Skeeter, lol
who the fuck is buying a thomson frame of any sort?
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Geo is bizarre, and their numbers don’t add up
the zoomers are really into millennium era fashion this fall.
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I do see a lot of young dudes on fixies, but they seem mostly to be dtc brands like THRONE
Tbh it’s a Zukas underneath so the bikes gonna be sweet as heck.
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Saunters up with a Chrome Messenger slung over my shoulder, my phone in a spiffy pouch on the shoulder strap
‘Hey there fellow track messenger kids’
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sw8 bike in the wrong decade by the wrong company. I bet it rides great though
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Probably the only way they can sell X2 stems these days.
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Nate is making these!?! That’s rad.
The only bunny logo I’m aware of is his. That’s pretty neat!
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Finally got around to sticking the Growtac friction brifters on a bike tonight.
They’re very plastic-y, mostly made of a very high carbon-fill material - maybe something like a 20-30% GF PPA? Very high-quality feeling plastic, whatever it is. Several of the screws are self tapping straight into the plastic - feels kinda bad on one hand but on the other hand I design a lot of plastic assemblies with screws like these at work and if you only need single-digit cycle life they’re great (and cheap). The main one that you’ll need to fuck with - the cover for the shift mechanism - has a threaded insert in the plastic and a machine screw, so they’ve got your back there.
Installing the shift cable is maybe the single most hateful bike component installation process I’ve ever experienced. The hoods simply CAN NOT be pulled back far enough to actually fully uncover the shift mechanism. You will always stretching the hood back with one hand while juggling tiny parts and screws and screwdrivers with the other. There are also little fiddly bits to guide the shift cable that can go “sproing” out of the lever if you’re not careful. I strongly recommend doing this with a friend. Also be aware that you can’t install the shift housing with the lever clamped down to the bars - it’s just too tight of an entry angle. If you’re the kind of person who likes to get the levers placed perfectly and aligned before you cut the shift housing to length, don’t bother… you’ll end up having to do it all over again. Also note that you need good access to the bottom of the lever for a variety of reasons: if you’ve got a porteur rack/wald basket/etc, strongly consider taking it off temporarily for the install process. I regretted not doing this and trying to power through.
I fucked up, in my frustration I wasn’t paying enough attention to what I was doing and hooked the left lever up to the rear derailleur and vice versa, so I’m gonna have to do that all over again. Oof.
In contrast, I can’t think of another lever that I’ve had an easier time installing the brake cables. They just go straight in, zero fuss, no trying to blindly find some tiny hole in the lever body behind the cable anchor. That said: there’s a conical spacer thingy that need to go under the cable head, presumably to spread the load over a larger area in the plastic brake lever. It would be really nice if this was pressed/molded into the brake lever, instead of a loose part that can be dropped and lost…
They seem really comfortable in the hand. They’re long enough that you can get your whole hand on them - similar to my R8000 Ultegra brifters, longer than the Tektro R200 levers Gevenalle uses, not doofy-long like a Hylex. They are VERY slim with a very nicely rounded top; probably great for small hands. The brake lever action is very smooth, as is the shift action.
Here’s what they have to say about cable spool sizes:
The levers come with the 18.5mm spool installed in the right lever and the 17mm spool installed in the left lever. The right lever comes with a spare set of 17/20/22/24mm spools as well, the left lever comes with zero other spools. So if you want the 17mm in both levers you can do that, but if you want 2x of any of the other sizes you’re SOL.
I’m using an 11-speed Deore XT RD-M8000 in the rear and an XTR FD-M986 with a double up front. Eyeing the chart, I swapped the right lever over the 22mm spool and the left lever over to the 18.5mm that I’d liberated from the right lever. But because of the aforementioned snafu with which-shift-cable-goes-to-which-lever, I’ve got the 18.5mm spool to the rear derailleur and the 22mm to the front derailleur…
The rear seems fine with the 18.5mm, even though I’m way out of the “MTB RD” zone on the chart? It’s three full sweeps of the lever to go end-to-end on the cassette, which is great because the full range of the shifter is 3-and-a-bit full sweeps. This makes sense, as a Shimano MTB-11 setup really only needs 35mm of cable pull… Shift action is super light and I can pick off single-gear shifts easily in both directions.
On the other hand, the FD needs more than one full pump of the lever to fully shift between the two chainrings even with the 22mm spool, so I think I want to move all the way up to the 24mm…?
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Sounds like it. Makes sense. Bigger pulley would pull more. I wonder why they come standard with the smaller one in the left. Better trimming? I never had to swap any pulleys but definitely found the rubber covers a PITA when inserting the shift cables. I forgot to put the alloy cup in place when installing one brake cable and had to redo it. Annoying as Id already trimmed the cable and the internal routing and super stiff cable housing with the cable angle approach to the caliper making it trickier than it should be.
