During what was either the twilight of steel frames or their first renaissance in the late 1990s, Big Bicycle was adding its offerings, with some classic geometries and deceptively classic looking details. Take "braze-ons" for instance. The term applied to any little widgets attached to the frame in addition to the basic construction of the frame joints themselves. You can do that with steel, even years after the original manufacture of the frame. You'll need to repaint after heating the tubing with the torch, but you can do it. It's one of the benefits of the material, compared to aluminum, which was starting to be the most common choice if you weren't in the carbon fiber or titanium price brackets.
Cable stops could be welded onto an aluminum frame during the building process, apparently, but water bottle mounts and rack bosses (if any) were commonly provided using rivet nuts. A hole is drilled in the tubing, and the threaded insert is crimped in there using a tool that expands it to grip tightly in the frame without the use of heat. It's a faster, cheaper process that's not just as good, but good enough for the bike industry. If it's good enough for aluminum, it's good enough for steel, right? The public's love for steel won't last long enough for the shortcoming to be obvious: the seam where the riv-nut joins the frame is a perfect starting point for rust. No matter how well you care for the frame, this area will always be more vulnerable than a proper braze-on.
Carbon fiber has completely displaced steel among the performance-riding set. The Iron Age has become prehistory. But that doesn't mean we can't have some fun with the bikes while they're in our temporary possession. Check out what you can do to some Specialized graphics with a bit of strategically-applied tape:
The month of July was extremely wet. There has been enough rain since then to keep the trails silty. Little of it is actual mud. It's more a wet fine sand that does what you see here.
Speaking of safety, always make sure that your handlebar stem is no higher than the recommended safe height. For stems that insert into the fork, inside a threaded headset, the amount in the fork is intended to reinforce the threaded section so that the steerer tube does not crack at the stress riser where the threads begin. In other words, riding with the stem too high could cause the fork or the stem to break. Nevertheless, about once a week we will see a bike with the stem barely hanging in the top of the fork.
The black line shows the position of the max line engraved on the stem. The greasy part shows how little this person decided they needed to maintain control of their bike. Hot tip: if you're ever on a group ride, don't just inspect your own bike. Try to take a look at the bikes you might be drafting, or riding beside on a bumpy descent.
Beginning in the early teens of this century, you started seeing the phrase, "Biking is the new golf." You were just as likely to see, quite soon after that assertion first started making the rounds, that it most definitely wasn't the new golf, but the truism was out there already.
We find other entanglements, too. The double helix of DNA has nothing on the quadruple helix of WTF.
They're not even trying to hide it anymore.
Speaking of diabolical, Shimano is now securing some of their shifter pods with 5-pointed Torx Plus fasteners, which originated as a security feature. What if the bolt is loose, as it was on a bike we were assembling the other day? No one in town seems to have the requisite tools for us to buy. Why, after all these decades, is Shimano suddenly obsessed with the security of its low-end shifter pods?
Another nice find on a new bike assembly is this "tubeless-ready" rim tape that's not even ready to retain a tube.
But according to the printing on the bike box, all you need to assemble a bike is "+ and - screwdrivers" (make up your mind, do we need screwdrivers or not?), water pump pliers, two sizes of hex key, and an adjustable spanner.
This fork might be a plug for responsible citizens to participate in public health measures:
Quick credit where it's due: I've ragged on a number of products sporting this logo, but I have to say that their road handlebar plugs fit very well. This is actually rare among the plastic push-in type usually included with bar wrap.
When it comes to things for the handlebars, these grips almost rival white handlebar tape for silliness. Clear grips? What do you want to admire under there?
Another entry in the WTF category:
Most chains these days use a closure link to connect the ends, rather than pressing rivets as we used to do. The rivet press chain tool is only used to remove the unneeded links from a new chain to set it to the length required by a particular bike. In the old pressed rivet days, I would collect the orphan bits and eventually be able to assemble myself a chain. But the lower profile and reinforced shaping of the rivet heads on modern chains make the rivets unsafe to reuse. They damage the side plates when they're pressed out. The closure link snaps together without deforming the plates of the links they join.
Yeah, but why does this bike have four of them?
On some bikes I have grafted in a section of chain with a closure link at each end. Usually this is because the rider uses two different cassettes at different times, and shortens or lengthens the chain as needed, using the handy links. On most chains for ten speeds or more, you can't reuse the links, so antics like this are either expensive or dangerous, depending on whether the rider actually heeds manufacturer instructions and uses a fresh link every time, or reuses the links, risking a chain failure that could prove very painful and costly in its own way. The grafts I did were on 9-speeds and lower. I've also had to do them on bikes with absurdly long chainstays, like some comfort bikes and pedal-forward cruisers. Mountain bikes with the current bizarre mutant drive trains with huge cassettes, often on full suspension bikes, need such long chains that now the manufacturers are offering chains with up to 144 links as opposed to the old traditional 112 or 114.
If I have to lengthen a chain for a repair, I try to avoid putting closure links right next to each other. I know that technically they're supposed to be full strength. After all, pro racers are launching their heroic sprints at rocket speeds on these chains. But they still make me a little nervous. Like, we get away with one, but are we pushing our luck to stack them up? Chains do fail. The failures I've seen have been as often at one of the regular links as at a closure link, but still... early versions you could snap apart with just the right squeeze and pinch, like some 1950s Joe Cool snapping open a brassiere. Hardware and morals have evolved across the board since then.
Here's a forthright statement about how the bike industry views its customers:
And in the "weird branding" section, one can guess at what this saddle is supposed to say, but it's not stated clearly:
"Racerlike?" At least it's a Rgstyrd Trdmrk.
Last among the unexpected details, an early 1980s (maybe late 1970s) road bike needed -- among other things -- new tires. I had a nice pair of 700X28s. On closer inspection, one wheel was a 27-inch. Fortunately, I had a 27X1 1/8 (630-28) to match up with the 700X28 (622-28).
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