Current Projects chat and miscellany

phil, loving your collection, especially your Mercian randonnuer, the aende look like a criterium frame with all the steep angle and tight clearance.

Black Market Mob frame, finally!

Gonna be my new playbike...

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.

All depends what you are riding though. I preferred the Time pedals when riding brakeless fixed as they felt more secure, but on single speed (especially off road) I much prefer the Eggbeaters. My foot pretty much falls onto the pedal and also comes out of the pedal with less effort.
When riding fixed on the road this didn't matter as I never needed to take my feet off the pedals.

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.

I've been lusting after an extralite stem for a while. The reported stiffness compared to its well documented low weight is pretty amazing. But it also looks nice and neat too. I have wondered about the placement for the steerer clamping bolts though.

Just picked this up

Wheels will be replaced soon, thinking of making it fixed too

...thinking of making it fixed too

Wait, what?

thinking of making it fixed too

ahahahahha

It's ok Ed I think I read that too.

do it!!

Please don't.......

Don't worry, if you want to ride a fixed I've got a crappy one I'll happily swap for that. No mechanical fiddling required, everybody wins...

That Merak's lovely, Chorus 11spd - yes, Newton shallows - definitely, and team Flite - perfect.

Second thoughts ditch the groupo, dremel off the cable stops and hanger, swap the fulcrums for some deepV fixie wheels, and ditch the flite for a steel railed brooks.

Much betterer.

^^ you forgot risers and fluoro ourys. nice.

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.

this is seriously tasty, well done. where did you get that bag from?

Just picked this up

Wheels will be replaced soon.....

What wheels were you thinking of?

60 mm carbon clinchers (OEM), laced to Campy record hubs.

Well finally done it this is on order should get it Thursday.

KC, if I may ask, what do you for living?

Where can I get those translucent Campagnolo cranks?

Just got this through the post, a Vigorelli Track (23inch) - Oxford blue, gold lug lining, gold transfers (extra £10)
Going to be building it up over next few months after I've recovered from the Xmas time wallet hammering!
Current parts I have for this as follows:
Nitto B123s (breakbrake17 - Taipei)
Nitto 100 stem ""
Sugino 75 cranks ""
Sugino 75 chainring (max crowe)
Tange Levin Headset (Tokyo Fixed)
Cambio Rino pedals/cages ""
Brooks Swift (brown)
Brooks brown bar tape
Campagnolo Omega V rims (black) (Nigel at Campyoldy)

Will post some more pics when done. Happy Xmas riding to one and all!

edited- tried to link the picture, didn't work.

sorry, it was from my flickr, think I have the privacy rights high on there so it won't work, good old bookface, can always rely on that!

60 mm carbon clinchers (OEM), laced to Campy record hubs.

Really?

Record hubs are lovely. But they dont come in the sort of low drilling count you'd likely be looking at for such a deep rim.

Just my opinion.