new builds

Comfortable toury type pretty thing is the goal.

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Oooh nice.

Coming along. Needs grips, drivetrain and brakes.

Very hard to find a suitable 1x crankset that isnt far too expensive.

Racks and crap are still up in the air.

I have some MKS Allways in silver for pedals.

I have some stainless steel housing for it which looks completely amazing.

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Fab! What bars are those?

Velo Orange "granola moose"...

Wow

Dreamy, love the fenders

i can't find an appropriate 1x crank anywhere.

Get any black direct mount ones and get the toilet cleaner out with a silver or black direct mount chainring?

i have gotten closer and closer to surrendering to a black crankarm, but still retained enough hope for a silver one. I'm not to going to strip a black one.

i just found the Blue Lug 1x in stock domestically, so I'm in luck aslong as they don't price gouge me... they're "checking" on the price now.

Racks!!

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Needs to trim the lower mounts on the rear rack - i have placed new holes so it sit closer to the fender.

Front rack needs a little bit of tweaking as well. As it is now the support off the fork crown sits poorly on top of the rack.... and it's ugly. Want to get it under the rack.

Very nice, I like this baby blue color. Ha, the front rack round bent metal fits to the round handlebar! Blue Lug really has the fastest and most far away shipping of all bike shops. Recently Bike24 got so slow.

the velo orange is done. I will get better pics later that don't have mountains of ridiculous barrel distortion with a poorly adjusted saddle tilt and height.

This soma is up next. Just came back from getting the frame chased and faced. Silver bits from the downtube shifters up, everything else black.

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Talk to me about the fork on that soma! Steve potts?

Steve Potts that's right.

To be fair it's not custom but it is his fork. I believe it's actually made in Taiwan. Still an awesome fork with his name on it.

Coming along. Couldn't find the long adaptor for the front fender OR my crank puller to get the crank off another frame, got tired and frayed my rear derailleur cable... Brakes are working though.

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this is long, but a shocker.

i almost ALWAYS build my own bikes and here is why.

this new Soma is to replace the below pictured green Soma that has given me nothing but headaches and broken bones. below is is the thread detailing my experience with the previous bike.

NOW I just noticed that the dish on the front wheel that i pulled of the green Soma for this new one is off by about a cm. I thought, "great the new fork isn't straight."

So, like any normal human, i pull another wheel down and put it in the fork and it was centered. This means the FUCKING shop that put together the bike i am replacing with this one re-dished the front wheel to sit center in the fork. Which means the fork wasn't straight and they didn't tell me OR reach out to Soma for a different fork. i'm pretty pissed off.

Why am i so pissed off?

For the past year, I've always looked down at the fork and thought "that doesn't look straight" and never made much of it because the wheel was centered. Now i see the fucking wheel was re-dished. The said previous green Soma (pictured below) has given me nothing but trouble:

• 50 miles into the first overnighter, i lost 4 of 5 crank bolts and had to limp to the nearest shop in hill country in a big ring.
  
• 75 miles into the same overnighter BOTH brake calipers loosened
  
• the handling of the bike has been so poor that i've crashed on it three times almost inexplicably mid high-speed corner. in fact, the bike was bat-shit crazy in corners. two of these crashes have laid me up, the last one i ended up in the hospital. Here is thread detailing two of those crashes that i thought were just because the bike was low trail and i was riding way too aggressively.
  
  

https://www.lfgss.com/conversations/388054/

In fact i called Soma just to lament over my regret at buying a low trail bike... Literally just to chat.... and they were so unbelievably receptive that they sent me this new frame at a fraction of the cost. I never would have expected that and now i see the fork was faulty.

all of this can be chalked up to the shop that assembled the bike. loose shit everywhere in the first 100 miles, and a faulty fork that was ignored.

You might say, well if the wheel is centered then it shouldn't affect handling. And you might be right, unless fork was so faulty that the trail badly affected or who knows what. and franky the laziness of the shop is intolerable.

good on Soma. they're getting a call from me with praise. outstanding customer service.

the shop is getting a call from me today also.

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I would contact a lawyer in the first instance. If I'm understanding your two threads correctly, this malpractice from the shop could very well be the cause of your accident?

yes i believe so, but i'm not going to take it that far.

yes i believe so, but i'm not going to take it that far.

Your choice, but might be worth pointing out that you are making this choice to both Soma and the shop?

I second this. If you have access to an attorney, I'd explain in plain words what your experience has been and hear their input.

Soma seems to come out as the good guy in this scenario, aside from -possibly- missing a misaligned/bent/twisted fork in the QC step. Fork could also have been damaged in shipping, or during the time at the shop. Likely impossible to determine.

The shop in question sounds quite negligent or flat incompetent. Id promptly cease any future business with them. Their negligence/incompetence might quickly do them in.

I called the shop which is a cool usually reliable good shop that's been around for a long time. We're going to work through it.

Crazy stuff, such a ridiculous thing to do without discussing it with their customer

Wow, that's quite the story... I hope the new bike is serving you well.
I had a situation with a shop in London where they plainly destroyed my rear derailleur, fucked a freehub in a way that it blocked mid-ride and had hydraulic brakes stop working completely after they bled them. I was on the phone with them for hours and in the end, they offered me a voucher. As if I would want to go back there. I didn't pay for the last job and told everybody to stay away from them. I hope you can come to better agreement with your LBS.

After some miles and some stuff here's where we stand.

I couldn't get on with drop bars very well so swapped out for some swept mtb bars

The saddle tilt on the VO is intentional. She likes it that way and saddle has to break in anyway.

If anyone has noticed, I'm sorry for the cross post but I thought I'd throw them here also.

I should post all my bikes.

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