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the late-gen MTB pushers take sooo much cable pull
so probably need an older lower ratio version and/or a road model to have any hope of shifting a triple
if you need an integrated housing stop Microshift started making a new one Universal Cycles -- MicroShift Sword Double Front Derailleur - 10 Speed [FD-G7020-F, FD-G7020-B]
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i assume that’s the correct-ish size for “road FDs that aren’t Shimano 11-speed”, and that’s honestly probably a good guess for what most people buying these will be using
oh very neat! unfortunately i need a top-pull derailleur. I suppose I could run a full length of housing down from the cable stop at the back of the top tube all the way down the front of the seat tube and under the BB, but ugh.
i have sorta worked myself into a corner here (like i always somehow do…): it’s a 44/28 double on an XTR FC-M985 crank with a 49mm chain line. GRX FD would probably be perfect, but again: bottom pull. I’ve tried 8- and 9-speed top pull MTB FDs out of my parts bin, but the cages are too wide for 11-speed chain and every one I tried would drop the chain (off both the inside AND outside) more often than not. And most 10/11-speed MTB pushers are designed around MUCH smaller chainrings with a tighter gear spread - I tried an 11-speed XT or XTR and that went poorly. I also tried a top-pull FD-CX70: nada, won’t go far enough outboard for the chainline.
Turns out the derailleur that Shimano originally paired with this crank is kind of a unicorn: a top pull 10-speed, designed for a both a wider chainline and a wide-range double with a >40T big ring.
I think this would shift a triple just fine, the way it’s set up now with the 22mm spool it has a hair under 3x as much cable pull overall than I need to shift my double. I’d just like to be able to shift between the two rings without double-pumping the shifter each time. Fortunately I’ve got one more larger spool to try - and I’m so close that I think the next size up being ~9% bigger will do it no problem.
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Lets us know how you go. I will probably go back to 2x at some stage too.
is adding a cable stop on the downtube to feed a traditional bb guide impossible?
this is often very fixable by squishing the cage in a vise or with a knipex pliers wrench, they are pretty old world products that sometimes need truing even in normal circumstances
sometimes some special attention is needed to manipulate the lower tail of the cage where the sides join to manage the difference
Can confirm, I have wrangled some unholy alliances of front danglers into some seriously inappropriate coalitions via a vice grip or pliers. Sometimes its about leaving slack in the cable or tweaking the tail of the cage or the width of the cage. Was looking at my CX-70 last night actually and thinking how it looked very limited in its outer range. I guess it is for a CX q-factor after all. I am sure you will be sweet when you pop the bigger pulley in @adem
2x OS frame with a 34.9mm DT, the problem solvers (origin8, yokozuna, etc) clamp-on downtube shifter bosses are only 31.8mm.
This is a good suggestion but i do have a derailleur that works for me right now.
The bottom-pull ones actually can go quite wide (I have shifted a triple with one) but yeah the top pull ones have a very limited range of motion before the linkage interferes with itself. Like ya say, it’s designed for a double on a 43.5mm chainline, no need to go much further…
Anyway I went and swapped the cables around. Just as hateful an experience the second time around, even though I had a better idea of what was going on. You know how I said the housing hole is at too tight of an angle to get the housing into the lever when the lever is already clamped on the bars? Well, if you don’t have brand-spanking-new cables that still are soldered on the tip, it’s also at too tight of an angle to get already-cut cables to go through the hole and into the housing without the cable catching and unraveling everywhere. So ya gotta unbolt the levers, feed the cable through the hole in the base of the lever, and then slide the housing over the cable and into the lever. V difficult to do when you have the brakes already done up! I am very glad that I didn’t wrap the bars before my test ride last night.
18.5mm spool on the back still feels great. 24mm spool on the FD worked perfectly. We’ll see how I feel about these after commuting on them for a week.
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To be fair, you cant install sram red gear cables unless the cable ends are soldered either, but its hard to imagine your average home mechanic wanting to do this stuff eh. I wonder if a next generation version might have a teflon guide or something to eliminate the little sleeve and guide widgets. ( I dont know anything about engineering ). I was a little bit shocked at the self-tappers in the reach adjusters for shifter and brake lever too. I measured a 4 mm decrease in reach when I put in the fatter shim yesterday actually.
Also have finally had to adjust my brake pads a reasonable amount for the first time. That last CX race must have caused some wear. Im impressed with whatever the compound is in their brakes. Gutted now that I didnt get my buddy to grab me some more when he was in Japan. Will go with the shimano ones when they die.
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