Bike Washing Help!

We get newsletter emails from the guys over at The Hive, makers of Chub Hubs, importers of Formula Brakes, etc.

This month, there was a nice little chunk of info about bike washing techniques and strategy, which I will copy and paste now.  Happy New Year!

Tech Tip
So it is winter, and where we are, that means mud. That might mean worse weather where you are, in either case if you are riding through the winter (you are riding through the winter right?) you are going to need to know how to keep your bike clean. While the standard garden hose seems like your best bet, think again. Hosing you bike after every ride isn't really the best thing for your bike, specifically the bearings. So what to do when your sweet ride is covered in a weeks worth of mud and horse crap? A couple tips can help you from wrecking those ever important bearings:

Our man Joe at Santa Cruz bikes says:
"Stop washing your bike so much. We did some experiments with bikes that were washed a lot but ridden infrequently, bikes that were ridden a lot but washed infrequently, and bikes that were both washed and ridden a lot. Guess what? Your bike hates only being washed and not being ridden. This test group had the worst results. They became creaky and not much fun to be around, much like the people who own bikes like that. Don't get all angry (you know who you are), you can still wash your bike from time to time - and there are those times where it has to be done after every ride. Everything needs more attention during those times. BUT, maybe you should examine your priorities. It's a mountain bike. You can get dirt on it. It's OK."
Joe knows his stuff and as the head engineer of Santa Cruz bikes he seems to know more about bicycles than he does about fine scotch.

So...

• If your bike it just a little dirty clean it with a rag. Knock all the big chunks of dirt off first then go over the frame with some Pledge furniture cleaner. Not only will your bike be shiny, but it will also smell lemony fresh. Just be careful not to get any on your disc brakes.
• Grease those bearings. Use a high quality grease and change it occasionally, this will keep bearing debris and wear to a minimum. Also inspect the bearing seals and make sure that they are in good condition. On the Fifteen.g bottom bracket, try putting a layer of grease under the outer non-contact shield. This will help keep any water that does make it around the seal from getting to the bearing.
  

• If your bike is covered in filth, it is ok to bust out the hose. But do it PRO style, spend more time brushing and less time spraying. Take your wheels off and clean the separately. Warm water helps.
• Don't point the hose at your headset, hubs or BB. Pressure washing is a definite no-no. "But the pros pressure wash their bikes after every stage of the tour", yeah we know, the pros also have a team of mechanics repacking their bearings once a week. You don't need to wrap those parts in stretch wrap, but avoiding a direct blast will help avoid forcing water into those parts.
• If you must wash your bike know the risks. Bikes that get hosed off will need a bit more love to stay happy. Washing your bike isn't the worst thing in the world, but realize that you will need to service your bearings more frequently. So from time to time, bust out the grease and spend some time cleaning the inside of your bike.

New Troy Lee D3 Helmets are here!

We got the new D3 in. And boy does it go well with our jersey:





Any chance our design caught Troy Lee's eye last year when we had them make Jerseys for us?
Hard to say, but I'm going to go ahead and assume yes.

Anyway, the helmet sure does look good with our Jersey.

The new D3 is chock full of new features, worth checking out. We have every color in stock now (except the black carbon, which is proving hard to get).

Miss Me?

I've been a delinquent updater once again.
Not a whole lot to talk about though.

Last weekend, Danny and I and our lil' families went up and race cross country in Taos. It was good times. It's a very fun, and extremely hard course. Up some of the steepest dirt roads that I have ever seen. And some very tight single track up around 12,000 feet.

The course was very complicated, doubling back and crossing over itself a number of times, with a slightly different route for each of the three laps done after the big fire road climb.
Fortunately, it was extremely well organized, with a ton of volunteers to steer you in the right direction at every intersection, and everything ran smoothly.

Danny, true to form, pinched a tube, and then proceeded to blow up his chain. This worked well for me, because it slowed him down to the point where I could catch him. So we rode the final 1/3 of the race together, coming across the finish line as team Bikeworks.

My age group (19-29) was actually faster than Danny's (30-39), which is unusual, and the same finishing time resulted in a 3rd place finish for Danny, and 4th place for me, in our respective age groups in expert (cat 1).

And then it was back to work with us. Our final week without Tony, Danny and I were certainly feeling a little worn down. The shop is just a little difficult to run with two guys.

