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Cycling log - random events in the day of a cyclist II

I went out to ride my local TT course this morning ahead of Wednesday’s TT. I was on a quick part of the course doing nearly 30Mph with my head down (I know I know - there was almost no traffic and I have a rear view mirror so I knew I could take the lane). I heard a rustle ahead at the side of the road and thought a kamikaze squirrel was about to throw himself under my wheels but when I looked up it was a full grown deer. I short past it only feet away and it looked just as worried as I was. I’ll keep my head up on Wednesday (TT bikes give me a sore neck).

I did once hit a squirrel on that same course during a triathlon. It made an awful crunching sound and I nearly came off. I assume I killed it and I felt awful about it but there was no way of avoiding it.
"If there's a bustle in your hedgerow don't be alarmed now..."
This has happened to me a couple of times too, deer are surprisingly big aren't they?
 
I'm after a new front mtb tyre. Current rear is a Maxxis 26x2.1, Advantage. I like it. It's a wet winter compound, a proper sh*tegripper. Front is, I kid you not, an old Pana Smoke/Dart from the last century. It performs perfectly on XC stuff which is most of my riding. Bike is a Kona Kula, hardtail, 3x9, goes like hell XC, hard work at trail centres. A mate is taking me to trail centres, I'm enjoying it but spending lots of time on my arse. I know it's about the skills, not the bike, but I'm hoping a tyre change, rather than a bike change, might help. Any clues? Anything that just might give me a bit of traction in wet rooty conditions gets my vote, after all anything grips in the dry.
 
26" tires are getting harder to source. I swapped some vulcanized / tread challenged tires for some WTB velociraptors - they're a bit heavy, but cheap and very effective.
 
One day mtbing, I rounded a bend and came upon two squirrels copulating. They managed to get off the trail without disengaging. Respect. If you’re wondering... I could see no difference between how they were doing it and how dogs do it.
 
26" tires are getting harder to source. I swapped some vulcanized / tread challenged tires for some WTB velociraptors - they're a bit heavy, but cheap and very effective.
That might well do the trick. To be fair any new knobbly tyre with nice sharp edges will outperform what's on there and more critically what's sitting behind it. It's clear that my XC setup makes the trail centres rather unforgiving, and I need all the help I can get.
 
On my XC bikes I either run Continental Speed King Supersonics in 2.1" (which are no longer made and very difficult to find now) or Specialized Fast Trak also in 2.1" - which are still made. They're both lightweight summer XC tyres but I've not found then too bad in wet conditions. They're also very light and not too draggy so I think would work well for a trail centre (at least for my style of riding)! I've also just got a set of Schwalbe Racing Ralphs in 2.2" which I've not tried yet but are a similar sort of lightweight tyre (and I think still available pretty cheap from Planet-X).

For wet & winter conditions my preferred combination was a 2.2" Specialized Purgatory on the front and a 2.0" Specialized Storm on the back. I've used their Ground Control tyre and it was also decent. I don't think the Storm is still made but the others are.
 
Received abuse from fat blokes on scramblers today, trying to take the moral high ground as we rode two abreast. Obviously they had illegal number plates & probably no insurance.

The second bit of abuse came from someone towing a caravan who was trying to overtake in an unsafe place, a caravan, FFS.
 
I'm after a new front mtb tyre. Current rear is a Maxxis 26x2.1, Advantage. I like it. It's a wet winter compound, a proper sh*tegripper. Front is, I kid you not, an old Pana Smoke/Dart from the last century. It performs perfectly on XC stuff which is most of my riding. Bike is a Kona Kula, hardtail, 3x9, goes like hell XC, hard work at trail centres. A mate is taking me to trail centres, I'm enjoying it but spending lots of time on my arse. I know it's about the skills, not the bike, but I'm hoping a tyre change, rather than a bike change, might help. Any clues? Anything that just might give me a bit of traction in wet rooty conditions gets my vote, after all anything grips in the dry.

I just reshod my 26" wheels with Maxxis Aggressors. For the rear they are fine, but not convinced for the front, tried to get Maxxis DHF's for the front but as of now haven't found any in stock at a reasonable price.
 
Just done over an hour on zwift, first bit of riding of any kind for three weeks, thought I was going to puke.

On a plus note I set a new 5 minute power PB, which goes against all common sense, even more surprising given I wasn't paying attention to any numbers, just hanging on for grim death.
 
