Category Archives: Bicycle Build

The State of the Roadrat

07 Tuesday Jan 2014

Posted by in Bicycle Build

≈ 2 Comments

Tags

, , , , , ,

This is how my Cotic Roadrat (or Off-Roadrat as I refer to it) is looking these days. It’s set up for on and off-road riding, can carry a fair amount of gear, and is really fun to ride.
P1040365.jpg
The brakes are a weird combo of Tektro cantilevers at the front and an Avid BB5 on the back. It used to have an Avid BB7 at the front, but I had to change to rim brakes when I wanted a dyno-hub on the front. I was intending to build a new front wheel using a Shimano hub with a disc brake mount, but when the hub arrived I noticed that because the Roadrat fork puts the disc brake on the right-front of the fork rather than the rear-left, the hub would be running backwards. I have emailed Shimano tech support to ask if this is a problem, but haven’t heard back yet.
P1040364.jpg
The front wheel (Shimano DH-3N80 dynamo hub on a Mavic A319 rim) is one I bought fully built from Rose Bikes in Germany, and the rear is a Shimano Deore hub on a Velocity Dyad rim, which I built myself. The tyres are the excellent Bruce Gordon Rock n’ Roads. They’re surprisingly fast on the road and fantastic on gravel, grass and mud, providing lots of grip and a smooth ride.
P1040368.jpg
The crankset is a Stronglight Impact. I bought this from XXCycle in France. I like the Stronglights because they are simple, good quality, fairly cheap, and they have a great selection of sizes. You can choose singles, doubles, triples, and with all different combinations of teeth & crank length. And, they’re silver (I really don’t like black bicycle components).
P1040367.jpg
The handlebars are Salsa Cowbell 3s. These are fairly wide, have a shallow drop, and flare slightly outwards. Not especially aerodynamic but very comfortable. The front derailleur is a Shimano 105 and the rear is a Shimano Deore, both secondhand. They are operated by Shimano Ultegra bar-end shifters. The brake levers are Tektro.
P1040372.jpg
The saddle is a Brooks Flyer and the front rack is a Nitto M-12. On the back is a Planet-Bike Versa Rack Disc. Hanging off the front of the Nitto is a B&M Eyc light.
P1040371.jpg
The bag on the front? Made that myself (hence the dodgy sewing). There is a padded compartment on the left for my camera, and a map pocket on the lid.
P1040370.jpg

Salsa Casseroll

15 Sunday Dec 2013

Posted by in Bicycle Build

≈ 2 Comments

Tags

, , ,

R0012684
Last year I was pottering about on TradeMe, looking for nothing in particular, when I cam across a Salsa Casseroll frame. It was a 2008 model which, strangely no one else seemed interested in. It came with a Chris King headset and Salsa seatpost & stem. I managed to resist the first time it appeared, but when it was relisted at an even lower price, I caved in and bid. I was the only one who did, and it was all mine for only $280. Soon after, also from TradeMe I bought a set of wheels – Mavic OpenPro rims, Shimano Ultegra hubs, with 72 spokes between them. I hid the wheels & the frame behind the couch for a few weeks while I scoured various exotic corners of the Internet for more parts.
R0012692
From XXCycle in France, I bought a Stronglight crankset. Why the Stronglight? Three reasons, they’re reasonably cheap, they’re quite good looking (I really don’t like those modern Shimano cranksets that look like a stingray is glued to your bottom bracket) and they come in a good range of sizes. The ‘standard’ 50t road ‘big ring’ is too big for me, and I wanted a low bottom gear for ascending some of the very steep hills you find in a city built on 57 volcanoes. So I chose a 48/34 and put a mountain cassette (11-34) on the back. This has worked out really well – I spend most of my time in the outer ring, and the middle third of the cassette. If necessary I can crawl up steep hill in the 1:1 bottom gear, and I have never spun out in the top gear.
R0012687
Lying around in the garage, I had a set of Miche dual-pivot brakes. So installed them hooked up to nice Tektro levers. To change gears I bought 9-speed Ultegra bar-ends. Why bar-ends? I like their simplicity and versatility, also if the indexing gets screwed up, you can switch them to friction.
R0012694
I was very fortunate with the all important contact points – the saddle is an old Brooks I salvaged from a 1970’s Peugeot, and the handlebars are Grand Bois Maes Parallel that I found on sale at Planet-X in the UK. Both of these items are very comfortable. At first I put on Shimano Deore deraileurs, but I have since replaced them with Shimano 105. The tyres are the classic Panaracer Paselsa TGs.
R0012685
Built up like this, it was my Sunday rider. But I don’t really ride on Sundays, so it wasn’t getting much use. I thought I’d try riding it to work, this required the addition of some accessories – via TradeMe, a Tubus Fly rack, from Rose Bikes in Germany, a B&M Lumotec IQ Fly-T Senso Plus front light, SKS mudguards and dynamo hub front wheel.
R0012686
So now I ride it all the time – to work, on “training” rides on the way home from work, for longer loops around Auckland and it’s even been on a little tour. I like it a lot – it’s very comfortable and reliable, without being slow or boring. It’s not perfect though – the bottom bracket is low enough that it suffers from a bit of pedal strike, and there is some toe overlap. Maybe one day I’ll buy a nice 650B randonneur to replace it. We’ll see…

