My first new bike in 14 years

[Thunderchild]

I found a video showing a cut-away look at the Christini AWD

Find it here:  http://www.christinibicycles.com/video/ChristiniCutAway.mov

Thunderchild

[w2zero]

sound only here

[racesrc]

Fyrstormer,

I thought I was done with bike quests for awhile, but now I hear the whispers on the wind of the beginning of a new quest.  Any plans on renting it

Also found this limited video on You Tube  http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aS4ik9xEijM


Thunderchild

it looks kool, but i highly doubt it's the 17 pounds they say it is in the video on utube. maybe just the frame and fork.


david

[fyrstormer]

It's definitely not 17lbs, since the frame/fork/AWD system weighs 12.5lbs, but it shouldn't be heavier than my 756 when it's done.

- - -

In other news, The first set of parts purchases showed up over the weekend: both wheels, two sets of inner tubes and tires, two quick-release skewers, a seatpost clamp, a handlebar stem, and three carbon-fiber handlebar stem spacers.

A screw-down steer tube cap also arrived, along with an expandable clamp that grabs hold of the inside of the steer tube to give the cap something to screw into  -- but unfortunately the clamp was a bit too big to fit, so I'll probably have to go with a less-elegant solution -- a flanged nut that gets hammered into the steer tube and never comes out again.

That one little snafu aside, though, everything went together nicely. And now...pics!

Here's the rear wheel, fully assembled except for the chain sprockets which will get installed probably early next year. I bought the brake disc for this wheel ahead of time, even though I don't have the brake yet, because the AWD drive gear bolts over top of the brake disc and so it would be incorrectly positioned without a brake disc taking up the appropriate amount of space. I ordered a brake disc with a red carrier to match the frame (which I also did with the quick-release skewers, as you can see in the center), and then I wondered if it would've been better to just get the normal black carrier, but in the end the extra splash of color looks quite nice.


Here's the front wheel, fully assembled except for the brake disc. Since I didn't need a brake disc to install the AWD drive gear on the front wheel, and since the brakes will come with discs as part of the package when I get around to buying them, I decided to postpone that purchase and spend my money on parts I have to install now to support other parts in the future, such as the handlebar stem.


Here's the handlebar stem and the spacers that lift it up by 20mm. (should be 25mm, but I measured incorrectly and ordered 3x 10mm spacers by mistake.) This stem is one of remarkably few stems that doesn't have clamping bolts sticking off the back of the steer tube. That might not seem terribly important, but people have broken kneecaps in crashes by smacking into the steer tube clamp bolts before, and anyway it looks cleaner without them. This one has an elegant clamp design that uses a fixed-size steer tube hole, with a pair of wedges that are tightened together by a bolt in front of the steer tube, and those wedges jam a shim against the front of the steer tube to provide grip. See, other companies? That wasn't so hard.


And here's all the new parts assembled on the frame. Note the black quick-release seatpost clamp to match the red quick-release wheel skewers. I like it when companies make parts that match. Hopefully I'll be able to maintain the color scheme of mostly red and black with silver accents; fortunately those are fairly popular colors these days.


So that's that. It's far from finished at this point, but it sure looks good thus far. I have to send back a couple bits and exchange them for other bits, but that's not a significant effort. The next batch of parts will most likely consist of a handlebar, handlebar grips, a seatpost, and a seat. I may also opt to get some pedals even though I have no cranks to put them on, because the same company that made the handlebar stem also makes red and black pedals, and I have a sneaking suspicion the colors will get changed for 2012.

[Willie_B]

So who make the stem? I like the way it looks and functions.

[racesrc]

so forgive me for saying but it looks like you have to deflate the rear tire to line the label up with your valve to match the front. sorry, i always notice the little things


david

[fyrstormer]

So who make the stem? I like the way it looks and functions.

It's made by Crank Brothers, famous for their "eggbeater" pedals. The stem is called the Iodine 2; the Iodine 3 has a carbon-fiber handlebar clamp, but I don't want to take the risk of the clamp breaking under stress. Even a carbon-fiber handlebar will only break off half at a time, but if the clamp lets go I'll instantly implant the steer tube into my sternum.

so forgive me for saying but it looks like you have to deflate the rear tire to line the label up with your valve to match the front. sorry, i always notice the little things

david

The rear wheel was built with last year's version of the same rim. There's no structural difference, but there's also no way to align the labels since the labels are different. I'm just going to remove the labels like I did with my 756.

Anyway, I already served my new-tire penance by cutting off all the little injection-mold bits that were sticking out of the tread. Took an hour per tire.

