The nameless ride recce

Those who were in the Ratty Arms one Wednesday evening a few weeks ago will understand the video below more than most.

Needless to say - riding off road with road tyres is.....interesting.

Who's the April fool

Filmed in 720p

Hardknott - still snow bound.

We had a walk up Hardknott today.

A week after the snow and the pass is still well and truly closed. There are a few drifts on the first section up to the fort which will probably only last a couple more days. However the last section has significant drifting with the road pretty much lost in the snow. Unless it rains I can't see the pass being open for another couple of weeks.



Park just behind that ice burge.

 

I think they're trying to tell us something

Ellie holding back the snow.

 

Looking down towards the fort

 

End of the road



The hairpin on the last section above the fort

Right I've eaten all of the grass and the braken and I'm sick of eating snow!

Harter Fell, pretty alpine even at low level.

 

George's new bike

I'm not sure what it is about farmers, either good genetics or to much time outside. However they seem to excel at anything physical!. Here's a bike we're developing to try and slow them down a bit!

 

 

 

 

A break from road bike training.

Last weekend saw winter return with a vengeance! So for a nice change and to avoid the inevitable pain of peddling into rain at 1 deg C Andy and I headed to Whinlatter for a spot of Mountain biking.

I'm also in the middle of a challenge ('Strava' driven) to ride for 31 hours 51 mins in 16 days. So a nice easy day was the plan and to get a few miles/hours in. We did all the dedicated mountain bike trails (about 15 miles) before lunch (soup in the cafe) then headed up and over on the fire track to the West side of Whinlatter for another 5 mile loop.

Whinlatter has 2 man made mountain Bike trails, the red route that is split in two - North and South side, plus the blue route. All are really good riding, the red route has some serious climbing on both sides. There are also miles of Forest tracks to ride, I still don't think I've done them all!

Andy then left me to it to ride for another 3 hours while I tried to ride everything I could off road in Whinlatter, including the track up and onto Lords Seat. 40 miles later and a good few hours in the saddle I'd had enough!

The top of Lords Seat, mud now frozen to the bike!

I think it snowed lightly all day (well at least when it wasn't raining) we were however very lucky with the wind as we managed to be in the shelter most of the day.

I got back to the car as it was getting dark to see the Whinlatter Head Torch race set of from the other side of the Valley. It was very impressive seeing 40+ lights head up the fell at various different speeds.

Winter training with Andy 2013 2

Winter Training

With several challenges planned this year on the bike, its time to get fit ready for the spring.

Unfortunately this means riding, regardless of the weather, road conditions or temperature!

Winter training can be a lonely place, even when your riding with other people, when you have a bad day on a bad day you know about it!

Three things make this all worth while:

1) A bowl of soup at the cafe stop, after 50 miles at 0.5 deg C there is no gastronomical delight better than a warm bowl of soup or beans on toast or even better......... both.
2) Getting home and soaking in the bath while your fingers & toes thaw out.
3) When the temperature finally allows, leaving the training bike and all the lbs of added winter baggage behind for the first time and flying (relatively to the preceding few months) on your best road bike up that first climb. Its like being released from the clutches of an ice breathing dragon and pushed on your way all at the same time.

Heading to Port Carlisle

Duddon Estuary from Corney Fell

Honister pass.

West side of Thirlmere



Wasdale

There is actually one other thing that makes riding in the winter very satisfying, its not the quiet roads free from tourists, or the great views as the air at this time of year can be very dry giving great visability. It's not the feeling of getting fitter or the knowledge that next week (or maybe the week after...) it will get a little warmer, or even the colours of the snow and the dead bracken as the snowdrops start to appear. No its the fact that everyone else, who stay at home nice and warm, think your bloody bonkers!!! Which of couse...............you are.



Baptism of ice and water

On the road to Grasmere.

 

The snow hadn't all quite melted on the west side of Thirlmere today.

 

What had melted was creating large puddles with ice burgs floating on them!

 

 

 

The dogs... taking a rest.

An idiots guide to building a bike

 A guide by an idiot building a bike

Part Four: Gears

Well finally, after a few weeks wait, I've pretty much got all I need to finish the bike.

A few more bits.

The first thing I need to do, so I can get the saddle & bar heights right, is fit the chainset. I was going to get a full Campagnolo Centaur groupset but this Fulcrum carbon chainset is basically a cheaper re badged Centaur one that I think looks better. I think Campag' (and Fulcrum) are the only manufacturer that do a split crankshaft that bolts up in the middle. This leaves very clean crank arms with no bolts to collect the muck.

Fitted bearing shell.

Another move away from the norm is the fact that the bottom bracket bearings are not fitted in the shells but fitted to the crank arms. The shells are simply screwed into the frame with a special tool (luckily its the same tool that fits the Shimano external bottom brackets, which I have). Then all you do is slide the arms in from either side, fit a little spring clip on the drive side to hold the bearing in place and fit the centre bolt. This also needs a special tool as its a long 10 Allen key. Nothing that a hacksaw, a 10mm Allen key and a 10 mm socket won't fix. Then out with the torque wrench to tighten everything up correctly.

