Some Of My Bikes

It has been a long time since my last post.  I have not been riding as much in the last two years as before.  But I have made a few changes to my bicycles.  So here are a few photos.

Here are two photos of my Salso Cassarol.  I am running a SRAM I-Motion 9 speed internal hub gear on this bike.  I switched it to Albatross bars about a year ago.  I am enjoying the more upright position this gives me.

This is my Trek 800.  I rebuilt it into a great utility bike.  It had Titec H bars and now I have some vintage steel Schwinn cruiser handle bars on it.  Very comfortable.

This is my Fuji Espree fixed gear.  I have had it for 14 years now and just recently made some adjustments and swapped out the saddle to a more comfortable model.

This is my Kalkoff.  It was an early 70s' ten speed.  It is now a single speed and I use this often when I ride transit into or around Dallas.  It is a good bike but looks beat up.

 My mountain bike.  Seven gears on a Diamond Back Topanga frame.  Fun

Re-Locating Cantilever Brake Studs

Recently I started a project on my daughters bike.  She has a Trek MT 220 mtb with 24 inch wheels.  This bike is built like a tank.  It came with a cheap Suntour suspension fork.  It just seemed like this fork was a lot of extra weight (about 5 lbs) to haul around when she mainly rides around the back yard or on neighborhood streets.  Sometimes we ride on some of the various bicycle trails in the area also.

 I started looking on line for suspension corrected forks for 24 inch wheel cycles.  I did not find any.  So I looked through my collection of bicycle forks.  The axle to crown measurement of a cro-mo cyclocross fork that I had came close.  But in the end I decided to use the steel fork from my old Diamondback Topanga 26 inch wheel mountain bike that I used to have.  I had scrapped the frame but held on to the fork.  The axle to crown on this fork was a little short but the fork was much lighter than the cross fork. I may use the cross fork on another bike later.

  This DB fork has a one inch threaded steerer on it.  My daughters Trek has a 1 1/8 inch dia. head tube and came with a 1 1/8 inch threaded steerer on the suspension fork .  I remembered a friendly bike shop owner had once told me that some product was made that allowed you to install a one inch headset into a 1 1/8 inch head tube.  I couldn't remember what this was but after a little internet research  I came up with a set of shims that press into the 1 1/8 inch head tube then you press in the one inch head set cups and races.

 I ordered the shims and knew we were in business.  One major issue remained what to do about the front brakes.  The fork I was going to use had been for a 26 inch wheeled mountain bike from before the days of suspension forks.  I knew that I would have to move the cantilever brake mounting studs down lower on the fork blades in order to have the brakes work with a 24 inch wheel. I figured out how much to move them down.  It ended up being about 26mm lower that I needed to move them.  So I cut the studs off the fork being sure to measure the distance from the crown to the center of the studs before I did so.

  Then I welded them back on the fork blades at a distance from the fork crown 26mm further away than they had been mounted in the 26 inch wheel position.  I used a TIG welder to do this.  I also made a plate with holes in it to space the studs the proper distance apart and hold them in place while I welded them back on.

  Once I finished the fork I was able to install a one inch headset into the frame and installed the fork.  The bike is several pounds lighter now and also seems to handle a bit better.  With the suspension fork the bike seemed a little raked back like a chopper motorcycle.  The V brakes installed just fine and work well on the new fork.

Light Mounts From Brake Parts

I have been slowly putting my new Velo Orange Randoneur  bike together over the past year.   I have not been in a hurry to get it on the road because I have other good bicycles to ride and as a result I  have not been motivated to get this one going.  About a year ago I saw a picture somewhere on the net where a person had used a piece of a center pull brake to make a mount for a headlight that attached to the front rack on the bicycle.  I liked this idea.  I used one on the new bike using the backing plate from an old Dia Compe centerpull brake.  Recently Bike Tinker had a post about such light mounts.  You can read that post here:

   http://www.biketinker.com/2011/projects/brake-arm-light-mount-extension/ 

Here is a picture of my setup attached to a Velo Orange front rack.  I may move the light over to the left hand side of the rack.

Bday weekend rides

I had a couple of good rides this weekend.  Sat I did a ride with my bike club the Pennyrile area Cyclists.  Five of us went out on a 50 mile ride starting in Madisonville Ky.  We had some light rain for the first half of the ride or so.  Also had some head wind.  I ended up peeling off and heading for home a different way Getting about 64 miles in all.  Sun afternoon Brad, David H. and I rode one of our loops from Nortonville.  We had some light drizzle at times.  I rode my fixed gear bike for the first time in a while.  It was a blast to charge up the hills as hard as I could and then spin down fast on the other side.  We got in about 20 miles on this ride.

Birthday ride.

Today is my birthday so I thought I would celebrate it by going for a ride.  I rode from my house in Nortonville Ky to Princeton Ky .  I met the family there at a pizza resturaunt that we enjoy.  The ride basically followed US 62 the whole way.  Traffic was light today.  And the weather was beautiful.   Blue sky and puffy white clouds.  There are several good sized hills along this route.  And they were enjoyable to ride up and fly down.  The ride was about 30 miles.  My bike of choice for this ride was my Campy Denali.  I ended up having some front derailer shifting issues.  It did not like going into the big ring.  I will have to look at that and see what is going on.

First Post

This will be my blog to post my thoughts of bicycling.