I've procured a couple of new rides for the stable lately. First was a Swobo Crosby.

This bike is bad to the bone. The frame is nicer than I anticipated, with some details that you can't really see on the picture. The downtube is six sided, with a huge interface with the head tube, and then is rotates and has a hug connection with the BB. A carbon fork that gives a much smoother ride than I anticipated. Sliding dropouts, disc capable, gearing capable, solid parts spec out of the box, and the most rad color scheme I've seen in a while. Even the tires are perfect for our foothills.
It also comes with the Sram Torpedo hub, which looks vaguely like a coaster brake hub, and can be converted between singlespeed or fixed gear with 5 turns of a small flathead screw. The screw sits inside of the axle, and is accessed via the driveside axle nut, which is open on the end.

And the bike retails for $1,000. This thing is a lot of bike for the money.

I also just replaced my Soma Rush frame for another of the same, except this one is my size. Also, it's white, and awesome, because white bikes are awesome.

If anyone is interested in a 55cm black track frame and fork, this thing is a beaut, and it'll go for a good price.

And with that, I'm going to go pay bills on my day off, because it'll be nice and quiet at the shop, and I haven't paid bills in a number of weeks.

My Knees Hurt

So that last post was from Charlie, not me (Lucero). Although I do get a fair number of new bikes, the Altitude is not one of them. My next bike is going to be an Anthem XO, and it is going to be fast and light and I am going to destroy Dan Swinton with it at Dawn til Dusk. Bwa ah ah ah ah.

In other news, we've begun getting back out for wednesday night rides. Two weeks in a row now, both nights were jersey and shorts weather, which made things much more enjoyable than those very cold winter rides we had gotten used to.
Last wednesday my trusty old Niterider HID finally gave up the ghost after six years or so, and died on me about ten minutes into the ride. This wasn't my first time out without a light, so I plodded along riding off of everybody elses lights (cohorts included Richaround, Dr. Dave, Danny, Tony and myself).
At one point I managed to get in front of everybody, and then in a moment of darkness totally throw myself into the ground, via the over the bars route, with "all the grace of a frog falling from the sky" as Danny put it. Much skin was lost from my left knee cap, a deep nasty puncture wound at the top of my right knee, which proceded to spew blood all over the trail.
But I am impervious to pain, and very manly, and proceeded to finish the ride with nary a wimper.

Last night we got out with Charles in charge, Scoot, and Travitron. It was a significantly faster ride than our typical weds night jaunts, which I blame Travitron for.
I was using / demo-ing the Lupine Tesla light, which had been sitting in the shop for a couple of months calling my name. It made me happy, here's my mini review:

The Lupine Tesla is good. It is bright, super light, and it makes me happy.

After the ride, whilst getting things in and out of Charlies vehicle, a managed to completely rip the scab off my left knee cap by rubbing it against his fender. It hurt big time, but I didn't wimper, you know, on account of my manly-ness.
The gross part was 5 minutes later before we left I found the scab, stuck to the fender. I showed it to Charlie, and he took it and said he was going to save it forever. He's getting weird lately.

Hoping to get out to the east mountains sunday morning. If anyone wants to join, give a holler or come by the shop. I'm excited to ride something other than the foothills.

Buenobye

Redefining "standard"

So it used to be that bikes had 68mm or 73mm wide bottom bracket shells. I know there were other standard before that, and Italian threaded bb's rear their ugly head from time to time, but for the most part, there were two "standard" sizes.

In the past couple years though, things have gotten a little stupid. With the proprietorizing of components that the big manufacturers seem so fond of these days, us lucky wrenches get to deal with the following ridiculousness soon:

Here is a quick guide to a number of these new standards:

BB30, or 30 X 68 and 30 X 73mm bottom brackets, come in either 68mm or 73mm shell widths for road or mountain bikes. The spindle diameter is 30mm, and the 41mm-diameter bearings press straight into the BB shell and are held in place by snaprings. In addition to Cannondale (who named the system) and Specialized (which doesn’t call its system BB30), FSA and SRAM (TruVativ) make BB30 cranksets; Shimano does not, and Campagnolo makes press-in adaptor cups to fit its Ultra-Torque (and Fulcrum Racing-Torq) cranks to a BB30 shell.

