Late 2016: I was going back and forth between a 650B wheelset with fat slicks (commuting mode) and a 26" wheelset (bikepacking mode) on my orange Nashbar MTB frame
Early 2019: became dynamo-pilled and bought a new 26" dynamo front wheel. Non-dynamo 26" front wheel went on the garage floor, along with the 650B QR/disc wheelset. Swapped between 26" fat slicks and knobbies on one wheelset for commuting vs bikepacking
Early 2021: I wasn’t really commuting on this bike anymore (lol covid) and the fork could fit a 2.8" tire, so I built a NEWER, wider 26" dynamo front wheel to take advantage of that. The first dynamo wheel joined the other three wheels on the garage floor.
Late 2021: A friend needed a 650B QR/disc dynamo wheelset. I gave her the 650B rear wheel, and took apart both the 26" dynamo front wheel and 650B non-dynamo front wheel to build a 650B dynamo wheel out of the parts.
Early 2023: I wanted to go back to commuting on this bike and I didn’t want to do that on a 2.8" MTB tire. Who knows where the rim went from the wheel I took apart in late 2021, but I still had the original non-dynamo 26" front wheel… I took it apart and stuck a dynamo hub in, effectively re-building the exact wheel that I bought in early 2019 and took apart in late 2021. 5th different front wheel on this bike in 7 years.
Right now the Coffee Grinder is in road mode with 32mm GP5ks and Rodeo Spork.
Night Moves is in low-trail fast-fop chariot mode with the steel fork and 36mm Challenge tires.
Spring/Summer means lots of long road rides, some crits, and some mixed surface rides. Plus we’ve got our Saturday morning mixed surface thing going again.
The tentative plan is to go back to 36mm (or maybe bigger) Challenge tires (knobby up front maybe) on the Coffee Grinder and leave on the dynamo. Switch to a carbon fork on the NM and go full roadie mode for fast 200k and Tuesday night crits.
I want to drop the front end of my Nordavinden. I already have a -17 stem as low as it can go. It’s hitting a paul funky monkey canti hanger that is required for Racer Mediums that I don’t want to get rid of because they max out fender clearance.
Solution is to get a Nitto UI2 -17 crmo stem. Ill have my /framebuilder/ braze on a couple of parallel tabs to the bottom, put a bolt through and then hang a surly or nitto paperclip style canti hanger. Either that or just braze the paperclip straight on there. Then i can slam that stem all the way while still keeping the racers and their fender clearance . Good idea y/n/OWD?
It’s a thing. They existed briefly in mtb just before cantis got swept aside by rim brakes. So there’s stuff like this on ebay but it’s rare. Oh yeah and it also happened before threadless so they’re mostly/all??? quill and 25.4.
It makes me feel better than drilling a hole. The double tab on this stem is the exact thing im thinking about, except it holds up a surly paperclip that is the stop.
OK though, just going to hang a paperclip for a while while I try slamlife. Like this. It’s going to be a little bit awkward of a line because the stem is 110 and there’s a bag. But cheaper than dithering a custom modified stem .