An Austrian Rain Bike

11 Wednesday Jul 2012

Posted by in Bicycle Build

≈ Leave a comment

Tags

, , , , ,

In a previous post, I referred to my Cotic Roadrat as my “Everyday Bicycle”. I also mentioned it’s lack of mudguards. So when it scarcely stopped raining in Auckland – “The Seattle of the South Pacific” – for a couple of weeks, I assembled a different “Everyday Bicycle”. One with mudguards. Let me introduce The Puch.

R0012225

It’s not an especially pretty bike, although it probably was back in the 1970s when it came out of the Puch factory in Austria. I spotted this particular vehicle on a well-known local Internet auction site and arranged to purchase it for the very reasonable sum of $10. There was some work required – I replaced the handlebars, wheels, front brake, brake levers and derailleur.

R0012226

As a general purpose bike it has some shortcomings – the chain has a tendency to fall off if I change too quickly in to a higher gear, and the actual levers are placed, not very conveniently, at arms-length. And then there’s all that.. ahem.. rust.

 Puch in the Park

But The Puch also has some excellent qualities – the aforementioned mudguards, a surprisingly comfortable riding position and a pair of very nice Schwalbe Marathon Racer tyres.

R0012221

And… a dynamo powered headlamp.

R0012218

The lights were also an addition of mine. They are made by Busch+Muller. The headlight has a facility called a standlight – meaning that it stores a bit of charge from the dynamo, so that when you are stopped at traffic lights, the headlight stays on for a few minutes. It doesn’t produce an enormous amount of light, but it’s enough to see by if I find myself in an area without streetlights. Thanks to the dynamo, I don’t have to worry my pretty little head about batteries, and it makes a pleasantly loud whirring noise that warns pedestrians and frightens dogs.

Testing the Monstertruck MB4

28 Monday May 2012

Posted by in Bicycle Build

≈ Leave a comment

Tags

, , ,

I mentioned in my previous post, that I would test the MB4 with the Schwalbe Super Moto tyres, to see if it really was fast or if I was just imagining it. So I took it out for a ride. It’s a loop I’ve got worked out that goes from Newmarket railway station, up Remuera Rd to St Johns, down to Tamaki Drive, in to the city, up College Hill, back along Ponsonby Rd & then through Grafton back to Newmarket.

In the manner of a modern and sophisticated rider of bicycles, just before I left, I started up the Map My Ride application on my phone, and told it to log my ride. As I sped through St Johns about 20min later, I heard a voice just behind me. A woman’s voice saying something about my speed or the time or something. It like totally freaked me out & I nearly fell off looking around to see who it was. Eventually I realized it was my arse. Or rather it was my phone sitting in my back pocket telling me something about my “workout”. So I calmed down & kept riding.  Later on, I got home & whipped the phone out so I could tell it I’d finished, and read statistics about speed, distance, calories burnt, increases in gluteal firmness etc. Only to find that the battery went flat 20 minutes ago and the phone thinks I’m sitting in a bus stop next to Victoria Park.

So… umm… I’ll have to try that again sometime.

My Daily Bicycle

01 Tuesday May 2012

Posted by in Bicycle Build

≈ 1 Comment

Tags

, , ,

I read somewhere that in the Finnish language there is a specific word (Poronkusema) for the distance equal to how far a reindeer can travel without a “comfort break”. I wish there was a similarly useful word in English to describe the situation where you want something, but when you go looking for it you can only find a million varieties of that thing – that you don’t like at all. This happens to me all the time. Writers in a gentler age would have called me particular. Writers of this age would call me a wanker. Unless they were American – in America a wanker is a type of fannypack. Interestingly enough, I knew someone who was travelling in the US some years ago and they met a guy who’s name was Randy Wanker. Really.

So anyway, a couple of years ago I decided I was going to cycle around the place instead of driving, and went looking for a suitable bike. I couldn’t find one and decided to build my own. This is what I made.

The frame is a Cotic Roadrat, and the rest of the bike is put together from parts made by  Velocity, Sturmey Archer, Brooks, Sapim, Tange-Seiki, Michelin, Jagwire and Shimano

It’s not perfect – there are no mudguards and the rear basket is a bit crap. But it’s practical enough to be my primary means of transport – I ride it to work and everywhere else around the city (including to synchronized cycling practices and performances).

It has a front light powered by a large rechargeable battery…

3-speed gears…

Comfortable handlebars…

Front & rear hub brakes…

It also has a rear light attached to the carrier and some fat tyres. These days there are some more options when it comes to buying city bikes, you’ve got Velo-Ideale and Rode for instance. But I think a good point to remember is, if you can’t find what you want, you can always go & make it yourself. And if the project turns in to a Vortex of Damnation, well then at least you’ll know not to do it again.