Kaleidescopin'

A bit late in posting, but this is my best effort at taking iPhone snaps on the opening night of the Hong Kong Art Fair last week. Not quite as good as last year, but still nice to get a bit of kaleidescope culture.

3D future

Bartlett Summer Show 2010 3D Scan from ScanLAB on Vimeo.

http://vimeo.com/17284846

Wheelbuilding

This week I was unlucky enough to have yet another crash (my third in 3 months), and while the resultant damage to my body was not too bad this time (just some minor road rash), the damage to the bike was, whilst visually small, very tricky to repair. See that hairline crack along the hub body in the above photo? It may not look like much, but it does in fact make the whole wheel loose, as well as rendering one of the spokes useless.

Now, obtaining a replacement hub for a Corima wheel in Hong Kong might sound like a bit of a tough task, but it was in fact quite easy, courtesy of the fact I have a spare Corima Winium rear wheel in the spare room. This is a left over from another crash where I wrote off the front wheel a couple of years ago in a minor collision with a car (the driver paid for the replacements). What proved to be much less easy was the process of getting the actual hub off the old wheel and re-lacing the new.

Given Mrs bikesandbuildings was off for a long yoga session and it was raining outside I thought a solid couple of hours wheelbuilding should do this. Little did I appreciate quite how much longer carbon wheels take to deal with. The all internal spoke nipples mean you can't see what you're doing, the hub requires the removal of the axle to remove the spokes, and the mix of radial and 3 cross lacing took a good 15 minutes of moleskin sketching to work out the lacing pattern and sequence.

Lastly, upon dismantling the existing deep section Corima, I discovered that none of the spokes really want to leave the rim. I managed to get the outer half of the two cross off in order to remove the hub, but in actual fact the re-lacing was a mix of rim to hub with the more conventional hub to rim.

I got there in the end with the lacing, but to use a car analogy, I tend to think of replacing a hub as a bit like replacing an engine, and replacing a Corima would seem a bit like replacing a rotary wankle engine. OK, I should probably stop writing about embedded nipples now...

4 hrs later, I still wasn't there with the tensioning of the spokes, and I must admit I'm not 100% confident I'll be able to produce a well tensioned wheel, as it'll be my first attempt at a 24 spoke carbon wheel, but nothing ventured nothing gained. And, if nothing else, I feel I have a better understanding of my equipment. Of course, there's something quite satisfying about building wheels, and any excuse to take something apart jn the living room and put it back together is always quite welcome in my book, if not the wife's.

Permanent Style

In an alternative bikes and buildings free existence, where instead of wasting money on bicycles I'd fritter away my hard earned on gentleman's clothing I'd be an even bigger fan of Simon Crompton's 'Permanent Style'. But as it is, I find it interesting he covered Rapha's fancy pancy leather gloves. Not ideal for hot and humid HK, I'm sure, but you do have to appreciate the frivolousness of it all.

http://www.permanentstyle.co.uk/2011/03/leather-cycling-gloves-at-rapha.html

Brooks

http://garyb.posterous.com/unquestionable-british-tradition

The Man with the Nice House

Apparently this Swedish house is owned by the villain in 'The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo'. Nice.

http://www.dezeen.com/2011/05/11/villa-overby-by-john-robert-nilsson/

My Bikes: Turner Flux

The past few couple of weeks has been my first serious rides on my new Turner Flux- I've now clocked a good 150km on it so feel qualified to report back my first impressions. It hasn't the easiest build to get together, and it's still got a few tweaks before i'm completely satisfied, but wow, as first impressions go, I'm quietly blown away. The bike has felt immediately familiar and exceeded my expectations in all the areas i'd read up on and hoped for, but wasn't 100% sure on whether they'd be delivered on a frame I hadn't test ridden. 

