Fun fact: I got a new bike

[clinton/website/src/unknownlamer.org.git] / Bicycle 2012.muse

#title Clinton's New Bike

* The Wishlist

After my old frame broke, I thought about what I wanted in a new
bike.

 - Mechanical disc brakes (ease of maintenance mostly)
 - Lugged steel frame (why not?)
 - Indexed shifters
 - Rear rack mounts (without horrible hacks required) and maybe mounts
   for a front rack too (nice for multi-day treks)
 - Front and rear fender mounts (again, without horrible hacks)
 - No suspension (extra annoying maintenance and pain with things like
   fenders)

I was willing to lose the disc brakes for the fender and rack mounts.

* A Whole Lot of Money Later

I searched high and low and found a few bikes that *almost* had what I
wanted... Unfortunately the bike I want doesn't exist for under $1200
which is a *wee bit* much for my liking. Months of searching in vain on
Craigslist for anything less expensive failed, and I gave up on the
dream of my ideal bike.

Instead, I got a [[http://www.trekbikes.com/us/en/bikes/town/fitness/fx/7_3_fx_disc/][2012 Trek 7.3 FX Disc]] for the low low price of $720 +
a painful bit of sales tax. A few hundred more than I had wanted to
spend, but it *did* meet all of my wishlist except for the frame.

[[img/photos/bicycle/2012-01-01/new-bike-with-fenders.jpg][Everyone loves new toys]]

I promptly ordered a replacement battery for my Dual Cross 300 (at
this point, I can wholeheartedly recommend [[http://cygolite.com][Cygolite]]'s stuff -- the
head light outlasted the battery pack **and** the bike I got it for!), SKS
fenders, and thought about [[http://www.jandd.com/detail.asp?PRODUCT_ID=FREXP][new rack]] (but ended up reusing my old rack
for now). As of January 1, 2012 I am ridiculously out of shape and
barely able to go anywhere, but I'm hoping in a few weeks my entire
body will stop hurting after a few hill climbs.

** Fender Installation

It is a well known fact that SKS packages their fenders with
instructions designed to deceive and punish half-men who read them. Of
course, I tried reading them despite not really needing to (and,
indeed, ended up led astray). After spending ages getting the new stay
ends on (which I ended up having to remove from the front later) the
real fun started.

The rear fender, I am happy to report, went on without a hitch. The
caliper-side braze-on was positioned such that I didn't even have to
cut or re-route the stay like on my old
mountain-biked-turned-commuting-rig.

The front fender, on the other hand, was a bit of a pain. The SKS
fenders do **not** come with the M6 bolt needed for mounting the fender to
the crown (riddle me this: why the hell is that an M6 bolt when every
other bolt on the bike is M5?). I'm guessing because most bikes have a
brake bolt you can piggy back on (then again, the kit comes with
about five extra bolts that have seemingly no use on any bike...).

A trek to Home Despot proved fruitless; a trek to the other super
chain also yielded disappointing results. Both only carried plain
steel metric bolts... I hacked it for a while until I could hop down
to the bike shop to get a proper stainless steel bolt.

That challenge overcome, even more fun was to be had with the
caliper-side stay. [1] The lower stay had to go directly through the
caliper. I found a [[http://www.flickr.com/photos/seditiouscanary/3358079803/][few]] different [[http://www.bikeforums.net/archive/index.php/t-609665.html][solutions]], neither of which I ended
up using.

I accidentally found the front fender I was never able to mount on my
MTB and ... *phew* breathing room! Having two spare stays made it easier
to experiment and eventually I found that cutting the the lower stay
arm and mounting the stay to the upper rack eyelet was the easiest
solution. This does require not using the newfangled integrated end
caps (luckily I had the caps from the old set) because the insertion
angle of the caliper-side stay isn't quite straight.

[[img/photos/bicycle/2012-01-01/caliper-side-fender-stay.jpg][Caliper-side fender stay]]

After two days of cursing at my bike success was mine.


[1] Actually, I hacked the crown bolt mount using a smaller bolt and a
     nut first, and then solved the stay issue... followed by despair
     and pain as I discovered the front of the fender hit the tire. It
     seemed like this was because of the weird stay mount hack (the fender
     was under a bit of tension) and I wasted quite a bit of time
     adjusting the stays only to realize ... the fender wasn't flush
     against the crown. D'oh.