[racesrc]

So who make the stem? I like the way it looks and functions.

It's made by Crank Brothers, famous for their "eggbeater" pedals. The stem is called the Iodine 2; the Iodine 3 has a carbon-fiber handlebar clamp, but I don't want to take the risk of the clamp breaking under stress. Even a carbon-fiber handlebar will only break off half at a time, but if the clamp lets go I'll instantly implant the steer tube into my sternum.

so forgive me for saying but it looks like you have to deflate the rear tire to line the label up with your valve to match the front. sorry, i always notice the little things

david

The rear wheel was built with last year's version of the same rim. There's no structural difference, but there's also no way to align the labels since the labels are different. I'm just going to remove the labels like I did with my 756.

Anyway, I already served my new-tire penance by cutting off all the little injection-mold bits that were sticking out of the tread. Took an hour per tire.

sorry, the tire label, not the wheel label

david

[fyrstormer]

sorry, the tire label, not the wheel label

david

I assume you mean align the tire label with the valve stem -- but the hole for the valve stem is itself positioned opposite the area where the rim is welded together, which the label covers, so if I align the tire label with the valve stem, I will also align it with the wheel label.

I don't really care about the alignment of the tire label and the valve stem; the alignment of the tire label and the wheel label is much more obvious to me, and as previously noted I'm just going to remove the wheel labels anyway. Problem solved!

[02gf74]

.... and any prgoress on this?

there is one fully built on ebay BIN $ 25,000    with offers.

[fyrstormer]

.... and any prgoress on this?

there is one fully built on ebay BIN $ 25,000    with offers.

HAHAHAHA, I had to look that one up just to laugh. $25,000 for a bicycle! Amazing.

Then again, my dad thought I was nuts when he found out I spent $500 on my Pro-Flex 756 back in 1998. Then I crashed into the side of a moving car, and the bike was strong enough to catapult me over the car instead of crumpling under the strain, at which point the price tag suddenly made sense to him. He still jokes that if I hadn't been distracted at the time of the crash, I probably would've heard the bike sighing with satisfaction at finally seeing some real action.

Anyway, yes, I have made progress. The bike is essentially done now, except for a new front derailleur because the original one suffered a seized cable clamp bolt that essentially required me to destroy the derailleur to remove it. Fortunately www.universalcycles.com was nice enough to take it back as a defective return, despite my use of lockjaw pliers in a manner almost certainly not approved by SRAM.

Update post is forthcoming.

[fyrstormer]

Finally some progress on this project. My taxes worked out favorably for 2011, due to working 3 quarters but being taxed like I worked all 4, plus I sold some stuff I never use (word to the wise: titanium tools don't depreciate in value), so I've got enough cash to finish building my bike now. However, I'm not ordering everything at once because I need time to install the parts, step back and look at what I've done so far, and re-evaluate what should come next. I should be done by the end of April at the latest, though. [EDIT: okay, now the first week of May...stupid broken derailleur.]

Since the last time I posted, the following parts have been bought and installed: carbon-fiber handlebars, a height- and angle-adjustable carbon-fiber seatpost (they're all adjustable, but it's worth mentioning why the part exists at all), a seat, handlebar end-grips (to give me a couple different positions to rest my hands in while riding), a front brake disc to match the rear one I got last fall, a control lever to engage and disengage the AWD clutch, and a water bottle holder and tire pump. Most of this stuff actually arrived Wednesday evening (a few hours before I posted this), but before I went nuts installing all of it, I had to go for a ride on my old bike -- to test this:

My new cyclometer; an all-in-one speedometer, tachometer, odometer, timer, and clock.


I used to have a cyclometer on my old bike, but I stopped using it after I replaced the front fork; I would've had to buy a new sensor mount for the new fork because the old sensor mount was glued to the old fork, and then the computer mount on the handlebar cracked in half, and then I lost the sensor. So, to hell with it. The sensor was hardwired to the computer, and the wire was way too long, so the only way I could feed it down the fork without having it flop around was to wind the wire around the front brake cable. What a pain in the ass. I honestly didn't miss it much, because I don't ride just so I can look at numbers, but it's nice to have the numbers available for later contemplation.

The new cyclometer is a big step up. It can remember info for two different bikes, so I only need one computer for both bikes, and the sensor is wireless so I don't have any stupid little dangling wire to deal with, and the screen is backlit, and the computer mount actually lets me attach it to the handlebar stem so the screen is centered instead of off to one side, and and and and....