Anyone here running fairly recent Shimano Ultegra or DuraAce? I’ve got a full Ultegra 6800 groupset on my road bike and I’m starting to get a bit nervous as it looks like there may be a design or manufacturing flaw with the glued ‘Hollowtech’ chainsets. A huge thread over on Weightweenies, an Instagram group called ‘Thanks Shimano’ and a plausible explanation of what is happening on the Peak Torque YouTube channel (which is great for cycling engineering topics):


There is certainly a lot of visual evidence of catastrophic failure and that has me very twitchy. I’d far prefer to pay £200-300 just to swap it out than end up potentially injured with a damaged frame, or worse bleeding out inspecting the underside of bus. At the very least I’ll be inspecting it before every ride.

Has anyone here had a crankset failure of this current-era glued Shimano Hollowtech? Particularly interested if anyone is involved in a bike shop and could find out what sort of numbers/percentage of returns they are seeing, if any. It’s always very hard to establish risk-factors on a product that has such market dominance as even a trace element of failures will equate to many hundreds of units worldwide.
 
I would imagine the failure rate is tiny i.e. a fraction of a fraction of a percent. If there really was a serious issue, then a company as big as Shimano would issue a recall and have implemented design changes. I would ride without concern, but with the caveat to visually check itonce in a while for any signs of problems.
 
This is a much better article examining a failure:
https://www.bikeradar.com/features/shimano-crank-failure/

The tl/dr appears to be - failures are rare, but be attuned to any new noises or feeling from the crank area. Squeaking/ or feeling like the pedal shaft is bent - any feeling that something isn't quite right should lead to a thorough inspection. I'd carry on riding, perhaps change it out if it's seen serious winter riding or high mileage.

Perhaps take this as a timely reminder to regularly and thoroughly inspect your bike and not ignore anything that "feels a bit off".
 
Anyone here running fairly recent Shimano Ultegra or DuraAce? I’ve got a full Ultegra 6800 groupset on my road bike and I’m starting to get a bit nervous as it looks like there may be a design or manufacturing flaw with the glued ‘Hollowtech’ chainsets. A huge thread over on Weightweenies, an Instagram group called ‘Thanks Shimano’ and a plausible explanation of what is happening on the Peak Torque YouTube channel (which is great for cycling engineering topics):


There is certainly a lot of visual evidence of catastrophic failure and that has me very twitchy. I’d far prefer to pay £200-300 just to swap it out than end up potentially injured with a damaged frame, or worse bleeding out inspecting the underside of bus. At the very least I’ll be inspecting it before every ride.

Has anyone here had a crankset failure of this current-era glued Shimano Hollowtech? Particularly interested if anyone is involved in a bike shop and could find out what sort of numbers/percentage of returns they are seeing, if any. It’s always very hard to establish risk-factors on a product that has such market dominance as even a trace element of failures will equate to many hundreds of units worldwide.
No, I ran 6800 for quite a while with not a problem, I do about 12-13k KMs per year so I wouldn’t worry.
 
Finally got around to making a start on the fast bike, had the bits for a while but not got around to it. It will be dual purpose, a 'fast' spec and 'faster' spec.

Woodrup hand built 531SL frame, quite a racy geometry looking at the fag paper tyre clearances, those are Veloflex Record 22c open tubulars for reference - with Vittoria latex tubes. I contacted Woodrup for a date but they had a fire and lost most of their records from the 80s but I spoke to the guy who built it and he reckons on about 85-87 so I went for as period as I could with the other bits, I've not been super strict with that though due to some silly prices.

A mix of Campag Super Record/Record, in these pics it is in TT spec (although with it's road wheels) with a Campag Pista crank and 56T ring, I have an alloy straight through 13-18 block for the rear, road spec will be a Campag copy Ofmega 42/52 crank plus these wheels, I have a classic lightweight tubular wheelset for full on attack mode.

I did want to replace the hoods but NOS or even just nice condition originals are silly money so it will have to keep the worn pair. As it stands with just a chain and cables to go on it comes in at 7.8kg including the heavier road wheels and not very light saddle (Rolls Titanium) which isn't bad for an old steel bike IMO.

Nothing is set up here, just thrown together for some pics.





Remember to only tape below the levers for that retro style.
 
Tried my first Zwift group ride this morning, I thought I'd chosen wisely, looked at the course and the w/kg requirements etc. and it all looked OK.

Got dropped at the top of the first climb as I don't press on that hard down hills and never caught it back, was still a decent work out but not much of a group ride sadly. Will need to be a bit more realistic when looking at my next one, everyone raves about it being what Zwift is all about but to be honest as a solitary anti social hermit I'm quite content just plodding around by myself.
 
Just took my own advice and inspected the forks, cranks and handlebars on all my older 1990s bikes. Everything looks good, but as a precaution I'm going to swap out some dura-ace 7400 cranks of unknown history (came to me on a used road bike in the late 90s) with some NOS early 90s 105 cranks I just got off ebay for $80.
 


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