A couple of cool bikes and cool sites:
And a couple of posts of porteurs and randonneurs
Inspired by “Cargo Bikes and Stone Tablets Pt4” @ Bike Hugger
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Another issue I didn’t even think about were the stays. I didn’t discover the problem until I went out on a ride after my first mod. Here you see my toe hitting the end. For a while I couldn’t think why my toe was now hitting the stay until I realized when I shortened the fender it meant that the stay bracket also moved up… DUH!!!
SO! I used my Dremel to cut the ends shorter and I think that did the trick. I’ll know for sure when I ride to work tomorrow morning.
Today I just realized that after almost a week with my new Woody Fenders that I hadn’t posted any pictures up of them. So here they are all custom and beautiful. The craftsman is Cody Davis and he used Bloodwood between Wengewood, and then Leopardwood on the outer edges.
But all wasn’t perfect with the fenders after all. Yesterday I discovered an issues with mounting the bike onto my Yakima bike rack. The front fender was too long to allow my forks to reach and lock into the tray skewers.
At first I didn’t want to have to modify the beautiful fender and thought I might find something to extend the fork reach to the tray. Yakima has an extension for thicker forks which do not fit within the standard skewers but I didn’t want to pay $50 (including shipping) to find out it wouldn’t work and it still wouldn’t address the issue of when I took the wheel off to work on it or the bike and needed to place it on the ground.
So out came the tools. I hate having to modify a new thing but I was pretty confident the fender would be easy to do.
Initially I decided to cut off about 6 inches because the block I used to prop up the bike in the pictures was a piece of 2″ X 6″ (1 3/4″ 5 1/2″) and it looked almost close enough. I then took off the hardware and cut the 6″ off the bottom of the fender.
Then used the bottom piece as a stencil for the curve
Then drilled the holes using a 1/4″ bit (vary carefully) and lacquered the raw end and new mounting holes with automotive lacquer.
And mounted back onto my bike
Now they work both on flat surfaces and in the bike tray
I probably could have gotten away with just cutting off 5″ but I can live with them this short. I am also planing a pair of leather mudguards Within the months leading up to Beth and my last tour, I spent a lot of time reading about bicycle touring and what equipment would be best for our trip and for later tours. One of the pieces of bike accessory that I heard a bit about were kickstands. I heard a lot about how they are very convenience for holding up your gear, working on your bike, and keeping your bike out of the mud when you have to step away from it. From previous tour experience I like all those reasons. So I got the kickstand most often praised, the Swiss made Pletscher Esge. By kickstand comparisons, it’s a nice looking stand made of aluminum alloy, very strong, and this one had double legs which was especially nice when changing out the two flats I had on the trip. I was very pleased. Since we’ve been back, I’ve lightened up my LHT for commuting purposes and took off the stand. A couple of days ago I spent a couple of hours inspecting my bike and tuning it up a bit but then I flipped the bike over to take a look underneath and to my horror saw that the kickstand crimped my chainstays!
In all my research, although someone could have said it, I never saw anything about the possibility of this happening. I’m figuring that most of this came not from how tight I had it but from the added weight my load had on the bike thus torquing the frame on the stand and causing the damage. I suppose if used battle wounds like this are a sign up usage but I would of rather a few scratches over dammage to the frame. |
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