Especially when my version of ‘fettling’ is standing around watching my mechanically minded mate fix all the broken bits on my bikes.

Today the RipMo had a seatpost upgrade. Out came the 170mm KS and in went a V2 210m OneUp version.

Even though that’s a large and I have short legs, the combination of a short but uninterrupted seat tube and a nicely packaged collar, I can run it full 210mm with about 10mm to spare.

My SolarisMax has the KS 170 to replace a very tired niche one imported a few years ago. And a new front Zee brake lever after the 3 year old one succumbed to ‘swollen piston’. Bonus was a quick service on my OneUp pedals (nice design and well sealed).

Fettling complete for the day. Eeking a few more rides out of the Solaris Drivetrain but it’s pretty shagged. I just hate changing drivetrains in winter.

So anyone else had ‘quality time in the shed’ today?

Last Saturday the nice guys at 18 Bikes fitted me a new rear mech after I managed to destroy mine climbing the Beast.
Thursday night we changed the chain ring on Abigales Enduro and fitted a new chain. All went to plan but I hate the effort I need to put on the allen key to crack the crank bolt.
Tomorrow Will need to remove two shocks which need posting for Wednesdays booked in service.
I’ve not even looked at the ironing pile 😎

I officially now feel embarrassed with a 120mm shaft

😜

🙂 I think we did all those jokes today. Never gets old!

One of the reasons I don’t like SRAM cranks is the ridiculous leverage needed for the self-extractor to move (if they’re still like that).

Still the same and I always use the required torque. I’ve developed a way of jamming the pedal on an old bottle crate and some straight handle bars onto the allen key just to crack them.
I still prefer it to the Shimano pinch bolts which I always tended to over tighten.
Moving up to 170mm from 125mm on the Alps holiday this year was definitely worthwhile. Any longer wouldn’t fit in the Enduro.

I’ve gone the other way with Shimano and had the NDS crank fall off 😉 I tend to buy frames and build them up, and always buy Shimano cranks. When I bought a 2nd hand Trek Stache, I took it to the bike shop as I was sure I was about to break something when removing cranks for the first time!

125 to 150mm really noticable. 150mm-170mm schamybee.. not as much as I expected. 170-210mm esp on a bike with a short seat tube feels amazing. Like the saddle isn’t there.

Off to Malaga with Switchbacks in Feb, so that’ll be a proper test.

Those RipMo’s do look nice….

I’m a serial bike changer, but since buying the RipMo 18 months ago, not considered changing it or anything else. Just shy of 3,000KM ridden in all sorts of places in and out of the UK. Never feels too much bike or under biked.

I’m still under-skilled, but the bike definitely compensates for at least a bit of that 🙂

He who cannot fettle,

Should put on the kettle.

And provide the biscuits…

I like it when it gos well. And the shed has some heating on. And there is space to move.

I don’t like limbering up for a big maintenance to find it all spirals out of control, or a bolt gets rounded, or you start on the brakes and then its the whole bike before you know it.

I’m not the most mechanically minded either so the anxiety leading up to “sod it, it needs doing, I’m getting it done” can be quite painful as well. But its good to find it all running better. Part of the anxiety is from not being 100% what the problem is, and getting the bits / tools lined up..

Cor, not feeling great now with a very sticky short reverb..

Nice looking bike

Tracey

Subscriber
Still the same and I always use the required torque. I’ve developed a way of jamming the pedal on an old bottle crate and some straight handle bars onto the allen key just to crack them.

1/2 drive socket set breaker bar with the appropriate sized hex socket would be and is much easier and safer

Set up my wife’s Anthem tubeless this morning, bled the front brake on my Zero and swapped the front disc for a nice Shimano Ice-Tec one.

Your path needs weeding, Alex. 😉

Not my path 🙂 That’s the portal to the ‘place where things get fixed’. My shed is a lot tidier, but it’s more the place where ‘things get broken’ 🙂

I’m doing a reverse fettle + new one today.

After putting my Ibis wheels on the hardtail to try 29″ 2.4″ tyres over 27.5+, a few rides suggest that I still prefer the plus tyres on a hard tail.

Will be changing them back today and also going to put the 11sp set that was supposed to go onto it in the first place, having given up with the idea of a winter bike as daft – just need to clean a bit more, as I have done for the previous 25+ years.

1/2 drive socket set breaker bar with the appropriate sized hex socket would be and is much easier and safer

My first experience of SRAM Dub crank removal was failing with the above on a brand new bike, and then my LBS failing with a pneumatic driver tool.

Eventually managed it with a long bar, an old pedal fitted on the NDS and clamped in a vice, the rear wheel braced against the wall with my lad hanging onto it for dear life. Made a noise like a gunshot when it eventually gave.

Been procrastinating for some time about fitting a dropper to my gravel bike.

Summoned the courage to go through with it today. Drilling three big holes in my newish bike then filing it down took some thought.

Much satisfaction.

The weird red glow in the first pic is from my heater in the garage.

That looks a tidy job…. Glad you explained the first pic. Looked like you were spannering in Satan’s workshop!

@twonks – chubbies on the HT rule. I know everyone reckons 29s are faster or 29×2.4 is the same as chubby, but I much prefer the SolarisMax on 27.5 x 2.8 at 12PSI.