Chainset fitted

Modifications required from the start

Very early in the concept stage of this build I knew I would have a few issues to overcome. So none of the following were a surprise, just added to the challenge and the delivery times.

Cyclocross frames are designed for mud and to be carried over obstacles, so unlike normal road frames the gear cables are fitted on top of the top tube rather than under the main tube. This is all well and good until you try and fit gear designed for the road. My first problem was that all Campagnolo front derailleurs are designed to be pulled from the bottom (bottom pull). One solution is to fit a pulley below the front derailleur that changes the cable direction, these are not very aesthetically pleasing and a mud magnet. So along comes some simple but cleaver German engineering, an Umlenker from Speen.de. This little piece of stainless steel acts as a lever which changes the pivot point to allow a cable to pull from the top (top pull). It just bolts to the original cable clamp and allows the cable to be clamped at its end instead.

German Engineering at its simplest. The Umlenker

Fitted to the front mech.

All connected up.

My next problem was a compatibility issue with the rear gears. No one (well at least no one I've found) makes a disc compatible wheelset that take a Campagnolo cassette. Shimano and Campagnolo spacings on the rear cassettte are not quite the same. Its down to about 0.16 mm per cog, on a 10 speed set up this is 1.6mm total and makes the difference between perfect shifting and jumping gears. The solution for this is made in America, the Shift Mate.

Shift Mate

This simple device uses a double pulley that has two slightly different diameters, the cable enters the pulley on the larger side and goes right around the pulley, at the half way point it jumps to the smaller side and so changing the amount of cable pull. This allows for a Shimano compatible cassette to be used on a Campagnolo system.

Simple double pulley

Rear mech fitted with shift mate

Its not tested on the road yet but while setting up the gears it seemed to work a treat.

Well that's about it, bar tape is on, bottle cages fitted, gears set up (after adding some in line gear adjusters, I just couldn't get the new single action drop front mech set up without it!) and peddles fitted, I've finished building, a good test ride is needed to make sure all the heights are right, the gears are right, the brakes are bled properly and everything is tight. but that'll have to wait until the weather warms up. Yes I know is meant for the winter weather but its just to shiney to get dirty on its first ride out.

The Hydrocross. a.k.a. 'The dogs..........'

Not sure which is my best side, this one or....

This one.

Nice clean crank arms

An idiots guide to building a bike

Or...an idiot building a bike

 

Part three: Bars and brakes.

 

Rule #8

Saddles, bars, and tires shall be carefully matched.

Valid options are:

• Match the saddle to the bars and the tires to black; or
• Match the bars to the colour of the frame at the top of the head tube and the saddle to the colour of the frame at the top of the seat tube and the tires to the colour where they come closest to the frame; or
• Match the saddle and the bars to the frame decals; or
• Black, black, black

So without any consideration for the rules, which are of course only there for guidance, I still managed to comply with all options. Not hard when everything is black!

Christmas has been and gone and I've got my brakes, wheels and a few other bits so can start building again.

The fork headset needed to be fitted first, this is as easy as sliding on the lower race seat, then the race sliding the fork through the steerer and dropping the top race into place. I put on all the spacers supplied to start with to allow room for adjustments later and also slid the clamp that my brake master cylinder will attach to, then dropped on the stem.

At this point you need to decide how long you need the steerer tube, draw a line around the top of the stem where it meets the steerer then disassemble again, I cut around the steerer about 6mm below the line to allow for the stem adjuster to slot in and then the top cap. After cutting the steerer, carefully with a hacksaw dress with a file, reassemble and tighten everything up.

Bars, stem, shifter and master cylinder adaptor fitted.

Next to fit the shifters, these just slide on and then clamp up by a torx headed bolt hidden under the rubber grips. Now finally after a few weeks of waiting I can fit the brakes. These are Hope V Twin, this is a hydraulic brake set up that uses normal road shifters by using the brake cables to actuate the master cylinders under the stem. This means you get the benefits of hydraulic brakes with while using road bike drop bars and shifters.

One of the other problems with fitting hydraulic brakes to road bikes (other than no one is currently making hydraulic road shifters) is the lack of road wheels that take discs. The solution is to use mountain bike 29er wheels which are exactly the same size as road wheels just generally over built as their designed for off roading, not a big issue as they will be put to good use on our great lakeland roads! So I opted for a set of Fulcrum Red Power 29ers which are a good compromise of weight against cost.

To fit the brakes properly the hoses need to be cut to lenght then the system re bled to remove the air so i lso took the opportunity to fit some colour co-ordinated caliper caps (little red things) fitting these means total disassembling the caliper screwing the old black caps out and fitting the new ones from the inside then filling the whole system back up with brake fluid. I ended up placing the full system on the work bench, fitted a small clear hose to each caliper bleed nipple in turn and bleeding through the air by pumping each master cylinder in turn (while keeping it topped up with fluid) a bit of a faff but effective.

Rear wheel with caliper and disc fitted.

So now I have the bars, saddle, shifters, brakes and wheels fitted. So I can stop and turn just need some gears to be able to go!

Ready for some gears.