Friday, August 19, 2005

Anti Midas Touch

Rain this morning. I've got the Iron Horse built up but haven't done anything but ride around the house. As typical with my Anti Midas touch, meaning whatever I put my hands on goes wrong whether it is my fault or not.

NOT--->

The build hasn't been going the greatest. First the guy I bought it from had put some spacers in the wrong spot. Thankfully he realized that latter and informed me, there is no way I would have known they were out of place. Actually it wasn't a bad thing because it forced me to take apart the linkages and put them back together so now I know how to do that.

Then the frame is so small and the linkages take up a lot of space that there was no way planned front derailleur-Xgen was going to fit. It needed a top pull top throw (where the clamp is below the cage).

So I found and XTR on ebay, great price, buy now, right clamp size, right throw and bought it. But, when installed, the lower linkages make it impossible to get to the cable clamping bolt. I either need to saw off an allen wrench shorter to get it to fit in the tight spot, or pull this jury rig trick of raising the the unit up high enough so I can get to the clamping bolt, then clamp the cable but with some extra slack and then lower the clamp into position. Not real pro. Imagine trying to do it on the trail. But it sort of works. Though it scrapes in the small ring.

Thankfully the guy I bought it from had the original front der. that went on it and it is in the mail.

Then after I had it built up enough to sit on, the shock would move like 1/2" before the shock body hit the linkage shuttle. Hmmmm. The shock had been installed backwards. No big, flipped it around. Again good learning.

Then I'm trying to adjust the rear derailleur and it isn't working very well. Lower limit screw is all the way in but it still wants to shift past the biggest cog. Shifts ok on the smaller cogs but then wants to jump up on the higher cogs. I think the der hanger looks bent in towards the cogs at the bottom.
P1010011

That diagnosis would make sense for how the shifting is acting. This same der. and shifter were on the salsa and the BREW before this and worked ok. So I then pull out the BF-crescent wrench also known as Mr. Precision

and try and bend it a little. Obviously I should take it to the professionals and have them use the Park DAG-1


Then the threads seem to get mangled, so I get my tap out and clean up the threads.

But now I'm not so sure the hanger is bent, as the rear derailleur does have a lot of play, but it worked ok in the last two bikes. But it is working ok now after I bent the hanger a little. I've got another rear der to test out, and should have the shock check it out with the DAG-1

Anyway, I wanted to ride it so bad on the trail, but it was raining so we went road riding instead.

However, two things I've noticed riding around the house.
1) I can see the shock moving, but it doesn't feel like it is moving while on the road. This is good, cause with the Salsa I could see it moving and it sure felt like it was moving
2) climbing this one grass hill in front of my house felt really good. Like it just wanted to climb. There could possibly be something to this DW link
3) longer travel fork is going to take some getting used to
4) fork lock-out could be the greatest thing since sliced bread...or not.

So I've got so much anticipation built up to see what this baby can do, but can't until later.

Oh well, just like ketchup I guess

2 Comments:

At 11:54 AM, Anonymous site said...

Goodness, there is really much worthwhile data in this post!

 
At 11:19 AM, Anonymous dinero said...

This can't truly have success, I feel this way.

 

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