IS mount, but the brakes Post mount. all is not lost however, a handy adapter saved the day.

Ta da!

That led to this


which in turn leads to


You'd think that would be it , but the pads were too far to one side, scraping the rotor, and making a definite noise they shouldn't do. They would work ok if the calipers were unscrewed slightly, but that isnt something we want to do on brakes is it? The trick turned out to screw the caliper on at the same time as holding the brake lever. Easy when you know how...Nice wee rear shot for you (pfnarr)


So, not much left to do apart from gears, ooh and the chain.Had new get new cables and outers, so plumped for these, I am indeed last of the big spenders. New outers from ebay for a similarly high price!All I needed to do was do a bit of cutting the outers so they fitted and routed the cable, no fuss at all. Odd...

New bike - new chain says I. SRAM jobbies, so it comes with powerlink which are really quite nifty.

http://www.chainreactioncycles.com/Models.aspx?ModelID=9911

Chains are normally too big by design so to get the size right you fit the chain over the largest rear sprocket and largest front. Oddly you don't thread it though the rear derailleur when sizing . Dunno why. that was what the book said anyway.I also popped on the front derailleur. again nothing too scientific just lined it up by eye. Somehow I think this fairly haphazard method wont work long term.

So put chain on, it was far too big dangling all over the place, so I just removed some links (think it was about 5) until it "looked good". Yup, that scientific. Re-break it, then put it through derailleur and pedal like stink. And find that the gears slip all the time....

Another quick look at the book said cable tension too slack, fixed by just turing the barrell a couple of times. Heh Heh...

So,we are almost at the end of our story. We are good to go apart from the seat. Could get a nasty surprise if we forgot that eh? Bargain off forums time again! £20...ok that innit. SDG. Tres posh.

Well it would be if it would fit into this

Lesson 2) (to be filed beside different brake mounts), is that you get different saddle mounts too, so check before you buy, Ibeam (the saddle I got) and the old fashioned rails. Dohhh...

Back to shopping (last time surely?) for this

http://www.wiggle.co.uk/charge-spoon-saddle-with-cromo-rails

so, that then leaves us with........


Ithankyouverymuch.... (takes bow). Well it certainly looks like a bike anyway.

Test ride next week methinks, lets hope those brakes hold.... Will also produce a price list to see how much I have put down the pan.

Thursday, April 28, 2011

Bithdays and Berms

The big 4-0 arrived for for one of The Rusty Chain today so a day at Glentress seemed a fitting way to spend it. With not a cloud in the sky and the sun beating down (yes really), seven hours out on the dusty trails was a great way to get the first visits to the 7stanes this year under our belts.


A quick coffee at The Hub and then it was a huff and puff up from the Trailhead to Buzzard's Nest Car Park, and then onto the Red Route and up, up, up to the top of Spooky Wood for some birthday flapjack in the sun. To be honest we could have quite happily sat taking in the views and topping up the tans for a few hours but then again the Spooky Wood Descent was literally just round the corner.


Being a bit rusty Spooky Woods was left behind in no record breaking times and it was down the Red Route and back to the Hub for lunch.


The afternoon saw a trip to the Freeride Park and included a ride down Glentress' latest addition, Berm Baby Berm. It's only been open a week and not yet marked on the official trail map but you find it just after you cycle past the North edge of the Freeride Park. As the Forestry Commission put it this new bit of the Blue Route is "700m of bermy, flowy, occasionally jumpy and pumpy singletrack to take you from the exit of Blue Velvet back to the Buzzards Nest carpark. It replaces the forest road descent and will hopefully put a smile on your face."


It was nice and fast flowing, with a surface that was more like a skateboard park than a forest trail but then again there can't be many that have riden it before we did. Nice to see those Trail Fairies have done Glentress proud once more!


Riders: DH (age 39) and AS (age 40)

Tuesday, March 22, 2011

The Cyclotrope

OK not really one from The Rusty Chain but what to do? Build a bike or make an entertaining wee film using the bits lying around?


