When I started this ‘NYC City Bike’ project in January, I never imagined that it would take so long to finish. But as of two weeks ago, the frame was completed, stripped/powdered and built up with a ton of newish parts.

We ran into complications from day one due to a distinct lack of frame building foresight/experience on my part.

On its most basic level, this project was about making the best NYC City Bike possible. It would be single-speed (NYC is really flat), have fenders and disc brakes for wet weather performance. I already had a Surly Steamroller frame and wasn’t going to have a custom frame built to lock up on the street so I decided to modify the frame and shoehorn a disc brake into it.

What I didn’t realize at the time, was that frames designed for disc brakes are engineered to have a space allowance for the rotor.   This meant that I could push the rear axle so far into the drop-outs before the disc rotor made contact with the inner chainstay.  Crap, but while the Steamroller had mercifully long drop-outs, I was only left with about 20mm of fore/aft adjustment.  Another issue was that I was running a dishless rear wheel and had  improperly installed the Montano Velo Dixie unit, (I placed the rotor on the outside of the lockring as opposed to behind it) and the disc caliper was barely able to clear the spokes on the rear wheel*.  Thanks to the talents of Seth Rosko, we were able to successfully weld adjustable disc tabs onto the frame and successfully mount and run the rear brake. It currently runs a half-link to keep the wheelbase as short as possible without rotor/chainstay contact. Seth Rosko was also kind enough to tack on a couple of guides and fender mounts.

* A disc hub’s non-driveside flange is pushed away from the rotor mount so that the caliper body of the brake does not make contact with the spokes.  If I had properly installed the rotor, it would have sat inward about 5mm and made contact with the spokes.  A lucky mistake!

Special Thanks:
Seth Rosko for all the fabrication work.
Lance @ Squarebuilt for the powdercoating.
Alan Tansey for the wonderful photos.

PHOTOS:

Driveside shot.   The rear fender mounts were placed higher on the seatstays so as to not conflict with the disc brake caliper.  I chopped the fender down so that I wouldn’t have to fuss with it during a flat change.  I chopped and bent the rear fender support stays into an arc to make the fit.

Non-driveside shot.  The Race Face cranks have a big hollow axle and are pretty stiff.  The disc rotors are both 160mm.

The Avid Speed Dial’s are among my favorite levers and have been kicking around the parts box since day one.  The bars are as comfortable as they are from outer space.

The custom Rosko fork.  Seth did a fantastic job here.  The cable routes cleanly around the fender.

The non-driveside dropout.  Again, fantastic work by Rosko.  You can’t really tell in this shot, there is a 2-3″ spacer pushing the fender stays outward to avoid the disc caliper.

Driveside crank shot.  I’m a big fan of these cranks and even the ring (but not the art, it looks like a broken lava lamp.)  Plastic pedals have come a long way too, another favorite product for city riding.

Driveside freewheel shot.  The rear axle is as far forward as it can go and you can see the half-link in the bottom right corner.

Tailend of the bike.  This shot shows exactly how close the brake caliper is the spokes of the rear wheel.  As I said before, the Montano Velo engineers designed the Dixie to sandwich the rotor but I accidentally installed it on the outside.  Proper installation would have moved the caliper into the wheel’s spokes and ruined the whole project.

The full shot of the non-driveside tailend.  A great example of Rosko’s work.  He tacked on the fender mount, the support brace and the sliding disc tab.  He used the sliding disc tab so that I could position the caliper optimally regardless of the axle position.

