Bike Design with Crayons

We just learned about the 2023 Marin Gestalt X10. A $1,549.00 bike that is almost worth riding. I try to rep Marin County with my bike work. It’s an incredible place to ride, especially if you want mixed terrain. We have hundreds of miles of gorgeous fire roads and a ton of singletrack from mild … Read more

Microscope Holding Upgrade

I just recently got the chance, again, to post microscope images of some failed handlebars. While I’m not into having failures, it’s nice to use my neat setup microscope. Images like the ones that I took are extremely difficult to obtain. Holding a handlebar (or portion of a handlebar) the long way, rigidly, under the … Read more

My first weld failure.

In response to whether he should give up a project, Thomas Edison once said, “I have not failed 10,000 times—I’ve successfully found 10,000 ways that will not work.” I’ve been welding my own bike frames, forks, and handlebars together since 2006. That’s about 16 years. Before that, I had a good amount of experience preparing … Read more

Suckered by Junk

This was supposed to be a nice little post about a setup tweak to Windy’s Stumpjumper and a different look at front end setup. Instead, we are also going to look at what makes a terrible commercial handlebar and what makes one good. When setting up Windy’s new bike, we were trying to push the … Read more

The Downhill Hardtail

This Sunday, I’m getting to close out the season at Northstar. I love riding downhill although I don’t do it much these days. I’ve had a nice summer in this regard. I was able to ride a day at Northstar early in the season and another two days of riding at Trestle in Colorado. Not … Read more

SRAM Retaining Ring Tool

A week or so ago, I posted my new bike, the 2022 PVD F-16 Fighting Falcon. Within the photoset and the breadcrumbs posted on Instagram was a photo of me finding a missing snap ring that got scuffed off against a rock or something. A discussion ensued on how and what to use to work … Read more

A new headset system

Testing is ruthless business. It requires radical intellectual honesty. Huge investments of time, effort, and money were put into getting something on the ground to test. Nobody wants any of that to be proven to be a waste. But it doesn’t help me in any way to lie and pretend to myself when confronted with … Read more

2022 PVD F-16 Fighting Falcon

In the short time I spent riding on my last mountain bike, the 2021 PVD MiG-31 Firefox, I fell in love. The bike was a stunning advancement in modern mountain bike geometry (PostForward). It felt amazing on the trail. Compared to older bike designs, it was lighter handling and cleaner while at low speeds and … Read more

Platform and Binding Pedals

Contrary to most of my posts, I’m not going to try to convince you of anything or tell you that I’m right. I just want to express some of my thoughts. Sometime in February or March of 2022, I put platform pedals on my mountain bike. Since then, I’ve also attached them to my all-road … Read more

The problem with 35mm handlebars

For many years I’ve been discussing the problem with 35mm handlebars on bicycles. Having them specified on stock bicycles is especially bad. They are rarely a good choice for a custom bicycle. I’ve got piles of these parts in a bin leftover from years of working around this junk, replaced with 31.8mm parts. I’ve finally … Read more

Brad Bingham Interview

We were on our way to Winter Park, CO. Our trip started with a birthday funday for Ronen at Northstar Bike Park and a Tahoe trail ride. The boy I once knew is now 33. Jesus was 33 at the end. Prophetic. The day of riding at Northstar was excellent. It had been a while … Read more

Bean Can 2022

Careful readers of my blog will know about the ‘bean can’. It’s a simple enough device that protects the delicate top tube of a bicycle frame when proper hand grip placement may produce damage in a crash. When everything goes ass over tea kettle, the front end swings around wildly, looking for something to stop … Read more

Windy’s trail crusher

It’s new bike day for Windy! I’m hoping that some of the younger folks read this post and be able to develop a new understanding of how to look at putting commercially available bicycles together. Most of my work is done at the extreme high end of construction and a development level that few can … Read more

Fail Early and Often

This happened. We all get to look and see. The carcass of my soul and pride lays in front of you. The message board heroes get to point and laugh. Public failures are a double edged sword. On one side, they give others ammunition to bring me down. They can point at this and say … Read more

Deeper Custom

We all think of custom differently. I like to take things a lot further than what you see in magazines. Spending money on retail crap isn’t custom as I see things, it’s consumption. Custom should be at your own hands not your pocketbook. It should be about taking risks, to show your style and flair. … Read more

Caletti Open House

Yesterday, I went to the Caletti Cycles open house in Santa Cruz. My wife and I had a nice little day trip. A few east bay stops on the way down and a sunset drive back up the coast to San Francisco and Marin. We enjoyed a quick ride in the trail network by UCSC … Read more

Upsweep Isn’t a thing

Handlebar upsweep isn’t a thing. It never has been. Notice that this will be the last paragraph where that term will be written in this article. Don’t say it. Don’t repeat it. It’s an old punchline to a joke nobody remembers. It’s been a few years since I’ve discussed handlebars in general. It’s time again. … Read more

Spring basics

A friend of mine was on a ride with us on Saturday. He had purchased a used bike a few months ago, a Santa Cruz Megatower XXL. He’s a big guy, 6’5″, and this bike is small for him. Not much tuning has been done. The rear end was giving him some issue. There is … Read more

The Half Volume Token

I’ve  been tuning the fork on my 2022 MiG-31 Firefox. It’s a RockShox Pike Ultimate RC2 150/42 B4. Nothing fancy in terms of tune at this point but sorting the spring side for now. It’s such a nice little fork. I’m 218 pounds and riding on gnar Marin singletrack with this hardtail. I’ve been tuning … Read more

Breaking things while moving fast

I got lucky. Really lucky. Less than a second later and I would have been tumbling head first down a 15 foot chute of chunk. It would have been very bad, possibly deadly. The 3D printed stem on my 2022 PVD MiG-31 Firefox  broke catastrophically on my third ride. This is the second catastrophic failure … Read more

The 240mm dropper post

Just about two years ago, the world changed. I got my hands on the (then) new OneUp 210mm dropper post. It was exactly what we had been waiting for and I put it right to use. Prior to that, we were on 185mm dropper posts, a 25mm increase. In the time since, all of my … Read more

2022 PVD MiG-31 Firefox XC MTB

It goes MACH 6 and is ‘invisible’. This insane interceptor fighter is thought-guided and controlled. The Firefox MiG-31. You need to ‘think in Russian’ to get this jet to do it’s job. In the past year and a half, I’ve invested a huge amount of time and resources developing an update to my state of … Read more

Ghetto CMM

I’ve mentioned using a manual mill with a DRO (digital read-out) as a ghetto CMM (coordinate measuring machine) in the past. Here’s a twisted example of what I’m talking about. Generally, when I’m talking about the ghetto CMM I’m talking about using the DRO to measure some points on a part so that we can … Read more

PBE2021

I hadn’t been to the Philadelphia Bicycle Exposition until this year. It was long overdue for me to attend as it is a very east coast event and I’m an east coast (originally) guy. Plus, folks have always said great things about the event. Unlike NAHBS (North American Handmade Bicycle Show) which moves from one … Read more