Bicycle

Last week, I had a tool fail in the shop. A shaft. A flexy one. A moment of carelessness combined with over a decade of use snapped the end of the shaft where it connects to the motor of my  Foredom SR flexible shaft tool. This can happen as it is the consumable part of the … Read more

I had a problem a couple of weeks ago. I was coming off of a ride on the M2-F2. What developed through the ride was a feel coming from the cranks that was horrific. It was grinding and feeling lumpy as I pedaled. I was lost as to what it was. I put the bike … Read more

I finally got a chance to dive deeper into the all-road bar-in concept. In December, I got the bar-ins installed on the all-road bike and the value (again) was instantly obvious. It’s grown to be one of my preferred positions on the bike. This is strange because you’d think that the wide grip position would … Read more

This is a new Road+ bike for Windy. Her last new bicycle frame was the 2023 Vega MTB. That bike was named after Amelia Earhart’s Lockheed 5B Vega. In my mind, it’s one of the nicest looking bikes I’ve ever produced. It’s really an eye catcher! Staying on theme, this road+ bike is named after … Read more

This is a golden oldie. About a billion years ago, I’d make special valve caps for presta valves from small dice, either six or 10 sided. Dice on tire valves is an old hot rod trick. It then got adopted by the BMX kids. It never quite made it from Vg8 to Vg5,2 Shrader threads. … Read more

It was time to interview Calvin Norstad. This January, Calvin took over from Mark (Calvin’s father) in running the whole show at Paragon Machine Works. This is some of the biggest news effecting custom bicycle framebuilding in a long time. One of the most influential and important companies has a new captain. This is important. … Read more

I’ve been working with the HT AE05 pedals lately. I just upgraded the pins. Now I’m looking at the spin. Out of the box, these pedals are very bound up. They have an insane amount of resistance to them. I wanted to figure out how to improve that. These are simple bushing pedals with a … Read more

I’ve made it clear that I’m not a fan of the new SRAM Transmission system. I’ve found that it shifts very poorly. It’s painfully slow. The shifter ergonomics are terrible. There’s no clearance under the new stealth master cylinder reservoirs for a better clamp. And the shifter pod perch is very weak. That’s a lot … Read more

finders, keepers; losers, weepers I have a several general rules that I follow when I’m riding trail. One of them (and the topic today) is that I stop to pick up any small parts that I see on the ground. Even if they are fairly beat or weathered. I do that. Why? The logic is … Read more

I said in the last post that I was going to be making some nicer pins for my new HT AE05 pedals. These were made from stainless steel M4x8 set screws. A basic 4mm x 34.7 degree taper. Sets up for a nice 1.5mm tip. The performance gain here is that it is now a … Read more

Yesterday, I made a couple of changes to my all-road bike, the 2023 PVD M2-F2. I figure that both of them were worthy of comment as this is always a work in progress. The all-road platform is fairly exciting for me to work with. The ‘answer’ to the puzzle is relatively undefined in the bike … Read more

I can’t remember exactly when Adam Prosise first showed up on my radar. It was maybe 4 or 5 years ago. I’m not sure. It was clear that he was something else. Adam really stands out in a crowd, literally and figuratively. He’s tall, 6’4″. He’s excited. He’s in the game. Chances are, you may … Read more

It was time to take another look at a ‘problem’ long in the making. Holding crap to a bicycle frame. In the bicycle world, we’ve been using a system to hold water bottles to a bicycle developed sometime in the 1930’s(?). Little has been done since. A hole is drilled in the tube and threaded … Read more

These are hard to get items. I wish that that wasn’t the case because they are very important. Few discuss them. In this case, these are 50mm x 47mm x 1mm stainless steel shims for T47 bottom brackets. I need to get a few 0.5mm as I needed one today. Broad strokes still work and … Read more

Mountain bikes and all-road bikes are some of the harder bikes to design and build. Squeezing frame members around tires and drivetrain parts compound into many other problems to solve. One of the primary ways of alleviating this is to provide as much clearance on the outside of the bike as can be made. This … Read more

Better. Stronger. Faster. I had two heroes when I was very young child. Mohamed Ali and Steve Austin. Ali was amazing. Steve ‘was’ an astronaut and more. It’s been quite a while since I’ve been able to put serious development time into the all-road platform. It was mid-2021 when the majority of the work on … Read more