Just put a new carbon seatpost on the gravel bike, swapped a couple of saddles, general lube of my full sus, including stripping the rear hub/rebuilding as it was sticking. Also trued up a rear wheel and bled the rear brake on my gravel bike. Not bad for 1.5 hrs work.
Been meaning to do all that for a bit. No problems, nothing broken, very enjoyable actually.

I’m not sure I could write that list and make enough tea to start that in 1.5 hours 🙂

There’s something very satisfying about perfect indexing or brakes with exactly the same bite point. It doesn’t seem to last that long in the mud and crud of this time of year, but this doesn’t make time spent in the shed any less worthwhile.

Have you had any issues with the 210mm in the Ripmo?

One of our group thinks he’s been hitting the saddle on larger compressions and that’s running the saddle about 8-10cm above the collar fully dropped.

My previous 170mm was about 20cm above the tube and no issues at all. I will go and drop all the air out of the shock and test that later though.

Decided to swap back from my DT Swiss rim with boring quiet Whyte hubs to my lovely noisy whizzy Halo/Supadrive hub but with the rim made of Brie (it’s wet and muddy, chances of bending/dinging said rim further are reduced)

Tyre off, insert out, swapped over and re-seated. Easy.
Swap cassette across, why’s it wobbling? remove cassette, clean (a little bit), replace cassette again, no wobble – yeah baby!

Try to remove brake disc from Whyte hub, first torx bolt bends the teeth on my torx key, bugger!
Try second torx key, round out the teeth from the bolt *facepalm*

Move everything back again, discover when I let the air out of the tyre to remove it that it just pops straight off the bead anyway, it would appear the Halo/Brie rim is knackered (I’ve had to straighten it out with mole-grips a few times).

2 hours and right back where I started just with dirty hands. Sigh!

That sounds like my standard maintenance scenario. Except I’ll have really broken something that requires twice as long to fix if I’d taken it to someone who knew what they were doing in the first place!

A quick tidy up of the fat bike after Saturday’s GFBD ride: gear indexing was slightly off so sorted that; front brake was grinding a little bit, turns out the rotor was catching the caliper body so a quick realign and all is good.

I’ve learned a new Shimano brake thing this weekend. If there is resistance and a ‘knock’ at the start of the brake stroke, it might be a bad piston in the lever or it might be the pistons in the caliper are misaligned.

So if one (or two if you’re on 4 pots) is a lot further extended it might ‘wobble’ a bit. Just a theory but resetting the pistons so they were both evenly distributed in terms of starting position seems to have solved the problem.

Free running rotors without a hint of ‘catch’ is another righteous maintenance experience 🙂

Wrong photo – will try again with the right one in a bit ;).

@kamakazie – I’ll try again.

Right forum ate my long post. So here’s the short version. It clears by 2-3mm if I’m sat on the saddle with 0 PSI in the shock. Might look a bit more in photos as I prob wasn’t fully compressing shock while trying to take pics.

That’s with a 2.5 Maxxis tyre on a 35mm rim.

I reckon it’ll be fine. It’s rare I get to the absolute end of that O ring when I’m riding.

Having not touched my bike in almost a month I managed to get out in the shed for a fettle this weekend and fit some of my black friday purchases and make some other small changes.

So that meant a set of Oneup carbon bars, been wanting to try these for a while and 20% off helped convince me, also picked up a new bash guide from them too which I fitted at the same time. I swapped my rear tyre to something a little better rolling, a Tough/High Grip WTB Judge is excellent but not the fastest, so replaced with a Trail boss Tough/Fast Rolling.

Other changes were mostly cosmetic, having the ability to cut vinyl at work means I can faff with frame decals easily so I played around with some different colours, also stripped some anodized parts back to silver to move away from so much black (Ano Black frame, Completely black forks etc)

I just want to get out and ride now, unfortunately I didn’t get a chance this weekend.

Anything solid, I can deal with. Anything with liquid (tubeless setup, brake bleed etc.) I may as well pour whatever liquid involved over myself, then hit whatever I’m trying to sort with a hammer for all the help it would be. Having spectacularly failed to set up a pair supposedly simple (UST) tubeless rims, twice, I shall be taking them to the shop, tail betwixt my legs…

Got some tyre inserts to change, but I can seem to summon up the enthusiasm to get it done.

Thanks @Alex.
It does look like you’ll be fine there. I can imagine there being issues on the S & M though as it’s another 50mm shorter so I don’t think he’ll be able to run a longer dropper.

@kamakazie. Agreed. I can’t remember if the S/M ship with a 150mm post. The great things about the OneUp posts are they are easy to shim, so even if it touched, I’d just go back 10mm.

@nickc – there’s never a good time. It’s like wrestling a furious octopus 🙂

@tomhoward – same. If it goes well first time, then great. If it doesn’t, I just admit defeat there and then so not to waste time making it worse 😉

Having bought a bike from Italy, I had a little surprise when I came to the first corner and realised that the brakes were on the wrong side.

So I had a lovely hour or so, swapping hoses and topping up brake fluids.

I loved it, and with the help of YouTube, I’m getting braver and doing more fettling!