Scott and Shimano came up with BB83/BB86, often called the “Shimano system,” but not by Shimano. It accepts a standard 24 X 90mm road or 24 X 95mm MTB crank spindle. The shell is 86.5mm wide with a 41mm ID. The bearing has a 37mm OD and is pressed into a nylon insert with a 41mm OD that presses into the frame . Each insert’s shoulder is 1.75mm wide, creating the 90mm width and hence the BB90 name. Shimano, FSA and SRAM offer BBs to fit this shell; Campagnolo makes press-in adaptor cups to fit its Ultra-Torque (and Fulcrum Racing-Torq) cranks to BB83/BB86 shells.

BB92 is the MTB version of the BB83/BB86 with a 91.5mm wide shell for MTB triple cranks. Again, the 3.5mm of the two shoulders add width to 95mm.

BB90 is Trek’s Campy- (and Shimano-, SRAM-, FSA-) compatible Madone system. The BB shell is 90mm wide by 37mm ID. The 37mm OD bearings (the same bearings as inside an external-bearing cup) insert directly into the carbon frame and accept integrated-spindle cranks.

BB95 is the MTB version of BB90 with a 95mm wide shell on the new Trek Top Fuel and Fuel EX carbon.


Wilier’s new system has a 94mm wide BB into which a Campagnolo Ultra-Torque (or Fulcrum Racing-Torq) crankset fits directly without cups or retaining clip.

Lifted entirely from Velonews, courtesy of Lennard Zinn. Isn't that nice and straight forward for you. Odd of any old shop having the bearings/bb you need for the proprietary setup on your new Madone when you are on a road trip? Probably not too good.
I came across this just now, and hadn't realized how ridiculous this had gotten. How many of these new systems do you think will be around in ten years? Gonna be easy to replace that crank?
I better be careful, I'm going to start approaching "crusty old bike mechanic" status.

We got kids shirts!

We had some sweet kiddie t's made for the shop. Like our big people shirts, they are super soft American Apparel T's.

The kiddies in the pic belong to Charlie, and you might be able to buy one if you don't have any children of your own to go with your sweet new Bikeworks T, seeing as he's got three of them.

Almost a month!

Its been almost a month since I put anything up on our site. Wow, I am negligent. I should remove the post date so it's not so obvious.
My only excuse is that the shop has been busier than ever. June was by far our busiest month to date, and we nearly doubled sales in July. If we're not careful, we're going to find ourselves employers soon, and that's a whole other can of worms. It's definitely an exciting problem to have.

Just found out about a cool online shop, Velo Orange, thanks to Richaround. He was trying to help me style out my newest bike acquisition, which is his old 1984 Stumpjumper, which he got new in 1985. It was already sans-paint, so now it is in the process of getting powder coated "extreme chrome", and then it will be built up with many original parts to become my new ultimate commuter / baby towing machine. I really wouldn't consider it as a regular commuter, except my commute is under three miles long, so really any bike becomes a good candidate for a commuter.

If your building up a dedicated baby trailer towing bike, does it indicate that maybe you're approaching having too many bikes?

I've also built up a few other bikes recently, speaking of too many bikes. I finally got around to re-building up der Fusion, my obscure German freeride machine. Don't actually know too much about the bike, as my German is limited to "a pint of beer please" (learned while in Munich, essential when in a beer hall) and "where is my underwear" (learned prior to my visit to Germany from my wife, who studied German in highschool, and wanted me prepared for the trip).
I believe it is a 6.5" travel bike, and they are handmade in Germany, and they don't have any US distribution, but they do have some sponsored world cup DH racers, and they seem to be pretty sweet bikes.

I finally got motivated to reassemble der Fusion because I had decided to head up to Pajarito a couple weekends ago to ride the lifts. I had been hearing about how many fun trails had been built up there, and I decided it was irresponsible of me, as a local shop owner, not to go check it out and show my support. It was a blast, there are plenty of trails to keep you entertained, enough stuff to scare your self on (or to be scared of and not do, as was generally my case). They are very enthusiastic up there, embracing the downhill and freeride scene, and plan on building more and more trails. There was quite a few riders on Sunday, and I hear Saturday is substantially busier. Everybody was friendly, no douche bag attitudes, and everybody sat around in the parking lot after the lift stop for a beer. In general, I'm very happy I went, and now I'm all fired up to go ride some big bikes some more.

