Feel free, but I’m also happy to provide some more well-worded, general-audience appropriate praise too
Honestly it worked out to be the perfect mtb gateway drug. Way more capable than it has any right to be - after taking our daughter to the bathroom while on a ride I came back to find M lapping the pump track on her Larkspur having a grand time. Up to this point we hadn’t really done much actual riding together and now she’s stoked on family rides every weekend and keeps asking all sorts of questions about body positioning, how to descend, etc. all while on her rigid bike.
When we were talking about ordering her a full suspension bike to start doing some heftier trails her first question was “but would I have to get rid of this bike?” I then had to explain how N+1 works…
You’re never going to get grooves out in a way that’s going to improve your breaking. I’ve used a DA sander with medium-ish paper to remove anodizing and old brake pad rubber from rims before, just keep it moving and don’t try to take off too much at once. Basically light scuffing around the whole rim around and around and around and around until you’re sick of sanding and then you’re half way done with the first of three brake tracks…
Just scrub them with alcohol and a Scotch Brite pad and get new brake pads until you get new rims.
Pretty solid. Sometimes they get a bit sticky, so bounce to get it up, but that is a solid price (they changed design for 2024, thus clearing them out). I had one a few years back and it worked flawlessly for a few years. Maybe I got new one a bit too PNW wintered, but still good for that price. I would imagine Chi city duties it would be good.
This feels more like a dither than a SQ, but is there a complete bike for sale in the USA that does big tires, all the dorky braze-ons, hydro discs, thru axles, and dynamo/lights included? Either drop bars or flat bars. I’d have to build such a bike from scratch anyway and I’m wondering if there are decent deals to be had on complete bikes because buying everything separate is going to be $$$ shartmo
Breezers are probably the closest you’ll find. I can’t think of any other production bikes spec’d with dyno lights (besides some commuter-style bikes).
Bummer they don’t provide the full specs. Looks like cable-operated hydros, and I wonder what the dynohub is. But, that’s a whole bike for less than the price of a GRX groupset or a set of wheels + lights, so impressive!
You’re probably not going to find hydro brakes with all the other options you’re looking for. That demographic is all about cable everything, typically.
Is it really that much of a dither to rebuild a front wheel and add some lights? Most bikes I’ve seen that come with dyno lights have some bullshit on them. I feel like the rest of your requirements leave plenty to choose from.
Fuck, I’ll rebuild the wheel for you if you send me the oem wheel and new hub. Might even be able to just trim the spokes on my buddy’s spoke cutter.
Well if I gotta get a dyno wheel built I will probably end up building up something like a Black Mountain Mod Zero. I didn’t think there were a lot of complete bikes with dynamos out there but I was curious how much they were gonna cost relative to building a whole bike myself. That Bombtrack is preeeeetty close to what I’d build for myself, and at $3k probably still hard to beat on price once you add the lights, racks, and fenders (I can forgive the cable brakes because I do like the bar ends).
The Arise has some nice details like internal dyno routing. It was at the top of my list for a commuter frameset until discovering the steerer would be too short for me on the XL size. Definitely don’t regret getting a Mod Zero instead.
Mom was complaining about shifting on her 10yo Ultegra bike. Of course it was cable fray at the levers. I replace the cables and housing and see that the big chainring is totally roached. FC-6750 50t is… $115?!
Suggest to me another crankset or chainring alternative. It’s a 170 on there but the bike probably a 51cm and could stand a 165.
(I’m a cheapass and see whole modern cranksets for $60 on AliX and really find it had to stomach $100 for one ring.)