Handling 

First up is the 'legendary' Turner handling- this gets quite a lot of press from other Turner owners and magazine reviews, and I must say the angles do all indeed just feel right. The steering is responsive without feeling nervous or unstable and whilst it is a touch quicker than i was thinking it would be, I actually quite enjoy the involvement of a slightly more traditional xc geometry. I can flick the front or rear end quite quickly to pick a line through rock gardens or singletrack and theres no hint of the front end wallowing on steep climbs. Super slack head angles seem to have become a very fashionable 'must have' for modern mtbs, but in my opinion the magazines fail to mention that slack just isn't as fun for many riding situations (esp. Singletrack). Sure, too steep and you're over the bars when it's steep, but for me when combined with wide bars and a 90mm stem the this feels like it takes the best bits from a 'traditional' old school xc bike and injects some new school stability.

Suspension 

One of the key things that sold the frame to me was the idea of the dw-link. Having had a few short try outs on Pivots and Ibis Mojos, I was impressed with the feel of their suspension- when you stand up and mash the pedals your energy goes into forward momentum, not shock compression (bob). In that respect it seems you can ride a dw-linked full sus much like a hard tail and not be forced into staying in the saddle on climbs. On the Yeti I'd been sold on the idea that the new pro pedal RP23 shocks negated the need for complex pivot arrangements, and whilst I still hanker for the simplicity of a single pivot, the reality is that the only way you get rid of bob on a single pivot is to keep the pro pedal switch 'on', which isn't so plush- Either that or you're constantly flicking switches, which isn't so fun. So, to have a bike that pedals so well yet retains a very plush feel is really a nice thing. 

In the same way that the handling is a bit split personality, the suspension reflects this also- it has the travel (105mm) of an xc race bike but as you get into the travel it feels deceptively like the plushness of a longer travel bike. The frame weight and the cnc construction method also reflect this aggressive 'built to last' feel. The feel of the suspension is also quite vertical, as in less like the bike is folding, and more like the front and rear are moving together. If there is a negative, it would be the inherent complexity of the linkages. I'm confident enough in all the grease port injectable pivots from a servicing and durability standpoint, but there are still lots of nooks and crannies to clean, and I like to default to less is more as a philosophy. But sometimes, just a bit more really is more...

The Build

I've carried over the bulk of the parts over from the Yeti / S-works hard tail, with a few sprinkles of freshness to liven things up. New wheels (Hope sp8) & brakes (Hope x2 special editions) have been the major new additions and Hope being Hope neither has disappointed. I may do more in depth reviews of these products in time but I'm very happy with both, and the Continental Mtn kings are nice tubeless rubber for the wheels. Hope round off all bearing duties with their headset and ceramic b/b.

The only disappointment has been getting the Middleburn cranks to work. Sadly I was sent the wrong spider, meaning whilst they look great on the bike the chainline is way off. Those of you with eagle eyes will notice old xtr cranks in some of these photos as a stop gap.

Another part I'll upgrade in time is the fork. I'm running some slightly tired 110mm Fox float rlc's. Nice enough forks, but scratches to the stanchions have meant lost oil and air pressure over time. Still a bit of life left in them yet, before I replace with either another pair of Fox, or maybe some DT Swiss 120s.

An xtr / xt 9 speed set up, monkeylites, a flite and my usual Thomson obsession pretty much wrap things up.

Conclusion 

This is the sort of machine that makes you wonder why you bothered not buying it sooner. It feels like I've found my holy grail of mountain bike- super fast, comfortable enough, great through the technical without just being a steamroller, reliable (esp. in it's reassuring lack of carbon), a sensible weight and just a very confidence inspiring ride. That's not to say it must be the best bike in the world ever- there are of course better xc race bikes, better freeride bikes, and those who believe in the way of the 29er / singlespeed and so on, but for just mountain biking, as in riding (fast) to the top and bombing back down or along, or across, I don't think it get's too much better. The price hasn't come cheap, but I do believe in investing in quality and the indications are there that this should be a bike to last. If I get bored of the colour Turner can respray and recondition for a reasonable sum. There's also something quite nice about supporting genuine hand made fabricators, be that Dave Turner in the USofA, Jan Kole in Shenzhen, or the Hope / Middleburn guys in the UK. It will cost a bit more than a Trek to buy, but sometimes getting what you want is worth that bit extra, and the best things in life aren't always free...