Created and animated by Tim Wheatley, the cyclotrope is a cycle of 18 images spinning at a certan speed so that the frame rate of the camera filming it gives the illusion of animation. To see more head over to Tim's blog at thecyclotrope.blogspot.com​


Hope DH doesn't get any ideas...

Thursday, February 24, 2011

Time to Get Out and About

The weather's not great but it's time to get back out on the bike after an extended lay off since the snow (and associated unhealthy living) arrived at the tail end of last year.


Why the panic? Well ever since someone signed us up for 10 @ Kirroughtree a few hours ago it suddenly seems like a good idea to put foot to pedal.

OK, so it'll be less brutal than Relentless 24 but a 10 hour mountain bike round Galloway Forest Park at the start of June (that's like only 3 months away) needs some sadle time pronto.

Just glad I don't need to finish building my bike first.

Wednesday, February 23, 2011

BAB - bottom brackets and crankset

Continuing on then... its time for the BB.

As usual with these things, there are various different types of BB and sizes you need to get. Easy enough to measure what you need. I plumped for a 2nd hand shimano integrated type below (a BB70) to be precise.

Here is it here:



Boring innit. So to start with I applied a good dab of anti-seize lube into the BB shell. The two parts of the BB are labelled L and R and also tell you which way to screw them in, which is handy.



You obviously get fleeced for another type of spanner for this mind you....

So once those were in and screwed nice and tight, its time for the cranks. A wee bargain these off the STW forums. XT. quite posh for me.


Now this was easy. You just pop em through one side (give em a bash with a hammer) and attach the other crank arm to the spindle, and tighten it with a wee nut thing that came with the cranks.


Jobs a good un!

Next time we shall get into the meat of it, and start installing the anchors!

L8rs...

Friday, February 11, 2011

Steering Bit

k then....

Lets get on with this shall we?

First bit I decided to put on was the handlebars bit. The thing you hang onto ya?

Before you connect em up though, you need to insert the fork, and for that you need a headset on the bike. This wee bit of metal gives your forks a nice comfy feeling, basically you insert the forks into the headset (the are bits of the headset at either end of the headtube).

Shit spins round easy cause they have bearings or something like that.

Headsets are generally 1.1/8 these days, so I trotted off to CRC and got a nice cheap un. The FSA pig (oink oink) fitted the bill nicely (and the pocket).

All you get for that is a lot of wee circles like this, its fairly disappointing tbh.


Still its fairly obvious what bit goes where. As it was an FSA model, the crown race (the bit that goes over the forks, was split, and therefore piss easy to install), no need for any fancy tools, just drop it over the forks and tappy tappy down with a screwdriver. Tick in the box for mr FSA.

You plug these into the headtube, but they dont screw in, it is sheer grunt to get these buggers in. You need a tool, called a headset press. You can make em yourself, or buy one. I ended up doing both (durr) as for some reason I could get one in fine with my self-built effort but not the other side. A quick £30 down the tubes (this time at wiggle) sorted me right out. Hopefully I will be able to rent that tool out to some other chumps. ahem.


So once that was on, it was time to put on the stem, and the bars. Pop them on, and screw down the top bit of the headset. There is a wee screw inside the forks call the star nut that they attach to. My forks came with it in already, cause they were off some gypsy and second hand. If you are posh, you'll need to fit yer own.
So, to sum up we have so far:
  • forks
  • stem
  • bar
  • frame
Almost done with this bit, but need to get some headset spacers. The forks are currently 2cm or so too long, so some spacers will be needed to fully sort it out. or it will look a bit shonky. And we can't have that.
There ye go. Next time, bottom bracket time. I can't wait. Can you?

Project B-A-B is gooooo!

BAB ye say?

Build a bike of course. Simplz, or not as I am sure will be the case.

I have this lurking in the back of the garage:


plus a load of other metal bits to stick onto it. The white thing, not the red kayak you chump....

More to follow once the spanners come out.

Over and Out for now.

DH

Route Locations


View biking in a larger map