Bicycle Therapy - Part 1

Since my last post, I have been through some wellness issues which kept me down (both physically and emotionally) for a bit. There was a period of a couple of weeks when I was told by my doctor to stay off of the bike. I missed the COG 100 bike race (which was epically difficult, due to the weather), and I just generally was not happy.

So, as I sometimes do, I kept my hands busy to keep my brain occupied with something other than my woes. In other words, I have built a bunch of bikes, since I last checked in. So, I thought I'd post up what I've been doing.

I'll break it up into a few posts, so you don't get bored with one big post.

First, I finally built up my 1989 DiamondBack Formula One frame. I have none of the original parts, so it is not a restoration, by any means. But, it is a hoot to ride, and doesn't take up a lot of room in the house, so it is my "convenient bike", for just jumping on and running a quick errand.

Since I built it up, I have added a seat bag with some tools and a flat kit, plus a frame bag for slightly larger items.

 I have a nicer fork in the shop building, waiting to be installed. It's not installed yet, because I have been really busy, since that fork arrived, trying to straighten up the building and weed out the stuff I don't need. But, that's another post for another day...

I love the Brooks Cambium saddles. I have them on five bikes, now!

This is the third F1 bike I have owned. The first was a 1988 DiamondBack, which I built up as a pretty weird road bike, 17 or 18 years ago. Shawn B ended up with that one.

The second was a Rockfish frame which I converted to track ends and built up as a fixed gear. I sold it, and immediately regretted that. (If you bought that bike and are reading this, I would gladly buy it back, btw.)

As I was working on this bike, I kept looking at my other bikes and thinking of changes which needed to be made. One big change was to my fat-front studded tired fixed gear commuter.

This was an aluminum cruiser frame which I had gotten to replace the Surly 1x1 frame I had used for a couple of years as my fat-front winter bike. The Surly frame is a Large, and I have negative standover clearance on it, with the fat tire mounted to the suspension-corrected Pugsley 100 fork. So, I got this frame, thinking it would alleviate the standover height problem, and work well enough to suit me.

It did both, but I really couldn't stand the looks of it. Plus, the frame is aluminum, and I am moving away from aluminum frames, as I get the opportunity. So, I searched around, for a week or so, and finally found an older cro-mo GT Ruckus single speed mtb frame on eBay at an affordable price. I nabbed it and, when I built it, I used my Ritchey cro-mo fat fork on it. The color was a close match, between the fork and frame, and I liked the fork, anyway.

The Ritchey fork has the 135mm hub spacing, and I had a wheel I had built up to use in it. The wheel has a Shimano rear hub in it, to fit the dropouts. But, that provided me with a challenge in mounting a cyclometer to the bike.

The freehub body on the wheel puts the fork leg quite far from the spokes. So, I was trying to figure out how to space the bike computer pickup out from the fork leg, to get it close enough to the spoke magnet. Finally, I realized that I was going about it all wrong.

Instead of spacing the pickup out to the magnet, I ended up spacing the magnet out to the pickup. I installed a single-speed kit on the hub, then mounted the magnet to the cog. A couple of zip ties keep the cog from spinning, and everything works as it should.

The new frame fits, and looks really good (to me, anyway), including the "matching" fork.

The cruiser frame went back into the box it arrived in, and I suppose I will try to sell it, eventually.

Next up: More steel in the quiver!

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