Third hand American wonders

looks :sunglasses:

Is this your only bike with two brakes?

my son has the Hope levers on his Giant Fastback set up for his right hand to use as he doesn't have use of his left arm.

The levers mate well with Giant's proprietary calipers and work very well.

in this unfinished state it has two brakes, yes. however, if you zoom in you find out they’re not functional brakes. they’ll be taken off soon and replaced by rear only tektro cr720. the taiwan matte finish on them concerns me slightly.

Thanks! I'll stay away from the shims in that case.

i've now ordered the last part to make the bike finally rideable, namely the 73/113 un55. if royal snail doesn't let me down it should get installed within the next couple of days, i hope. it'll still be far from finished, but should allow me to start speccing the cockpit and feeling the brakes.

at this point i'd like to propose huge shoutouts to @Qebrus for basically building almost the whole thing. he's done it with a wide smile on his face at least 95% of the time, a living proof that adjusting shit cantis is fun. he really deserves all the free parts that @Maj is throwing at him.

one of the two big question marks with the build, the braking, has been kind of sorted for now. the faithful cr720s, when teamed up with kool stop mountain pads at their furthest spacer setting, touch the braking surface just about the amount to not have evil minds laugh at me (too much). the feel almost does justice to the simworks outer and the polished paul lever. i already had my other eye on motolites but their time won't be quite yet it seems.

the second, still unresolved mystery is the low trail fork. most riders, even seasoned ones such as henry wildeberry, start gagging when examples of these are presented. why would one want to put
a low trail fork on a retro mtb? this very deleuzian idea started brewing in my mind after a certain shiny soma jawn was listed on the classifieds. axle-to-crown close match, tange infinity, mounts for bIkEpAcKiNg racks, no canti studs and most importantly enough steerer left unlike on those million retro mtb forks on my ebay alerts. the initial plan was to have winston bake one of these out of a pacenti mtb crown and suitable lightweight blades, but my personal recession didn't unfortunately inspire this. so surrendering to the haunting lost futures with the cannondale and going speedster felt like a brainworm. can't go wrong with adding a bit of jan heine vision to ron's formula?

while the pacenti brevets and switchback hills already supported this notion, it was time for the rolls to make way for a racier selle sprint in brown suede. it compliments the bronze tone of the simworks bubblies better anyway. there was also a passing moment when i dreamt of drilling the brake bridge for centrepulls, but the ceramics-infused m2 alu might not like this idea?

i never really cared too much about matching, just bought the colourways that were available cheaply. for some reason i decided to put a bit more effort into this build and finding myself from the impossibility of the deep end already. more on this later when i get to the stem and seatpost i guess.

no proper portraits yet as the bars need lowering, but here's some teasers. the early february spawning pike clocked the scales nicely. this figure without chain and pedals and with the triple still on.

first rideable guise photos are here. realising again iphone however new isn't ideal for the side view. could anyone enlighten what's a good lens pls? what does prolly use lol?

the woods mamilry patch is on its way off dw.

lovely build

200mm f/2.8

https://theradavist.com/2022/01/photographing-bicycles-how-to/

cheers!

You’ll get away with much shorter, mind. This was shot on a 45mm prime.

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round the block cruise impressions.

somehow i didn't figure how much the lower position and the aggressive angle on the cinelli placeholder stem was affecting the reach. the nitto x fairweather tall stack in the same 90mm length turned out way too short when lifted higher into the more touring appropriate region. swapped a 110mm parts bin alu stem shown on the photos and it's now pretty close to ideal. 120mm would likely be perfect considering i had forgotten to centre the saddle rails on the post clamp. heavily on the market for anything 120mm and steel.

interestingly the shape of the bars, the grip area length in particular, isn't allowing placing the thumbie as far away from the grips i have it on my other bikes. the viable positions are either next to the grips (pictured above) or blue lug style (see photo below) beyond the curve towards the centre. the former works better in the sense that i have more leverage to operate the shifter with my weak fingers. being within reach from the primary hand position, it's also the most functional. the latter would allow unrestricted use of newbaums between the grips and the shifter, look much more eccentric and balanced etc. however, as smootly as elevator_to_hell shifts from there, it might not be the best option for my one-handed operation.

