Hacks / Bodges

My bodged cambium is really nice to ride!
A bit of a squeak when honking, but I can live with that!

For the uninitiated (myself including), can you explain what you modified? You bolted the seat area to another rails? For what reason?

Yep, I was one of the original 100 testers for the first cambium. I rode it for a good few thousand miles and stretched the top to a point where my hoop would touch the bolts on the Thomson seatpost cradle. They replaced the top, and this one was hung on the wall. I really wanted to continue riding it, so I had an old ritchey saddle that I had already removed the knackered leather from, with a view to riding it 'stripped'. I removed material from it, so that the cambium top would line up with where I wanted it to be on the rails, and drilled and fixed the top to it, using some original rivets that Brooks had sent me with the new top.
Et voilà! A bodged, hacked, bastardised cambium top, that fits my bum well, and rides fantastically! It also keeps a bit of history alive 😉

I love stuff like that where it's been repaired and repaired and repaired to become it's own new thing.

I know....I couldn't leave it on the wall!

Because they've been watching Stayer racing?
https://www.bikehugger.com/posts/stayer-bikes/

I guess this is a bodge. Or maybe what is irritatingly referred to as a ‘hack’. From Instagram.

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yeh but does it work?

I would imagine it would work-ish. Can’t see it being easy to get much welly through it.

If you turn them both outwards and you've basically got a T-wrench which you can get a good bit of force on using both hands

Its the connection of the two hex keys in the socket that I think wouldn’t allow you to put too much force into it. I reckon they’d twist and slip or something. I may try it tomorrow if I get bored of the boring work I’ve got to get done.

Not sure how much force is needed to tighten FSA cranks but I've been able to tension a set of Shimano HT2 cranks using the method @frankenbike described.

I never had a big enough hex for my cranks when I was kid and just used to carry around two smaller like this.
I can say it does work, but then I had to tighten it up A LOT so maybe it didn't :)

Use a truck or two to remove a stuck seatpost.

I want my bike to be a tripod. One idea is to buy this, which means I need a short ¼”-20 thread bolt (odd camera size) sticking out of the bike somewhere. I thought it'd be quite neat if it's on the stem cap, so I can use the bars to point the camera (bike will have kickstand).

Is it possible at all to make a custom, double-ended bolt with different thread sizes and lengths on each side? Is there a more, erm, elegant way of doing this?

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Bloody hell, this is genius. But would the bars get in the way?

Edit: How about some sort of Go Pro mount on the faceplate and one of these? Not as adjustable and probably not as sturdy though.

Hope not, camera doesnt even need to be pointing forward, it’s just to not have to carry a tripod on a tour.

Oh, that would prob do the job, but dont know how happy I’d be having to look at it

Worst comes to worst you could weld two bolts together right?

Just watch that that screw it doesn't disembowel you if you go over the bars...

Just watch that that screw it doesn't disembowel you if you go over the bars...

Oddly, this was my first thought.
A litter rubber cap or even something which screws on and isn't diembowely like the old eight ball valve caps :)

Don't you need to be able to level the camera so that all your photos won't be shot at 72°?

That’s where the Joby ballhead comes in.

Actually, @frankenbike GoPro suggestion prob nailed it. If I install something like this on the handlebar:

and add the GoPro mount, I’ll have the mount itself giving me vertical adjustment, and the handlebar giving horizontal pan. No need for carrying a ballhead, and quite a minimal setup. Interesting.

As the mount doesn’t need to be centred on the top cap, you could drill the top cap off-centre and just pop a bolt through that from below.

I found an aluminium GoPro → ¼" adapter thing on AliExpress, bought one myself. Despite the fact that it's dodgy Chinese aluminium it's probably sturdier than a plastic one if you're loading it up with 1.5kg of lens and SLR. Will get a link later if you want.

@AlexD also a great suggestion, much neater than the GoPro idea

There's minoura thing that propably suits your needs:
http://www.minoura.jp/english/accessory-e/vc100-e.html