Most recent activity
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Some pics of my Wolverine V1 overhauled last year for commuting duties and also the possibility of doing some touring with road sections. Transmission is Middleburn 44-32T double crankset matched to Shimano XT cassette 11-42 for a massive gearing range: good enough to get some decent average speed on the road and also to tackle any climb fully loaded. Shimano 105 11 speed shifters paired to Shimano XT rear derailleur using Jteck Shiftmate - so far working flawlessly.
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Recently purchased a Bushcraft Essential Bushbox ultralight to use with an Esbit stove. I have only used few times but so far happy with it. I have a relatively narrow 750 ml pot and with the alcohol stove the flames lick the sides of the pot and it's not as efficient as with a larger diameter pot. An advantage of the Bushbox is that you can purchase additional ash-tray to put at the bottom and then use it with solid fuel tablets or even make your own fire with twigs (if location and conditions are appropriate to do so safely). If it is windy, you definitely need some sort of windscreen.
Like the Tangria triangle you can carry it flat, takes 1 minute to assemble and weights 70 grs.
Since this is not designed especifically to use with alcohol stove, there is a trick to put out the flame: just remove the inner rubber seal of the stove's lid and slide it through the open side panel to place it on top of the stove.
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The Pletscher twin leg kick stand has marks to cut the legs to required length according to wheelsize or personal preferences. No thumb rule here as the OD of wheel depends on tyre size so better do an initial cut, mount the kickstand again on the bike and check (on a flat surface) how much the front wheel lifts from the ground. If still too much, then proceed to repeat the process until you get to the required height. Metal saw would suffice to cut the aluminium legs (round the edges of cut legs with a file). Use the plastic end caps for this twin model which (surprisingly) are not included with the kickstand.
As @goosenoose suggests a front stabilizer helps a lot to prevent a flopping front wheel.
I will say leave no more than 5cm from front wheel to the ground as it will help to keep bike stable when you are on an uneven surface (mostly all the time) and you will have a good chance of both wheels touching the ground. But as I said is a matter of personal preferences.
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I carry the topeak super chain tool with an additional quicklink on a small tool pocket on framebag. When purchased, I tested it on an old chain removing and inserting a couple of pins and appared to be solid enough for occassional use. Chain hook also helps to keep everything in place when inserting the pin, although I prefer to use quick link for reattaching .
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Relatively easy to check whether your wheel is dished correctly without any tool just using a flat surface and two identical mugs or glasses and stacking coins underneath the hub. Check both sides to spot any gap between hub flange nut and the stack of coins.
From my limited experience when building a front, non-disc wheel with symmetrical hub dimensions and same spoke length at both sides, you only need to do minor adjustements in terms of dishing as long as spoke tension at both sides is fairly equal.
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Done! ;-)
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Pit stop on the Tour de France 1966 // Injured Cyclist Van den Bossche // Jaques Anquetil refreshing on Tour de France 1959.
While doing a back-up I have come accross these images I scanned few years ago from a collection of the sports magazine Le Miroir des Sports covering Tour de France editions of the 1960s. If you want higher resolution files for your personal use, click on the image and download from my Flickr account. Enjoy!
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Remove the clamp bolt and prise open the stem with a flat tyre lever.
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I think Syntace eccentric inserts allow you to align the rear wheel with the frame after welding. They come in o,5mm and 1mm increments and you place them on drive side to get rear wheel perfectly centered on the rear triangle in case there has been some distorsion when welding dropouts. Definitely not chain tensioning.
Front derailleur is a Sram MTB X9 for 10 speed. Most FD have a relatively similar cable pull so they can be made to work reasonably well with different shifters. In this case there is some minor chain rubbing in the big ring - small cog position but not real concern as I hardly use that combination. I have also purchased a Shimano 105 FD that I haven't got around to install it yet: the main reason is not so much to get better shifting but to gain some extra space behind the seat tube so I can run a wider tyre.