That’s sick! I would keep the shifter next to the grip in reach for the thumb. I can understand the idea of downtube shifters or mounting them on the stem but having them in reach without taking your hand off the bars and “artificially” moving them out of reach doesn’t make sense to me.

P.s. is that a narrow wide 50.4 chainring?

the microshift thumbie feels a bit different than my paul/sram sl-500 tt and paul/da 9000 combos. tightening made it a bit better at holding the gears. still need to re-index to be able to say how it performs long-term.

needless to say the tubeless rene herses feel buttery yet fast-rolling. slightly hesitant to take them to the biggin hill cx course to risk having the sidewalls torn. the light wheels accelerate nicely but still have a bit of the 'not going anywhere' feeling on road, which i was complaining with the klein. feels closer to 26er than a 29er, which i guess is how it should be by numbers anyway. need a longer ride to judge the real character.

the spacer stack is there to stay, perhaps in a taller form than anticipated. despite it currently looks how it does, it shouldn't be too bad with a steel stem and spacers. blue lug stack goals meets stridsland stump. i'll be always running some kind of a bag anyway to disguise the unwanted phallic stature.

besides the stem hunt, i've got a little brooks carving project going. a dropper post and a frame bag also need to be tried. the in-house seamstress caught rona and couldn't fix the vintage swift bar bag i planned to have for the premiere.

this looks more than satisfactory to me already. good work and a killer build!

thanks! i'll decide the position after doing a proper ride on each setups, i guess. not usually in favour of poser aesthetics over functionality but this is a hard one lol.

it indeed is! i was waiting for someone to pick it up. it's the grand bois x specialites ta exclusive. comes only in 38t, which seems to offer a nice range with the 11-42. 36t would've probably been even better, but i preferred the look of the ta collab over their own version (below).

It’s @Tijs ‘ bike, I did take the photo though.

Any idea how you're going to solve the front brake with that fork?

Funny, I used the same wheelset for my 26" > 650b conversion.

my solution is no brake with that fork haha. i don't have front brakes on any of my bikes as i have a bad arm and can't use the right side lever. as discussed upthread i might try the double output levers with another fork when the time comes.

the ck classics too? what frame did you convert? any content on here of it?

Looking gooooood.

Beautiful, how does it ride with the trail and 650s? + What about friction and clutch?

Edit: had this page up from earlier and only seen impressions on posting 🐸

cheers! the steering was noticeably wobblier and less self-correcting only with the 90mm stem. now with the 110mm i could barely notice it, but again, need a longer ride for final verdict.

i'm running the thumbie indexed. is there a problem if you switch to friction with a clutched rd? :D didn't really need the clutch just wanted a modern rd, but couldn't find a non-clutched or non-black version of this xt generation, which is a bummer.

You can turn the clutch off easily with the little lever if you want.

I had assumed that the clutch mechanism might cause the shifting to be too stiff or difficult with a thumb or bar end shifter, though there doesn't seem to be much discussing it so it might be a non-issue. Have you used the thumbie with clutch engaged?

need to try this when the gears have been properly indexed. will report back.

can't seem to get the indexing/shifting feel perfect. the lbs is saying the derailleur hanger isn't the correct one. the bending of it is apparently causing an issue.

i couldn't find anything online that would fit better. cyclestore.co.uk is offering this for 1994 m2 stumpjumper. it looks exactly like the one on the bike currently.

the whole system currently consists of a microshift sl-m11-r thumbie (for shimano mountain), a xt cs-m8000 11-42 cassette and a xt rd-m8000-gs medium cage rear derailleur. everything is 11-speed specific and the clutch hasn't been engaged.

questions:

1) if this indeed isn't the correct hanger, would it make sense to have one made that fits the dropouts better?
2) if it's the correct one but the metal has gotten tired along the years/from bending, would it make sense to buy a brand new replacement?
3) is it unlikely the hanger is causing any of this and i'd need to look at the other parts for the bottleneck?