Bike Envy

I have a number of friends that are lucky enough to follow behind me and pick up my "old" and "demo" bikes that always happen to be the right size and the right price for barely used one model year old stuff. I also have a number of friends that curse me for being a couple of inches taller than they are because they see this steady flow of luxurious and spectacular bikes flow through my hands from year to year and into the hands of some grateful customer who just paid way too little for a pretty spectacular bike. I've never really thought about this latter group much until last week when Michael from Dekerf came by with his 08 race bike asking me if I would mind putting it on the floor and selling it for him. Michael is about 3 or 4 inches taller than I am and for the first time I'm looking at a really nice bike for a really good price and it's just the wrong size for me and I wish I was taller or he was shorter.



The bike is a steel 29er hard tail and is pretty much a show piece for the company so it's got a whole slew of high end bits and pieces on it as well as a slightly unique classic panel paint job.




As someone who rides motorcycles from time to time I can appreciate the inherent advantages to an inverted suspension fork when it comes to structural and torsional rigidity. The Maverick fork on this bike is a good example of how the Halson inverted suspension technology of the early/mid 90's has been improved upon in the world of forks for bicycles.




And no group of photos of a Dekerf would be complete without a shot of the trademark seat stays.




A nice touch for this frame in particular is the inclusion of an eccentric bottom bracket so the bike can easily be converted to a single speed without all the hassles of horizontal dropouts and their incompatibilities with disc brakes and wheel/flat changes.



So why is he selling it? Michael is a lot like me. He's bought "the last bike he's ever going to buy" probably going on 20 times. This bike is no exception. There's lots of super high end cutting edge technology stuff on this bike like carbon bars, carbon levered brakes, fancy inverted forks, top of the line X-O shifters. There really is no reason for him to sell this bike except that next year he'll need to have room in his storage locker for "the last bike he's ever going to buy." In the mean time someone will get a smoking deal on the last bike they will likely ever buy, as long as they are a bit taller than me which would put you in the 6'3" range. If you're that person the bike's down here at the shop if you want to take a look at it. And I wish I was just a bit taller.

Salsa Fargo

I don't even know what to say about this bike. It's the most messed up thing I've seen in ages and there's no good reason for me to want one but, well, I want one. I'm sure I'll find some way to rationalize it like "it'll be good for towing the kid in the trailer" or "I've always wanted to explore the back roads and fire roads of BC, what better bike." It has mounts for six bottle cages on all but the smallest size which holds an astounding five. There's a rack to haul out your camping gear, food, crossbow, or keg. It's the Hummer of the bike world, but in a good way. Unfortunately the complete bikes won't be available until next spring but the frames are rumored to be showing up in about a month. Maybe the shop will have one built up as a demo bike before Christmas and it might just be my size. Funny how that happens...

Am I this old?

I wonder how old I am that all I ever do is complain about how bad things have gotten and how good they used to be. I will admit we are not always the best judges of ourselves but I would suggest I'm a reasonable mechanic, or by many standards, a pretty damned good mechanic. I will admit I don't use a torque wrench but I defend that with a story about how at the beginning of the first wave of lightweight crap for bikes flooding the market (think Deda Newton stem) I went out and bought a relatively expensive torque wrench and when it arrived at the shop all shiny and new in its own special little case I was quite excited to give it a go and proceeded to use a torque wrench for the first time on one of the delicate magnesium alloyed stems with little svelte titanium bolts only to have the bolt snap before reaching the recommended torque. To say the least I was disappointed. One manufacturer, Moots, put out a news bulletin to its dealers explaining why the torque spec of the stem wasn't necessarily in line with what the bar was capable of and the large number of snapped Easton bars is a good indicator of the truth in that statement. Understanding what Moots was talking about and my experience with the first snapped bolt in my experience as a bicycle mechanic as a direct result of using a torque wrench I adopted the "tight enough so that it holds but no tighter" philosophy of bolt tightening which brings us to today's entry.

Qualifier: I admit I didn't use a torque wrench to install this lockring and that I may be completely at fault for not following the manufacturers guidelines for installing a cassette on their product. There, I said it.

But I've installed a cassette or two in my time, perhaps even thousands but definitely hundreds. The picture above is of the freehub body on my own personal DT Swiss 240 rear hub. It has something like 3000kms on it. I have installed exactly one cassette on it exactly two times. The second time I installed the cassette the little lip that acts as a backstop for the cassette sheared off and binded up against the hub flanges. If you look closely you'll see where the lower lip of the freehub body is pulling away from the splined part and a wave in the rim at the edge of the freehub body where it has deformed due to its breaking. As per my qualifier I admit I didn't get out my torque wrench but it's not like I've never installed a cassette before. I suspect you'll see torque wrenches brandished by shop mechanics a vast minority of the time when it comes to properly installing cassettes. To say the least I wasn't impressed.

It's very disappointing when you do your research, cast reasonable budgets aside (the replacement freehub body for this hub costs more than some entire hubs) and make an effort to buy "the best" only to have performance expectations undermined by an inferior or substandard product. I think DT makes some very good rims but I stopped using their spokes a long time ago for very good reasons (which I see irony in because DT has always been first and foremost a spoke manufacturer in my mind.) And even though their rims have generally been pretty good there have been lots of complaints about cracked eyelets in their single eyelet R1.1 rim.

And then DT invests in Pace so they can branch out into the world of suspension. Again, I admit that my investment in the world of DT owned Pace suspension forks is limited to one example and for someone who values a significant sample size before drawing a conclusion of the "worth" of something I have to concede that perhaps my belief that the DT fork isn't very good may be unjustified. We put a DT fork on a bike and the client rode it once for about five hours and in that time the fork went from stiff and light and excellent to, well, light. It developed a noticeable and performance compromising amount of play in it in a very short time. While one doesn't expect high performance lightweight stuff to last a long time one might expect a fork that cost over a grand to last more than a couple of rides without a major overhaul.

Where is this long diatribe leading? I get lots of questions about why I don't carry Brand A or Brand B. The short answer is that if I don't think it's a good product then there's not a whole lot of reason for me to stock it. I keep trying the new stuff, bring stuff in that sounds good on paper or in the ad copy but if it leads to disappointing results then I really have no choice but to pass on it when ordering inventory for the store. There's a couple of DT products that might adorn the shelves of bicycles but you'll likely see less of it in the future. And if you don't see something on the shelves that you wanted don't be afraid to ask for it. If there's a good reason why we don't stock it we'll tell you about it. We'll do our best to refrain from base arguments like "it sucks" and take the time to explain to you why we don't stock some certain item and suggest what we think is a better alternative. Usually it's more affordable too. It's important to us that you're happy with what you spend your hard earned dollars on. Hopefully you can appreciate that.