To go along with my new big bike riding enthusiasm, I've been doing a little bit of shopping, you know, for safety gear. Most recently, I got a sweet new full face from 661.


That's my "holy cow I'm totally going so fast ... ohh f@#k!" face. It's good to practice these things so you can get it right when the time comes.

I also got a new singlespeed frame, one that I can finally run discs with. I acquired an On One Scandal 26. The frame was on closeout from one of our distributors, so I snatched it up in a hurry. It's sweet, I've always been a fan of Scandium frames, and it has a nice long (24.4 in) top tube, which is a welcome chance after so many bikes that were too small for me (a bad habit that took me several bikes to break). Of course, I shouldn't be talking it up too much, as we don't have any for sale in the shop, and rumor is the US importer isn't going to be importing any more (hence the closeout pricing). So we'll just leave it at that.

The following picture accomplishes two things at once.


Here you see a very cool, small, light and bright Hope light that I know none of the specs of, but Charlie just bought it and is excited about it and it's cool so here it is anyways, sitting on top of a picture in the current issue of Decline of local fast guy Chris Boice, who is a pro on the Yeti national team and good friend of ours who likes to come into our shop, grind things for hours with the dremel (something I've found most downhillers to be fond of), let his dog puke the most rancid dog puke anybody has ever smelled all over the sales floor, and yet we still like him.

Way to go Chris, it's fun seeing people you know in magazines that you read.

Of course, no post would be complete without a plug or a link to Bikefix.net. There's some new stuff on there about nice but too short Endura shorts (we agree, and so does our new rep, so maybe they'll change in the near future) as well as a write up about Mary from Siren bikes, who recently became the first woman to race the entire length of the Great Divide Mountain Bike Race. But most importantly, he finally did a review of the Maverick Durance, which we all know is the most superior trail bike available today. Marc agrees, and fortunately is eloquent enough to put it's pure awesomeness into words without resorting to use of grammatically questionable words such as "awesomeness".

And last but not least, we had sad news today as we found out that my old Pinarello cross bike died a sad death at the hands of a stupid car with a presumably stupid person behind the wheel (in our shop, you're presumably stupid until proven un-stupid when you go about running your car into bicyclists).


Fortunately, our friend and current owner of the late Pinarello came out relatively unscathed (relative to how the bike faired). The bike is bent in more than a few directions, without much hope of being straightened. I'm particularly impressed with the stem, which is bent in a way none of have ever seen a stem bend before. I guess that's a testament to the toughness of the Salsa CroMoto quill stem. You can rest assured that thing is never going to shear on you. Farewell Pinarello, I will miss your flamboyantly Italian rainbow dotted painjob.

And that's about what I'm good for tonight. Hopefully it won't be another 28 days before I get around to putting up another post. I actually intend to start a running list, with pictures, on the site that will show all the used bikes and major components we have for sale at the moment, which will be updated on a very irregular basis.

Thanks to everybody who has been coming around. We're thrilled about the customer base we've built so far, and we've been very busy largely because of all the positive word of mouth. It's starting to look like this whole "owning a bike shop" thing might work out.

Shop awesomeness

We did a little shopping, and ended up with a big ol' TV. Just in time for the Tour de France, hopefully I'll get the cable hooked up today or tomorrow and we'll be all set to watch some doping scandal drama, and maybe a little bike racing thrown in too.


Tony did a little shopping, and we ended up with a couple of sweet new integrated headsets from Cane Creek, with ash topcap and spacers. That headsets almost better looking than the Slowdown Brown behind it.



Speaking of beer, our friends over at Il Vicino had a little present to go with our most recent keg, in the form of a rad tap handle. We also reportedly have another 5gal Cornelius shell lined up for us that we should be acquiring in the near future, which will cut down on those sad days at the shop when we're inbetween kegs and forced to drink bottles.


Brian, a friend of ours, did a little shopping, and ended up with Danny building one of the hottest road wheelsets of his wheel building career. We started with some White Industry hubs, 20 hole up front and 24 hole in back. Then we added some Edge carbon aero tubular rims, and a collection of Sapim bladed spokes, and we ended up with an 1160 gm wheelset. Brian brought his bike by yesterday with the wheels on it, and they're definitely fast.

