My latest 650b low trail fredmobile for the peanut gallery

[roseyscot]

glad it works for you.

why did you put red tape on the top tube cable stops? were you snagging shorts or your skin? i've never had good experiences with cable stops at 3 or 9 o'clock.

[Matthew J]

No matter what's bolted to them, it's not a rando bike without a 110bcd Ritchey Logic square taper crank, ya heard!

Is it meant to be a Rando? Looks as though it would do quite well as a road / off road utility machine.

[sparky33]

The Extra Léger Hetres are set up tubeless, and the low rolling resistance of that combo is definitely noticeable, but I find myself inflating them to 30-35psi instead of 25-30 because of the lack of compression damping in the casing. The sidewalls even wrinkle visibly under load! I find normal Hetres at 20psi to still be perfectly rideable, but these sag a lot when that low and squeal obscenely just turning the bars on asphalt.

I am still in disbelief that Extra Leger Hetres can hold air tubeless. The Extra Leger sidewall is paper thin. Any issues so far?

[David Tollefson]

On paper, I'm not a fan of low-trail (I made mine to have mega trail, ultra slack front end with loads of front-center). But I've never ridden a low-trail bike (that I know of), so I'm judging without first-hand experience. I like the custom idea though, and the fact you're stoked about it. Bike tires on a roadie -- big grins from me.

[Rico]

On paper, I'm not a fan of low-trail (I made mine to have mega trail, ultra slack front end with loads of front-center). But I've never ridden a low-trail bike (that I know of), so I'm judging without first-hand experience. I like the custom idea though, and the fact you're stoked about it. Bike tires on a roadie -- big grins from me.

It makes a big difference when you are carrying weight up front.

[jitahs]

Elegant rack/crown interface - any dif in handling raising it vs. the R?

32 3x f/r ...what spokes?

Superlight steerer - that's a proprietary name right... you mentioned tandem cs for possible future fork blades - what's the compliance in the front like currently/must a load be carried to dampen things out.

[timto]

Cool bike. I love everything about it. Tell me more about the top pull Sram FD? any comments on that geo when not riding with a load on the front?

[blasdelf]

No matter what's bolted to them, it's not a rando bike without a 110bcd Ritchey Logic square taper crank, ya heard!

I've got three pairs in 180mm

Though the true holy grail for that type of rando dork is the 94bcd version, I've got a few friends with hoards of them that get used as 46/30 or 42/29 doubles

[Zandr Martin]

Tell me more about the top pull Sram FD?

From the pictures it looks like he bolted another piece in place of the existing cable-pinch bolt to reverse the cable pull direction. Am I right blasdelf? That's very clever.

[blasdelf]

why did you put red tape on the top tube cable stops? were you snagging shorts or your skin? i've never had good experiences with cable stops at 3 or 9 o'clock.

It caught on some loose thin pants a couple times an hour, I'll hit it with a deburring tool when I get back into the shop and it should be fine.

I routed the cables that way so that the top tube would be maximally sittable on, and also be good for shouldering from the NDS. I didn't want anything internal, and having nothing on the DT makes it a better handle (pretty much the way to portage a porteur).

[blasdelf]

From the pictures it looks like he bolted another piece in place of the existing cable-pinch bolt to reverse the cable pull direction. Am I right blasdelf? That's very clever.

Indeed

It's a Speen Umlenker, he's done the scut work of figuring out the geometries of all the major front derailleurs, making it much easier to buy than build.

[blasdelf]

I am still in disbelief that Extra Leger Hetres can hold air tubeless. The Extra Leger sidewall is paper thin. Any issues so far?

They swallowed up about an oz of sealant, and they got pinholes around the edges of the tread, but that's all quite normal for tubeless with nice tires.

The annoying thing about them is having to pump them up more to feel right — like a suspension fork that has great small-bump response but really because the compression damper is detuned, so you need a bigger spring to avoid wallowing in the travel.


I ride normal Hetres with tubes at 20-30psi, the EL Hetres tubeless want around 35psi. If I let them down around 20 they wrinkle visibly when I get on, and squeal on the asphalt just riding out of my driveway.

[blasdelf]

Elegant rack/crown interface - any dif in handling raising it vs. the R?

Once it's above the wheel, the height of the load isn't really noticeable until you get to extremes: like bundles of firewood that extend up over the bars, or piling a dozen tallboys on top of the stuff you already had in the bag.

Height does matter more than fore/aft placement, but centering the load left/right is the real sticking point. Part of that is that you really want to balance density, not just weight / center-of-gravity.


As such I didn't really design around it, but I just checked and the platform on the latest rack is actually almost an inch lower than the one on my Rawland:



On the Rawland I had one fender boss on the rack, positioned directly over the axle, and placed everything to keep the tire clearance the same there as at the boss under the fork crown.

On the new bike there's intentionally no direct fender boss under the crown, and once I put the Honjos on there will be two fender bosses on the rack facing the axle with it centered between them:



This ends up conserving the same tire clearance, because the mounts are along a chord rather than tangent right at the peak.

32 3x f/r ...what spokes?

DT SuperComps, which also make aluminum nipples viable because the 1.8mm threads give them more meat

Superlight steerer - that's a proprietary name right...

