Saturday, March 29, 2008

Not Nobby Enough

Today I had my second "crash" (first was in Moab, think not enough speed and 40" drop) in the 2008 season. The trails here in Durango are starting to dry and today I figured I see what the gulch looked like. The trails were really dry with the occasional mud hole and my confidence was high form the early season riding. Towards the end of the ride I went in to the tricky corner at at the end of the meadow loop and tried a little tighter line and what do ya know, my front tire washes out and I got a dirty. It looks like running a Crow on the front may not be the best idea after all.

Tuesday, March 25, 2008

Last minute fix

A group of my friends decided to miss a few days of school and head out to California for a NORBA race(Fontana). One of those friends has a SWEET hook up and had acquired a set of new rims for his old wheels. A few days before leaving he decided he wanted to replace the rear rim with one of his replacement rims and I gladly volunteered myself to build them. The rider is Dylan Stucki, A pro rider from Gunny Colorado who happens to be 180ls and 6' 4" and rough on rims.

This is a picture of the old rear rim.

The DT Swiss XR 4.2d rim was laced to a DT Swiss 340 Hub with DT Swiss comp spokes (24 black, 8 sliver) and Gold Alloy Nipples.
The Completed wheel.

The actual building process went great. The lacing was easy as usual and the truing and tensioning went extremely smoothly. In the end the wheel came out of the stand with less than 1 mm of vertical deflection and no horizontal deflection (rare) with even tension all the way around the wheel. This was only my 2nd time lacing to a DT rim and I was very impressed with the build quality. I will be recommending/using DT rims more often in the future.

Wednesday, March 19, 2008

2nd Attempt




This time around I used a high strength epoxy that I picked up at the local hardware store. The tread pattern is also different than last time(tread blocks are not connected to each other and a strip of tread was placed in the middle of the shoe to help avoid damage to the carbon fiber.
After gluing the tread blocks I coated the bottom and toe of the shoe with a layer of epoxy to protect the carbon from damage. The final result was a shoe that was lighter than the first prototype weaighing in at 642g for the pai w/o cleats. I will be testing the shoes over the next month here in Durango and I will post an update later.
Hopefully this prototype will work other wise I will be leaving the shoes as road shoes.

Sunday, March 16, 2008

Shoe Testing

After a week of testing on spring break(in Moab) this is what the shoes look like.
3 of the original 8 tread pieces came off, most on the first day riding slick rock. I had to walk up most all of the climbs there due to a worn front chain ring. On the later days of testing they did great, it was only when I was walking on steep slick rock when tread failed.

I have removed the remaining tread and glue and cleaned the surface for re-gluing, this time with an high strength epoxy. I will post again when the shoes are done (may be awhile, school work before bikes).
 

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