That's it, time to go do a little singlespeed ride before work.

Cycling Safety Statistics

I've mentioned Dave Moulton's bike blog before, and I link it in our link section.
His most recent post lays out a number of statistics about the safety of cycling in comparison to other activities, mostly driving. I'm not sure where these numbers come from, but they are some numbers that I've been wondering about for a while.
There are some crazy stats, such as, per million hours spent cycling the fatality rate is 0.26, as compared to 0.47 for driving.

Check it out.... http://davesbikeblog.blogspot.com/2008/04/cyclists-live-longer.html

I'm interested in this because of how often I meet people who don't ride bikes because they think it too dangerous. Or they think I am crazy because I ride my bike in the city every day, or they only ride bike paths, and often drive their bike somewhere to ride it.

I found it a very interesting post, hope you do to.

Busy Weekend

We had a nice and busy and fun weekend.
First off, Dan and Charlie (and Guy) went off to race Friday evening in Gallup. Charlie, in his first race ever, posted a very respectable 6 laps (something like 80 miles of singletrack in a day, I didn't know Charlie had it in him) which earned him 14th out of 27 racers in his age group. Just missed top half, sorry Charlie.

Dan and Guy were in the Duo Men race, and finished 6th place out of 22 teams, with 10 laps completed (5 laps each). Not bad for a couple of roadies, racing on 10+ year old hardtails. They certainly beat the pants off the other Albuquerque shop with a team out there, who came in last.

Looking through the results I noticed our friend Frankie Flats coming in 3rd in the 80+ combined age duo category. Nice going Frankie.

While Dan and Charlie were out playing, I was slaving away at the shop. I enlisted the help of Marc for the day, as running the shop solo on a Saturday isn't exactly awesome. Marc has a knack for retail, and merchandising, and making a bike look good, and all sorts of stuff like that. So after staring at our wall of bikes for a day, he had some suggestions for us, which resulted in a sweet brown medium Maverick Matic being built up for demo.



It's still brand new, and I could sell it for $3300 right now. Our demo program is $50 for a day, and that money will go towards any bike that you buy. As the bike goes out for demos, the price will be reduced accordingly.

Our other demo bikes include a large Maverick ML8, a Large Maverick Durance, a 19" Rocky Mtn. Slayer SXC 90, a 56cm Serotta Ottrott with full Campy Record build, and a 54cm Serotta Legend with full Red build. So basically, we have some sweet bikes to demo.

Another really good looking bike in the store right now is a 55cm (top tube) Langster London edition we have on consignment.



It has approximately no miles on it. we also have the rear brake and lever that it originally came with. We like this bike, it is very good looking. Fortunately it doesn't fit any of us, so we can actually sell it rather than keep it for ourselves.

On Sunday, Dan and I participated in another local alleycat. This one was organized by Jesse, who won a couple of the past ones, and sponsored by us, The Coop, and some other shop. It was a good time, with around 40 participants. The theme was Our Lady of Guadalupe, and the course took us to various shrines and churches around town, hunting for candles with stamps affixed to the bottom. Dan and I came in 2nd and 3rd, following Chris Downs who took the win. Chris and I were chatting about collaborating on a race in early June, as it's definitely our turn to organize one of these.
The finish included a number of prizes, as well as copious amounts of beer and pizza, a large grassy lawn, and a perfectly sunny lazy sunday evening spent with a bunch of bike dorks hanging out drinking. All in all, it was a great way to spend a sunday.
I seem to have lost my pics, thankfully I'm better with bikes than computers.

And that's about it. Time to finish my beer and be getting on home.

'08 Maverick's and Rocky Mtn.'s On Hand

We've got some sweet mountain frames on hand.
We have an '08 Maverick Durance, in Medium and limited edition Fast Orange color. The '08s are just starting to show up at shops, and we got a few of the first, as Maverick loves us. Why do they love us? I can only assume it's because we're so rad (and has nothing to do with the number of bikes we've bought). We had a large hard ano Durance for a couple of days, but it's gone, sold to a friend to replace a Blur LT. Good choice my friend.


As you can see, to the left of the Orange Durance, we have a large ano '07 Durance on sale for $1900, $400 off suggested retail. Slightly different from the '08 model, but an amazing bike at a great price. And to the right you can see two ML8's, one medium and one large. So basically, we got you covered.