Normal steel steerers have been 2.3mm thick at the bottom and 1.6mm thick at the upper end since time immemorial, a 1" OD tube ends up with a 7/8" ID at the top and it happens to make them thick enough to thread and slot for a keyway. Everything's been threadless for 15 years, but for some fucking reason almost nobody bothers to use thinner steerers even on modern 1 1/8" stuff (some at least started making them 2.1mm at the thick end).

True Temper used to make a thin 1" threadless steerer that was the lightest setup around, but that's been out of production for a decade. Thankfully they still make 1 1/8" 1.65/1.14mm steerers in both 4130 and OX Platinum. Sometimes you have to bend the flanges on a star-nut to get a good fit on the larger ID, but there's really no downside or even a cost difference.

If you wanna calculate the weight difference or dent resistance, here's a spreadsheet for your edification: https://docs.google.com/spreadsheet/...vMWt1ckE#gid=0

you mentioned tandem cs for possible future fork blades - what's the compliance in the front like currently/must a load be carried to dampen things out.

The fork is pretty beef, the blades are a little bigger than normal oversized, and less ovalized too. Despite that it does have some flexibility in it at least laterally, it'll probably get put in the fork deflection tester that BQ built at some point to really find out.

Unless it's truly extreme like one built with undersized super-tapered Imperial Oval blades or an old Time 1" carbon fork, any compliance in the fork is *very* hard to perceive over the tires.

You can get to the other extreme with an oversize straight-gauge segmented fork that has all of its offset at the crown, or by building a beefy porteur rack that goes all the way to the dropouts, or with a truss spaceframe like Jeff Jones does, or any of the superbeef insanity that Chalo needs to not break shit JRA.

[blasdelf]

any comments on that geo when not riding with a load on the front?

it's not as understable / nervous / supermanueverable as my previous lowtrailbro bikes when ridden without a load


the steering geometry isn't really different from the previous incarnations

I suspect the rounder tire profile is playing a large part in the difference, I could pick that out of the haystack immediately when I rode it the first time

the fit is better too, and I'm talking about balance not goddamn contact points — e-richie's "putting the wheels in the right place"

also the frame alignment is probably better, my old Kogswell was quite off especially towards the end of its life


if you know the handling difference between a standard cyclocross bike and an italian-style road bike, this one is about that much more manueverable than the road bike

with 5-35lbs added, it's more neutral like the road bike, but still different in character (I'm too habituated to it to describe better as I've been riding these for 6 years)


the weight of the load also pretty much disappears while you're riding, obviously you still expend energy to get the load up hill, but it's like waterbottles not panniers

and the absolute opposite of having 10 pounds in a saddlebag, which makes the bike feel like it weighs 200lbs the second you get out of the saddle

[summilux]

Also speechless that these tires work tubeless. ELs are on backorder at Compass and I'd love to try them tubeless. Think it was worth the trouble? Sure seems like a lot of sealant.

[blasdelf]

Sure seems like a lot of sealant.

The 124g 650b tubes I use are exactly the same weight as 4oz of Stan's sealant. I'd guess that each tire had had maybe 3oz of sealant put into it so far, and at least a third of that has coagulated into the sidewalls (with most of the liquid it was suspended in evaporating). The weight of the valve is trivial, under 10g.

I'm far from the only one using these tubeless, I ran into a few others on an SIR brevet, and I know Peter Weigle has done a couple sets (including shaved tubeless!).

[jitahs]

This ends up conserving the same tire clearance, because the mounts are along a chord rather than tangent right at the peak.

Apparently running the fender up btwn the mounts doesn't interfere with the bag.

If you wanna calculate the weight difference or dent resistance, here's a spreadsheet for your edification: https://docs.google.com/spreadsheet/...vMWt1ckE#gid=0

Ok I get it: the carried weight is born by the fork/axle/wheel, not by the steerer at all.

Unless it's truly extreme like one built with undersized super-tapered Imperial Oval blades or an old Time 1" carbon fork, any compliance in the fork is *very* hard to perceive over the tires.

True with the GBs at those volumes on those rims.

Thinking about the feasibility of converting an italo-roadie, griffin-style; Irina Shayk in the back, meat head in the front. Needs more study.

[spopepro]

; Irina Shayk in the back, meat head in the front.

I think I saw what you're looking for at the White Horse last friday.

[jitahs]

I think I saw what you're looking for at the White Horse last friday.

Yea anything close to the Tendernob (sic) is suspect. Beware what's under the boot.

[blasdelf]

Apparently running the fender up btwn the mounts doesn't interfere with the bag.

the fender would be bolted on with 1/2" spacers, and at the peak still have some breathing room, not coming up into the space between the tubes

the 58mm knobby I have for it still has a slightly smaller OD than the fender

Ok I get it: the carried weight is born by the fork/axle/wheel, not by the steerer at all.

the cargo load, yes

but the rider, no

the majority of the flex in normal metal forks is concentrated right at the crown

and if you've seen many crashed forks, that's where they like to deform plastically too

sometimes there'll even be a bulge in the steerer a few cm above the crown race