Winter! Time for some serious DVD action.

Yup, if I'm gonna be on the couch, or god forbid, on the windtrainer I want something cool to watch.

Kranked 8 looks promising, although it's hard to tell due to some munter's machine-gun trailer edit. Riding looks pretty sick though.



New World Disorder 9 has been out for a bit, but I haven't rushed out to buy it due to it's ever-decreasing quality and they're produced by a guy who likes to be known as "big D".

When I was a kid I wanted to be known as Superbadass, but it didn't happen. Time to grow up and move on D, get a real name and return to making quality vids.



Of course, the one I've been waiting for is THIS:


Oh man, the credit card is getting a hammering this week. Forecast is for cold fronts and a bit of couch surfing

New bike time

For a while I've been fascinated by the notion of 29ers. So when Stu at the local Borwn's Avanti Cycle Centre offered me one they had in stock for while at a good price I couldn't say no.

One gear. Big wheels. Cable discs. No suspension. Hopefully bugger-all maitenance. In winter I don't want to be out there for ages so the high-intensity workout this thing offers should prove to be interesting.

The challenge for me will be not upspeccing it. I think a pair of forks might be on the shopping list but that's about it.

It's a cool bike. I have affectionally dubbed it "the wagon".

Project Pink: Done.

Head over to Celia's site for a look. Still waiting for some stickers and to get some scales out to weigh it but it looks very nice in the flesh. :)

Safe Cycling is Smart Cycling

Stolen from Bike Snob NYC.

Project Pink: The Build

With the frame almost ready to rock it was time to fang it home from work and get this puppy built.

Note my workshop, its not really a workshop, in fact its a garage that's structurally unsound and will quite possibly fall over in the next year or so. This is why you won't see my car, my bikes or any of my decent tools living in there for an extended period of time. All things going well a new versatile garage should be up by the beginning of summer so I can really get stuck into the bikes in a far more clinical manner.

First step was to slide on the hope seat collar, this is where you find out how good your paint work is. If the collar doesn't fit on, you've used too much paint and it'll require some judicious use of some snadpaper, if the paint's too thin it'll scratch up.

Everything went to plan and the seapost slid in sweetly, next job was the bottom bracket. At this point you really want to head down to the local bike shop if you haven't got the tools yourself to get the bottom bracket chased and faced. This cleans the threads out and makes a nice sqare interface for your external bottom bracket, if you don't do this there are two possible outcomes:
1. You'll constantly blow out bottom bracket bearings because they're not running parrallel
2. You'll cross thread the frame because the paint is gunking up the threads in the frame.

Both outcomes suck. You can do it without the chase and face but there's a big difference between being ghetto and just plain rough.

Headset next, and this is where I said a small prayer of thanks to the bike gods for blessing me with a headset press and rubber mallet. If you do a lot of switching around on your bikes you should buy these two tools. now.
Headset in and forks bolted on. This is what I call the first phase done, it's often overlooked because a lot of home mechanics are in such a rush to get the bikes done as quick as possible but the crank and headset bearing are arguably two of the hardest working pieces of kit on your bike, and the ones that make the most annoying noises if they aren't working properly.

Onto the drivetrain. Forte tensioners work really well. They can get a bit sketchy and rub on the pulley wheel cage a bit with a 1 1/8th chain if the chain isn't correctly aligned.

XT cranks were burgled from the Nomad and mated to a deore 32T middle ring. Truvativ do a good SS-specific ring that's cheap and cheerful but the shops usually don't keep them in stock so I was making do.

I leave the chain until last, I don't know why, I think it has something to do with not getting grease all over the rest of the bike before its finished.

Everything else was bolted on in quick order and not much later we had a complete bike (minus the chain).

Next step is to put the chain on, cut down the brake cables, get it stickered up and finally tuned.

Project Pink

So my lovely wife has decided to enter the Naseby 12 hour race solo on her singlespeed. Not unusual, in fact she often decides to do random stuff like this without too much of an issue. She's more than capable of pulling it off and after she chicked me at the Taupo Day-nighter last year I'm in NO position to object.

The thing is, I'm not a huge fan of her bike in its current state, a solid mix of crap we had lying around and some bling that needed a home. It's not a bad bike, but it definitely needed some love.


The first project in the dubious stable was this one. I wanted to give it an overhaul and a new paintjob, but only had a couple of days to pull it off. Normally I would send it off to the powdercoaters to dip and strip it, it's cheap, durable, and most importantly, EASY.

Unlike what I had to do:



After a couple of hours and a bit of swearing you should end up with this.


I should mention the other reason I wanted to strip this thing myself was the previous powdercoat job had been done a bit half-arsed and I'm pretty sure some sweat has gotten under it and onto the bare alloy. I was right, big tasty chunks of powdercoat came flying off without much persuasion.

After a bit of sanding of the various corroded bits of sweat and alloy off the frame I hung it out to dry on the clothes line with a fresh can of primer for company.

This part of the process sucks.

You have to sit around waiting for the primer to dry before using your colour of choice. I recommend desgreasing and cleaning the bits that are going back on the frame while the paint does its thing.

Anyway, after an hour or so of waiting it was down to business with the paint of choice, Plasti-cote pink, I usually use the Plasti-cote stuff because it seems to adhere well to a wide variety of poorly prepped surfaces (this is my back-yard we are talking about here) and is fairly solid when it cures.

Voila.


Build pictures and progress up tomorrow.