Current Projects chat and miscellany

Eingang, you have no idea how much your avatar fit to your wonderful bike.

Same to you Ed. x100000000

And blue apparenty;

MTB stem, but would look great on a road bike.

It is nice. But £80 for a stem?

It is nice. But £80 for a stem?

Didn't stop people from buying Thomson.

if you think £80 is a lots for a stem (and I agree to a degree) don't have a butcher at the Tune stem.

Really love the gloss finish of the CB (carbon fibre);

ok, I wont.

A little project that belongs to a short friend of mine. It was bought from a forum member a little while back (I think it used to belong to Ldngrrl), cleaned up, and given new cables (and safety levers), tyres, saddle, and tape. As a final touch, I got the saddle stamped by Skully (thanks!) at Muswell Hill jumble yesterday.

I'm rather pleased with it.

What's the general view of this Crank Brothers Cobalt stem? (I'm looking at you mdcc).

Is it both lighter and stiffer than the typical Taiwan 3-D Net-shape forged product you can pick up for £20-£30? These are things which can be measured. If it fails, it fails massively by being both worse and 4 times as expensive.

but may look better while it is failing (subjective).

That stem is sick! Spanks most other aheads on looks.

Finally finished the Uncle John. Trying out a 38c front tyre...it's got a less nobly tread pattern than the rear.

Really liking it overall. Quite suprised by how quick it is on the road with the big tires. Altho after a while it gets a bit heavy going compared to 25c. Don't think I'm going any bigger on my fixed.

Also tried out time ATACs for the first time. Still getting used to them, but my first impressions are they're a bit overhyped. Easy to clip in, but quite allot of float and no adjustability...anyway we'll see.

Oh and that Somec is H-E-A-V-Y!

Is it both lighter and stiffer than the typical Taiwan 3-D Net-shape forged product you can pick up for £20-£30? These are things which can be measured. If it fails, it fails massively by being both worse and 4 times as expensive.

The claim weight is 117g for a 100mm stem, I'm asking your view from appearance (much like how you analysis the BMW stem).

Didn't stop people from buying Thomson.

if you think £80 is a lots for a stem (and I agree to a degree) don't have a butcher at the Tune stem.

Really love the gloss finish of the CB (carbon fibre);

http://www.crankbrothers.com/images/stems_cobalt11_prod.jpg

No faceplate? As much of a PITA as a quill stem.

With an oversized clamp, not really, I mean since the clamp is oversized, surely it'll be easier putting in drop bar? (apart from the one with the aero flat top).

I was thinking about quick handlebar changes. You'll have to unwrap bars before removal...

...(much like how you analysis the BMW stem).

do we have a link to this, ED?

@ Pifko, point taken.

@ Rik, no, I recall he got into a bit of a diss with Scott when he said the new BMW stem is flawed.

The discussion was somewhere round here in bike porn:
http://www.lfgss.com/thread29-668.html

I think you it goes over 3 pages and it starts a couple of pages back.

EDIT: here's how it started:

I'm pretty sure that putting the clamp screws in front of the steerer is a fundamentally flawed design, as anybody who has owned a Cinelli Alter/Integralter/Angel will confirm. You end up trying to bend the whole stem body to achieve clamping, rather than just bending the thin walls of the clamp itself as you do with a normal stem. If you must keep it clean and knee friendly, use a wedge clamp like Thomson, not a hoop tension clamp.

BMW* aren't in the business of great engineering, they're in the business of selling hyped product to wankers, and are doing fine without my help.

*Both kinds.

Mighty word coming from you! I'm almost afraid to ask what's your though on the BMW Gangsta.

Oh and the Tune one looks average. Clearly only worth buying to match your hubs and cranks ;6

Also tried out time ATACs for the first time. Still getting used to them, but my first impressions are they're a bit overhyped. Easy to clip in, but quite allot of float and no adjustability...anyway we'll see.

Used them for ages. They are good for nothing except consistency. They don't clog, always let you clip in, and just do what they do. You just have to take them for what they are, and forget about them, in a kind of "one less thing to think about" sort of a way. Oh yes, and, they are still better than eggbeaters.

Good advice bigtwin, they're defintely the sort of pedal that you can 'forget' about while riding.

still loving mine, think my cleat is a little thin, need to change it before I go clive-o-my-arse.

The claim weight is 117g for a 100mm stem, I'm asking your view from appearance (much like how you analysis the BMW stem).

Well, that's in the ballpark for weight with generic net-shape forgings, so it comes down to stiffness. It's actually quite hard to make an aluminium stem stiffer without making it heavier, unless you venture outside the bounds set by the 31.8 x 35-40 bar clamp and 28.6 x 40-44 steerer clamp. You basically need to get the metal of the beam section as far from the axis as possible, and hardly anybody ventures outside the aforesaid envelope. My critique of the BMW stem was strictly constrained to the poor steerer clamp design. The Crank Bros stem has a different, but equally problematic issue with the clamps; wedge clamps are prone to generating asymmetric compression loads on the cylinder they are clamping, which might be a problem with thin walled bars and steerers, especially carbon ones. The ideal clamp has as little bending stiffness as possible, so that the tension and therefore clamping pressure remains uniform around the whole circumference. You want it to be like a girth strap, not a saddle. If you must include some bending stiffness in a clamp, it needs to be precisely machined to match the profile of the clamped item when stressed; this is guaranteed to be impossible with a wedge clamp, since the clamped item has too large a tolerance on both OD and roundness.

I leave anaesthetic judgements to the individual user; I sometimes give a personal opinion but it has no more weight than anybody else's subjective view.

Finished the Mercian yesterday. Only thing left to do is change the freewheel.

Running Nuovo Record groupset, on record hubs laced to mavic open sport. Nitto Noodle 40cm bar, Mafac racer brakes with front rack, tubus rack.gilles berthoud mudguards and panaracer 28C.
The color of the saddle hasnt come out at all right.

Also pics for the Aende road bike and the Pinarello that i posted last week


sorry for the large pics

great collection there.

Wow, all really nice bikes you have there.

great collection there.

Wow, all really nice bikes you have there.

what they said, I've got a funny feeling ed will like that mercian too

what they said, I've got a funny feeling ed will like that mercian too