the blog at eric moon dot net

Today I joined the ranks of Bike Commuters.

It wasn’t without minor problems, but it sure as heck was better than driving.
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Here’s the current parking situation on my side of the garage – the truck will just have to stay out in the driveway, permanently. Besides, these bikes are probably worth 3-4 times the truck, anyway!

Current Stable of Bikes

The finishing touches are done! I attached the brake cable ferrules and taped up the handlebars.  I couldn’t wait so I took it out for a spin – what a blast!  It rides great.  I had two small issues, one which I fixed, the other I’ll have to check into.

First, I was doing some “track stand to hammer” transitions and the chain would skip.  Not cool, so I put it back onto the rack and could tell that my chain was way too loose.  I pulled the wheel all the way back into the dropouts and took away the slack. After 10 track stands or so, I can declare – Problem fixed!

Surly with Single-speed Chain

The second issue I ran into is the dreaded “Cantilever Squeal” (Is someone torturing a pig in the neighborhood??).   The front brakes are complaining when I pull ‘em tight.  Rears are nice and quiet. It’s not horrible, but I’m going to play around with them a bit more before I give up.  And it might be my imagination, but I’m pretty sure they weren’t squealing nearly as bad after 10 minutes of use.  Maybe it’ll go away on it’s own??  Fingers are crossed on that one.

A couple of other notes, mainly for myself when I end up replacing some parts down the line:

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I am not a bike mechanic.  I have done most of the maintenance on our bikes for the past couple of years, but I’ve never put a bike together from a pile of parts.   I thought that with the help of the all-mighty and all-knowing Internet, I would breeze through building a bike in no time at all.

Almost true, but not exactly.

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It took me a while to decide on which parts to hang on the Cross-Check frame.  My Kuota Kalibur Tri bike runs with Shimano Ultegra 10sp and my Serrotta Legend Ti rolls Campy Record, also 10sp.   I really wanted something different for this bike, so I decided on a single speed and/or fixed setup.

I had a bunch of parts that I was hoping to move over from Ivonne’s trashed Softide.  Some nice Dura-Ace cranks, a Mavic bottom bracket and a 105 brake set with calipers and levers.  It soon was very obvious that ‘cross bikes don’t do calipers, so no go there.  The Mavic bottom bracket is a special one that is used for stripped threads.  If you don’t have stripped threads, it requires some major machining of the bikes bottom bracket that I was unwilling to do, and the cranks, well, the cranks would be usable, I suppose, but I ended up getting a crank & bottom bracket set, so those didn’t make it either.

That leaves a set of 105 brake levers that I could re-use. I also had a new set of drop bars that I had been saving for who-knows-what that came in handy for this.

Read on for the list of major parts I’ve put on…

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