You can also see a BMC peeking in the corner of the photo as well. We still have two used BMC frames that we would love to find homes for. Both Large, the Trailfox will go for $800 and the Superstroke for $750. Both have seen minimal miles.

In other mountain frame news, we've got a couple of '08 Rockies hanging on the wall.



An ETSX 70 in 19", and a Slayer Team in 19" ( both in the Dan's size, strangely enough). I got to ride an ETSX in the south foothills a few days ago, and I was thoroughly impressed. I think it will the perfect bike for the die hard cross country hardtail guy who is finally realizing that a little suspension might be a good thing. It has super nimble, whippy cross country handling, with five inches of forgiveness to keep you feeling fresh and get you out of trouble from time to time. I was also impressed on it's pedaling efficiency, without the ProPedal turned on, and it's sheer grip at the rear wheel on steep, loose technical climbs. That bike dug in like nothing I've ridden before, even with moderate tires.
I haven't ridden the Slayer more than around the parking lot yet, but I'm planning on getting out soon with our Demo and our ML8 demo to do a side by side comparo. I'll let you know what I think.

In closing, it's spring time, and I think you should get a new mountain frame.
Lucero out.

Soma: keeping your feet connected to your bike with style.

Soma Fab makes some cool stuff. Affordable, well made, and stylish, and sometimes hard to come by. Items such as their double toe straps, which cost a fraction of the Japanese versions you usually find, will go out of stock for months it seems.

A bunch of stuff just came into stock though, and we bought it up quick.
In particular, we have the double strap toe clips and double leather straps. This is a sweet set up, and a very nice upgrade for all you fixie kids riding toe clips with single straps. I've had this same clip / strap setup for nearly 2 years now, and I'm very happy with it.

We also got a couple pairs of their Hellyer track pedals, which look strikingly similar to old Suntour pedals, have sealed bearings, are very light, come with gold or black cages, and are $70.

Just thought I'd throw a heads up out there, as it can be feast or famine with Soma goodies like these.

Charlie can type!

Turns out Charlie can type! And he put his typing skills to good use, and penned a very well thought out review of his Rocky Mountain ETSX Team, published over on Bikefix, the ultimate unbiased bike review site. I believe Charlie was inspired to write a review, after reading this review of the ETSX, that was brought to our attention by our Rocky rep.
Funny, as we're trying to sell this bike and all, that Charlie's review is decided less positive than the other one. It's not negative by any means, but surprisingly objective coming from a retailer of said bike. Perhaps we're just too honest to be good salesmen? Or perhaps Charlie's just a little too picky?

I know it's getting to be short notice, but a little reminder about tomorrows alleycat in Albuquerque, Going Postal, starting at Noon at the Duck Pond. Rumor has it, the race will be ending at Bikeworks, and another rumor has it that there will be copious amounts of free beer and food there. I'm planning on attending, while Senior Swinton will be singlehandedly running the store.

We sent a set of White Industries Double Double cranks, chainring, and freewheel out the door today. It was a sweet setup, and very very shiny. We like shiny.

This video was brought to our attention recently, plucked from the cornucopia of awesomeness that is How To Avoid The Bummer Life
Having thrown a few "parent out of town, let get rowdy" parties in my youth, I found the video and it's star very amusing. The best thing about it though, is how he didn't let the uppity TV woman bully him.

A little bit of industry news making the rounds lately is that Cannondale has been bought by the same company that owns Schwinn and Pacific, and Cannondale labeled bikes will become available in department stores in the near future. Having never been much of a Crackandfail fan, I found the news mostly entertaining. But it is a bit sad, as that is one less company of that size to compete with the mega brands such as Spez and Trek, and that much less variety will be available. On the up side, maybe this means that a few more people will buy a bike that actually rides well.

That's about all the pseudo-cleverness I can muster for now. Til next time.

New Goodies! Velocity Wood Rims

We just got in a pair of "Wood" Velocity Deep V's. We saw these at the show, and new we would have to get a set. The original version was a wood looking sticker though, which isn't that cool. However, they just switched to paint, and we got us a pair. We think they will be making a track bike look very hot in the near future.
We're trying to decide if we want to leave them for sale as just rims, or lace them up to some hubs. Perhaps the Miche Primato's we have in the shop?