MoHoyt.com » Bikes

Cupholder Win

Moses Hoyt — Sun, 30 Oct 2011 10:42:40 +0000

Cupholder win indeed. It turns out that Grande Starbucks cups fit perfectly in my bike water bottle holder. Quelle surprise? Now I can enjoy my Grande Sumatra with sugar-free hazelnut on ice while pedalling…

In other news I’ve just returned from Boston, I have a whole host of awesome new food places to write about. Stay tuned.

Fixie Wheel Testing…

Moses Hoyt — Tue, 29 Sep 2009 09:52:14 +0000

Well admittedly it did feel time for a new post—partly because there had been no updates in perhaps a couple weeks, but also because I’m partly (or maybe even mostly) settled into my new (basement) room in Cambridge. Hmm. Oh, and I also did a whole bunch of stuff on the old bikes…

When I was still back at home, I still had a lot of painting to do on the fixie frame. Admittedly I still do, but it’s ridable, or at least that’s what I’m telling myself. But anyway, it wasn’t even remotely orange for the last few days when I was at home, so, I just had to find some way of trying out the fixed gear wheel that I had put together laboriously with cone spanners and a fair amount of frustration. But anyway, as I might have mentioned earlier, I had that Giant Sedona frame that I picked up for a tenner at the start of the holidays that I was using as a kind of throw around bike. So I went and stuck the fixed gear wheel on there. The chain tension wasn’t that up to scratch with the whole vertical dropouts and such, but I found an almost magic gear (and reasonable chainline) with the middle chainset cog. And it was a pretty weird experience to ride as I really hadn’t rode a fixie before to any extent. I was a little shocked at the “you’re about to get propelled off the bike” feeling that I had at first, but it was a little easier with clip pedals…

Anyway, check out some pictures…

And Then I Ran Out of Paint…

Moses Hoyt — Fri, 11 Sep 2009 23:21:15 +0000

I’ve recently been getting quite a bit further with my bike building… (by the way, to all those interested, this post might be a little ‘bikey’ as it’s all I can think to say right now)

Finally (and I mean finally) I finished the sanding and stripping of the frame itself. To be brutally honest, I was so tired of the whole sanding process that I just wanted it to be over with. I’m sure I had spent at least 6+ hours on it and gone through countless sheets of sandpaper and really just wanted the design to progress a little… Though initially, when starting the project, I really wanted to make sure that the work that I did was of a high quality and not rushed, I knew that this part of it would be pretty testing. I know for a fact that I get pretty bored pretty quickly when doing certain things—sanding comes to mind very fast—and I had to make sure that I put in a decent sanding effort. But to be honest I think I did pretty well. Maybe if I had an electric sander next time, or something just a little more effective. Anyway, I wanted to get the whole project moving, so I could finish the frame part and move on to the mechanics and wheels and so on and so forth. Except that halfway through priming the wonderfully sanded frame, I ran out of the stupid red oxide primer.

I kinda knew initially that I should have bought more paint, but I didn’t realise it would be quite this serious (look at the photos! The whole thing isn’t even covered!). So I’ve now (as of this time last week actually) taken the liberty in ordering more paints. Except that I’ve used a different company (it was £4 cheaper and I think I get more paint for my money) and it hasn’t arrived. So either they’re jerking me around and taking their time (I’m someone tempted to think this (my nasty side clearly)) or it is as they’ve said and it’s delayed in the post—postal strikes—hmmmmmmm. I guess it’ll be a wait and see till monday. Not cool at all.

In the meantime though, it has given me ample time to finish other parts of the bike. The front fork has now been sanded (not wet sanded because a) I didn’t realise one needed special sanding paper to wet sand and b) out usual paper really doesn’t work when wet) and varnished, or lacquered if you will. Anyway, it’s looking hot, and shiny. I’ll get some shots on Flickr soon.