Speaking of numbers, my test ride was 6.8 miles long, taking a total of 35 minutes, at an average speed of 12mph and a top speed of 23mph. I can go faster, but not at a sustained pace, and a nice downhill slope comes in handy. It's interesting to see those numbers again; those were my stats in college too, almost exactly 10 years ago. My uphill speed seems to have improved slightly, though.

...right, about all those new parts. Pics!

The new seat, seatpost, and Formula-1-style single taillight. (yeah yeah, all two-wheeled vehicles have single taillights, that's not the point. =P )


The new handlebars, endgrips, and inner clamps for the handgrips that I haven't bought yet. (the endgrips double as outer clamps for the handgrips.) Clamp-on handgrips might seem like some cheesy pseudo-motocross gimmick, but when the brake levers and gear shifters are trapped on the handlebar and you can't get the handgrips off, suddenly the ability to remove the handgrips by loosening a couple bolts makes a lot more sense. Also, since the time-tested method for removing the old stretch-on handgrips was to slice them with a razor blade and throw them away, the clamp-on kind is also a lot less wasteful; the clamp-on handgrips on my old bike are about ten years old and still going strong.


The new front brake disc. Nothing to explain here, but on the rear wheel the inner part of the disc is covered by a large gear, so this is a nice opportunity to admire the pretty red finish.


A closeup of the handlebar endgrips. A lot of mountain bikes don't have them, and a lot of mountain bikers think they're a waste of time -- and that's certainly true for most endgrips -- but I like having the option to change my hand position from time to time. Cane Creek's design is the best by a long shot; they're designed so your wrists are centered directly over the ends of the handlebar, so you don't have to reach forward to use them. I have an older version of these on my old bike as well, and once I tried them I didn't bother to try any other design ever again. I should probably buy a spare set in case they're ever discontinued.


...and now I have to split the post because the forum says it's too long to post in a single shot.

[fyrstormer]

...aaand we're back. 

The little blue-and-black thing just above the AWD driveshaft is the control lever for the AWD clutch. For some reason, the company that built the bike included a super-cheap gearshift as the control lever; seriously, it looked like they ran over to Wal Mart and bought the cheapest thing in the bicycle section. I didn't like it at all, so I looked around online until I found something more elegant that looked like it would work. This is actually a lever designed to lock-out a suspension fork so it won't squish around when the rider doesn't want it to; lucky me, it has the exact amount of movement necessary to operate the AWD clutch on my bike too. I win!


In the previous picture you might have glimpsed a neon-green...thing...and wondered what it was. It's the new water bottle holder. You may ask: "Why? Why did I put a bright green-and-white bottle holder on a subdued red-and-black bike? It's the exact opposite of the established color scheme!" Precisely.


It's beginning to look like a real bike now. Lots of parts are still missing, but at least the "bones" are all there.


Next up are the brakes, and the gear shifters will bolt directly to the brake levers (yay for businesses cooperating with each other!), and then I'll have to put the bike into...um, a car bigger than my RX-8...and take it to the bike shop to have the crankset bearings fitted. Older designs used a single-piece bearing assembly with an integrated spindle, so there was never any chance the bearings could be misaligned. In the past few years though, with the goal of improving crank stiffness, all the bike-parts companies have made the spindles larger, which means there's no room for the bearings anymore, so they have to sit outside the frame of the bike in two separate pods that require professional tools to align properly. (misaligned crank bearings waste a LOT of energy -- MY energy.) Bah. But once that's done, I ought to be able to carry on with installing all the other parts on my own.

Progress!

[Colin]

Quote "In the previous picture you might have glimpsed a neon-green...thing...and wondered what it was. It's the new water bottle holder. You may ask: "Why?...."

Yes I did, and sorry to offend you but despite your explanation, I still can't cope with your choice of colour...........But hey, each to their own! <GRIN>

Maybe you should recommend your new AWD shifter to the manufacturer of the bike as an improvement?

Col.

[fyrstormer]

Think of the bottle holder like a bright red necktie with a dark blue suit.

Anyway, I doubt there's much point in recommending the AWD lockout control to them, since they're not making the bike anymore. I'm glad to see they plan to keep making spare parts available indefinitely, though.

- - -

In other news, now that the bike parts companies have jumped on the 2-chainring bandwagon, I can finally outfit my 2-chainring Pro-Flex properly. I picked up an 8-speed 11-32 cassette to drop the granny-gear ratio a bit, and a 26-tooth small chainring to reduce the size of the jump from the big chainring a bit. I also scored an XT front derailleur to match my XT rear derailleur, and when that gets installed, it will mean the last original part on my Pro-Flex will have been replaced.