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
I received a B & M Lumotec N Plus from Peter White in the mail yesterday and mounted it soon after. Hadn’t realized it was already coming with a mount so had ordered a mount I thought would work with my canties. The included one wouldn’t have worked anyhow and I even had to modify the added one. The problem was the crown was too short so I got out the Dremel and started cutting.
Light mount modification:
And here’s the finished result:
NOW, I can’t wait until my LBS finishes the front wheel I ordered weeks and weeks ago. They already have the rim and Shimano dynamo hub but realized after they were delivered that they didn’t have the right spokes. So I’ve got to wait another week!
Today, May 25, 2008, I finally finished my Surly Long Haul Trucker build! I built the new LHT mostly myself with some parts taken from the original blue machine. This is an accomplishment for me and from what others have said about the new green machine I didn’t do that bad of a job.
Apart from some of the original components I added:
- Brooks Champion Flyer Special and perforated leather bar tape (honey)
- Schwalbe Marathon Racers (38c)
- Shimano SPD pedals
- Swapped the 26 tooth inner chainring to a 24
- Thompson Elite stem and Elite seatpost
- Chris King headset
- Tektro top cross levers
- Nitto Randonneur bar
- Stainless steel brake and gear cable housing
- Silver front brake hanger
- Bike Planet silver chromoplast fenders
- Tubus Logo & Tara racks
- Ortlieb rear Bike Packer Plus & front Rollers Plus panniers
- Ortlieb Ultimate 5 Plus handlebar bag w/map case
- Acorn Roll seat Bag (olive)
- And finally a Japanese aluminum bell to top it all off
