Mark Taylor said:

@JP

the old shop was way better , i believe the owner Dave did a runner to Florida 

W/o Myles, it was rudderless.  Dave did a mysterioso disappearance for sure, though he maintained his FB activity.  

twoyacks said:

"As I've been arrested for bike riding in Long Island, I walked."

calls for an explanation

You can find it elsewhere in here.  Essentially, it was fire island, a village with a no bike riding ordinance and I came in through a spot where there wasn't signage.  The guy decided writing me a ticket was pointless, so he chose to detain me until the ticket was paid.  

get a haircut you hippie

So I was in the market for a new set of road wheels after non-stop issues with my Felt's stock wheel dropping spokes, and was also strongly considering buying a Stages crank when the group buy came around. Then yesterday, an immediate solution arose in the way of a used set of Open Pros laced to a R45 in front and a Powertap Pro+ in the rear. 

CX wheel question. Okay, so just about pull the trigger on the oft recommended Neugent productions wheelset for cross. As such, my, "am I sure I'm doing the right thing here?" neurosis is kicking in. In this case, I notice that the tubular rims are 22 mm wide while the clinchers are 23 and based on some discussions I've had with folks on their experiences rolling tubulars last season, I'm wondering...

Is 22 mm wide enough?

Thanks for playing.

@Marc Bertucco‌ Yes. It's wider than most tubular wheels.

@Marc
And maybe think about having NYC Velo glue your tires for you. I can't remember his name but their mechanic who was at the Tim Johnson/Pete Webber clinic is reputed to be one of the best guys in NYC at gluing tubs esp for cross setups

mperlberg said:

@Marc Bertucco‌ Yes. It's wider than most tubular wheels.

What he wrote. 1mm difference is not much; I even wonder if the rims get wider depending on where in the production run the particular rim is.  

ian ellis said:

Glue your own tubs. If they roll - do a better job next time.

LOL. Terrible idea. Still, LOL.

I glued my first tubulars ever three seasons ago. 

jim_nelson said:

I glued my first tubulars ever three seasons ago. 

It was a damn mess.

However, I used the Belgian tape and glue method that folks talk about and I have yet to roll one. 

I did rip them off last summer and reglue but they were still holding decently after two full seasons.

If I hadn't ripped a valve stem out of one I think they would both still be good to go for this season.

Don't fear it.

BTW, I ride the Vittoria XGs (pretty similar to a griffo tread) and like em.

Okay, tempted. So then...what's the brand of glue and tape you use? I've glued tubulars once, on my track wheels, but that was a bloody mess and I got glue all over the rim. Which didn't matter, but getting glue on the breaking track of a cross wheel? Sounds like disaster. I wonder if masking them off with painter's blue tape would be helpful?

If you are going the tubular route...a little sealant can go a long way.  I just sealed my front flat from Saturday with a can of this schwill...

@Marc

Vittoria Mastik One and Jantex Tape.

See here for some tips:

http://www.cxmagazine.com/taping-gluing-tubulars-belgian

I haven't gotten it on the rim but certainly all over my hands. And there was swearing involved, especially the first time.

Marc Bertucco said:

 I wonder if masking them off with painter's blue tape would be helpful?

Now this is an interesting idea! I'm going to try it and I don't see any reason why it shouldn't work.

PS. GLUE YOUR OWN F'ing TIRES!

dstokes said:

PS. GLUE YOUR OWN F'ing TIRES!

Stokes,

Don't bother with the masking idea. It takes LONGER to mask the rim than it does to clean off any small amounts of glue residue with Goo Gone.

Heard back from John Neugent today. I emailed him about getting a cassette body replaced. He responded within a few hours and shipped it out to me same day. He gave me the Kissena discount as well. 

I prefer the masking. Either blue tape or electrical. The small investment in time makes up for trying to get it back off later. Plus makes it easier to seal the tire or base tape with tent sealant if you chose.

mugwump said:

dstokes said:

PS. GLUE YOUR OWN F'ing TIRES!

Stokes,

Swear or don't.  It's "GLUE YOUR OWN FUCKING TIRES!," not "GLUE YOUR OWN F'ing TIRES!"

all, 

Gluing is easier than people are making it out to be.  If you end up with a sticky mess, you likely either didn't stretch the tire long enough or didn't let the glue dry long enough.  In both cases, you're smarter for the next time.

I'm going to disagree here with JP. I think the expression "F'ing" or as I sometimes type it "'effing" has become it's own explicative apart from being a contraction of "fucking." And has it's own flavor warranting use over the original sometimes.

Also, FWIW (jeesh, I'm becoming the Richard "ATMO" Sachs with my use of "FWIW" lately), I had my continental tires stretching for a week on my track rims back in the way back. Also, more interestingly is the philosophical discussion of what one should do by themselves. The majority of posters here clearly feel gluing tubulars is a routine job that should be within the skill-set of the bike racer.

I don't know if I agree there either. There are things that I would expect most folks to be able to handle on their own (e.g., pump a tire, change a clincher, patch a tube, remove and replace quick release wheels, change saddle height/fore/aft/angle, clean and re-lube a chain.), but to me gluing tubulars seems next level. Both in difficulty and importance of "getting it right."

That said, I think I'm going to give it a go myself anyway. If for no other reason than the total time it would take me to get wheels to and pick up from a bike shop or generous teammate might be similar to what I would spend attempting it myself.