But that’s not all! Despite the frame taking an absolute age to complete, I did get round to ordering more parts—and behold—some even arrived! I bought a whole bunch of stuff from VeloSolo, including all the bolt on cog and Shimano M756 axle conversion kit – and with their excellent customer service and packaging skills it arrived today. Thumbs up to those guys. However now I realise why I needed a cone spanner as opposed to a regular (adjustable) spanner – one side of the axle cones may be easy to remove. But the other isn’t exactly. However I found a temporary solution in the form of filing down a slightly thicker than cone 13mm spanner to a cone spanner. Thing is though, it’s made of “drop forged steel”, and it just ain’t easy to file. I might have to get one of those real cone spanners after all. Grrrr…

In addition to my ordering of the VeloSolo kit, I also got a chain off of Chain Reaction Cycles (haha – see what I did there) and behold, it also arrived today. So all is good except the fact that I don’t really need a chain as of yet. Though it was cheap at £5.99 – and it’s a 3/32 singlespeed chain which makes it all the better. Check out the KMC Z610 RB if you’re intrigued…

And last week too, when I was on my ordering spree, I placed an order for some sweet slick tyres. I’m not gonna lie, they’re probably the slickest mofos that I could find seeing as they have absolutely no tread. Wet times = ~~fun~~. They weren’t that cheap (try £16 a pair inc. tubes…) but then again they look so gnarley.

Specialized Fatboys (26×1.95). I just hope the company that I ordered them from doesn’t screw up too much. It’s already taking a while…

I also got some sweet eBay items yesterday, which may or may not arrive in the post on Saturday. We’ll have to wait and see. Until then, have fun.

Yikes! Bikes!

Moses Hoyt — Mon, 17 Aug 2009 09:30:00 +0000

I had a little more time to take some more pictures and upload them of the whole build and so on – and so I thought I should probably take the opportunity to add some up here and maybe annotate a few…

I have the frame almost completely stripped down – to the extent where all there is left is the bottom bracket (as I don’t have a large enough spanner!) And I’m not sure whether to go ahead and replace it anyway with a new sealed cartridge one… I am tempted to, but then again, why do it if it currently works fine and just could use a few more bearings and some greasy times? Hmm, we’ll see! On the topic of bearing I might replace the headset too as that’s a little buggered, but I think I found a nice 1″ bearing cup so that might do.

As part of all the rebuilding and so on, I’m stripping down the whole frame and removing rust and sanding and painting and everything – which is long and laborious, but the results are generally pretty self evident, so there’s a fair amount of almost immediate satisfaction. And so I have a few pictures from after removing the first amount of rust (which was luckily just surface stuff!).

As for the wheels, here’s some pictures of the rear wheel – which was originally a Shimano disc front wheel -h this should make for an interesting conversion. I currently need to retrue the wheel—a few spokes are loose, and replace the axel and bearings with a longer solid one.

For the front wheel, I have a fairly thin and light Mavic X139 wheel, which is probably sufficient. I only really need to get a thin (1.5″ is the thinnest) tyre.

The almost finished front forks. I have just put a couple coats of the main coat on. I need to (wet) sand it a bit to get rid of some lumps, but it’s looking pretty hot as of the moment.

And that’s all of the pictures for now. I should probably get on with truing the wheel more and sanding and so on, but watch this space.

Bikes Galore!

Moses Hoyt — Sat, 15 Aug 2009 09:31:44 +0000

Well I mentioned earlier that I had the whole bike thing going and that I was/am planning on doing up a couple bikes and building them etc. over the Summer just to have some fun/get my engineering side out/pass time. Well over the past few weeks I have been hard at it… Building and tinkering and buying and so on – and as a result I have a few pictures… (yay!)

FYI, I am building 2 bikes. Originally (like back on the Easter hols) I really wanted to build a fixie (with one gear and two way drive (i.e. forwards and backwards to and from the pedals to the back wheel), but after lots of careful research about the project, it seemed hard and expensive in that I need certain (track) wheels and a certain old skool frame. Well cut forward to now, I found a nice old slightly rusty Ridgeback frame in one of the sheds that was part of a pretty old mountain bike like thing with (ghastly!) slick tyres. So I figured I should take it apart (fun times) and then build it back up again (looking much better) in a single speed configuration and a bright new colour! I used a whole bunch of information and parts from velosolo to get a mountain bike front wheel with a fixed cog attached to the disc brake attachment as the back wheel, and then a pretty thin front wheel (with hopefully some pretty slick tyres (soon to be purchased). At the moment, I’ve stripped it all down, bought some wheels and have begun sanding and painting. Enjoy some of the pictures as there will be a LOT more on their way.

The other bike that I am building was a result of some cheap eBay purchasing and a slightly lack of hope of building a singlespeed. I really wanted to build a bike – especially a singlespeed, and when I realised that it could be too expensive and difficult, I thought that building a mountain bike would work just as well and be a similarly good fun idea. Indeed it is. So, I got this Giant frame and handlebars and such for a tenner on eBay and began doing it from there. I don’t have any pictures at the moment – and it’s raining like crazy outside,