Excuse me now, while I attempt to sand off the rust from my supposedly "stainless steel" egg beater pedals...

My eggbeaters fell apart yesterday - shredded bearing-  so I suggest you do more than just sand off the rust.
And FWIW, I would prefer to not let anyone work on my bike. If it falls apart, then I know exactly who to blame and you can make sure it won't happen again.
Finally, the consequences of rolling a tubular on a 'cross course are not that dire. Just run to the pit and curse at yourself for the rest of the race. Ragot has some practice with that.
P.S. I agree about 'effing'

thanks. but true, not a huge deal.

dstokes said:

Finally, the consequences of rolling a tubular on a 'cross course are not that dire. Just run to the pit and curse at yourself for the rest of the race. Ragot has some practice with that.
P.S. I agree about 'effing'

A bicycle is an incredibly simple machine. If we take the typical race bike from 1960-2010 (external cables, mechanical shifting, threaded BB) then disassembling and rebuilding the whole thing should be entirely possible by every racer, with a minimum set of tools (Allen/Hex keys, BB tool, cable cutters).

Some of the advancements up to 2010, such as cartridge BB (then external BB), threadless headsets, stems with removable faceplates, freehubs+cassettes made maintenance much easier than it was say in the mid-1980s. In fact electronic shifting is easier to setup than mechanical too.

A couple of recent trends have increased difficulty a little: press in BB and the desire to route every cable through the frame, but even press in BB is just a matter of having the right tool.

I can understand the argument that people cannot build their own bike because they don't want to buy the tools, or because they live in a small place without enough space, or because they would rather pay a store while they did something else with their time. However it is NOT difficult and people should not be deterred because they think it is.

We used to run a maintenance workshop - maybe we should again.

dstokes said:

My eggbeaters fell apart yesterday - shredded bearing-  so I suggest you do more than just sand off the rust.

Rebuild kit in my amazon cart right now! As Sarah said, this Cross camp that Patrick, Joshua and I are going to this weekend is already good in that it is forcing me to take care of shit like, not the night before Nittany.

Bike maintenance requires little experience to achieve an acceptable level of performance.  It is possible to do something horribly wrong and injure yourself (mounting tires wrong then descending on the road comes to mind) but generally the things we do have wide margins of error.  If I can build a wheelset that lasts me one season of racing without adjustment, I have faith in all you fancy folks to glue things onto things.  The only reason I'd pay to have a mechanic do something is: (1) I don't have/want to make the time; (2) the tool required for the task is specialized, expensive, and cannot be reliably replicated on the cheap; or (3) I feel indebted to Ride Brooklyn.

dstokes said:

P.S. I agree about 'effing'

Swear or don't.  "effing" is a construction created to pretend that the user is cleaning up her swearing because it's a PG crowd.  It's ridiculous.  Kids are savvy to the construction and know it's swearing.  Kind of like the way kids know something is up when adults s-p-e-l-l something.  Use expletives in all their glory or don't use them at all, for fucksake.

Marc Bertucco said:

dstokes said:

My eggbeaters fell apart yesterday - shredded bearing-  so I suggest you do more than just sand off the rust.

Rebuild kit in my amazon cart right now! 

Eggbeaters have incredibly improved over the years.  The internals and sealing were improved with the original externals, and the latest has new externals and much better internals--I rarely touch these.  I have two flavors of the old and one of the new.  The new has been excellent.  The old does take a little attention, though they're so easy to pull apart that I would do it a few times each cross season, typically after a muddy race, but sometimes, just because I wasn't satisfied with how the bearings rolled.  Basically, it's less than 10 minutes of work per set to pull off the endcap (originals were plugs, later updated to screws), get an allen key in to unscrew the bolt, pull the body, grease the spindle, install body, tighten bolt, install end cap/screw.

jesselash said:

So I was in the market for a new set of road wheels after non-stop issues with my Felt's stock wheel dropping spokes, and was also strongly considering buying a Stages crank when the group buy came around. Then yesterday, an immediate solution arose in the way of a used set of Open Pros laced to a R45 in front and a Powertap Pro+ in the rear. 

Took them for a spin this morning, and got some odd readings. Seems like anytime I wasn't pedaling hard, it read 0 watts: http://www.strava.com/activities/176553763/analysis

Could this be a sign of a low battery? 

Following up on my previous post from an earlier page, I had the batteries replaced by RB, and took it for a spin this morning. Very disappointingly, I'm still getting strange power readings: http://www.strava.com/activities/177243245/analysis. Emailing the manufacturer now.

mugwump said:

Swear or don't.  "effing" is a construction created to pretend that the user is cleaning up her swearing because it's a PG crowd.  It's ridiculous.  Kids are savvy to the construction and know it's swearing.  Kind of like the way kids know something is up when adults s-p-e-l-l something.  Use expletives in all their glory or don't use them at all, for fucksake.

Did you say that your daughter was going to school next year? Then I have a story . . .

When we lived in Charlottesville, my family used to have a rule that you could only swear in the car. My second kid (Noah) was 3 months when we moved to NYC, so that rule didn't work so well, since we were hardly ever in a car.
 
Fast forward to first day of kindergarten. At the end of the day, the teacher pulls my wife aside to discuss an incident on the playground. Noah had reputedly called some kid a fucking moron, which was apparently not appreciated.

Mostly I used F'ing to void any kind of big brother filter on the forum. I don't generally use it in speech, as evidenced by my Noah's incident.