Parts Spec:
Frame: Surly Steamroller, modified and refinished.
Fork: Custom Rosko fork, built around the stock fork’s geometry but with disc tabs.
Headset: Cane Creek S-3.
Stem: Thompson X-4.
Handlebar: FSA Metropolis 31.8 (while I love how these feel, it took me a while to stop looking at them because they’re damn spaceman funky.)
Brake Levers: Avid Speed Dial Ti.
Grips: Black Ourys.
Brakes: Avid BB7 MTB disc brakes (the r.brake has its inside adjustment knob removed to clear the spokes on the r.wheel.)
Wheelset: ELVS Velocity Deep V laced 3x to Formula/Velocity hubs. Front is a standard disc hub and the rear is fixed/free.
Tires: Nothing special, I think I have a Rubino on the back.
Seat Post: Thompson.
Saddle: Specialized Alias 143.
Pedals: Odyssey Twisted PC.
Crankset/BB: RaceFace Decadence 130bcd. These are pretty rad and I covered the lightening bolts on the crank arms.
Ring: RaceFace Decadence 47t 1/8 ring. Despite the silly etched lightening bolts, this ring is a super high quality piece. If you get a chance, take a look at all the CNC relief work that went into the backside of it. Very rad.
Freewheel: Shimano 16t 1/8. (I actually would have been totally fine with 3/32 but then I would have had to toss the ring.)
Lights: Some Knog units that perpetually need new batteries. Feh.
Fenders: SKS Chromoplastics that I modded to fit the bike.
Skewers: Pitlock locking skewer on the front wheel.

Thanks for looking!

Got this back from Rosko about a month ago and got it powder coated and built up over the weekend. I’ll have finished pictures of the bike over the next few days…

Jigged and not tigged. The disc tab is lying on the counter to the right.

Post welding. Rosko is on point per usual.

Backside. Tabs for cable routing added.

Finished backside.

Carrera, an Italian jeans brand, sponsored a successful road cycling team from 1984-1996 (wikipedia).

THE KIT!

A great aggregation of pictures and video on the late Marco Pantani from La Gazzetta Della Bici.

The Marco Pantani Story, a four part Italian piece.

Last Wednesday I took some time out and rode over to Red Hook, BK to see Justin Aquinaldo and the Bamboo Bike Studio.

The Bamboo Bike Studio has two goals. First, along with their partners at Columbia University’s Millennium Cities Initiative, they are developing and launching a locally-owned and operated bike factory in Kumasi, Ghana. Second, to fund themselves, they offer Workshops where you can build your own Bamboo bike for a very reasonable price.   More information on the Workshops.

It is pretty heartening to see a local business do well, especially one with a goal as positive as this.

I had hoped that John Prolly could have accompanied, but it wasn’t fated to be.  Here are some of my shots.

The Main Room

This is the main room where all the frames are built.  There are several work stands assembled for a forthcoming class.

Better shot of the work area.  The stand to the immediate left has a partially assembled bike in it.

Some of the parts used to make a jig.  When the jig is set up, it will determine the geometry that the built frame will have.  That means, head angle, seat angle, bottom bracket height, etc…

Tools!  I love the toothed saw/machete thing.  So mean and perfect for home defense!    The cubes in the upper right corner are foam.

I didn’t ask, but I’m pretty sure this is fiberglass, epoxy and mixing cups.  The ‘twine’ on the ground is fiberglass itself.  Its used to ‘tack’ the frame together before being wrapped in carbon fiber.

Epoxy mixing station.

Better shot of the epoxy mixing station.  The metal plates on the right side of the table let you adjust the angles of the jig.

The Woodshop

The wood shop, as shot from the doorway.  This is where the joints/lugs and bamboo are prepped for frame building in the main room.

Close up of the foam joints.  These will be aggressively trimmed down during the frame assembly phase.

Carbon fiber spools.

Bamboo supplies and a circular saw for mitering. This room is panda-free.

Bamboo Bikes Being Built

A jigged up front-triangle.  The foam hasn’t been worked yet, and the nothing is visibly tacked into place.  Note that the headtube, the bottom bracket, track-ends (drop-outs) and inner seat-tube are actually metal (this is a good thing as bamboo is pretty inconsistent in shape.)

The exposed headtube.  It has been knurled to promote a positive and lasting adhesion with the carbon fiber.

They’ve bonded a metal inner seat tube into the bamboo seat tube.  This is done to have a uniform inner diameter for a seatpost.  You can see how the bamboo is roughed up to promote adhesion.

The foam lug pieces held in place for reduction/carving.   The seat-stays will go on either side of the ‘tail’ on the left side of the photo.

A More Completed Frame

This frame has been ‘tacked’ together with fiberglass and is on its way to being wrapped in carbon fiber.  The black material on the seat-stay/chain-stay is carbon wrap.  The blue masking tape protects areas that will not be wrapped in carbon.  Note how different the the foam pieces look!

Headshot.  The headtube is tacked in place with fiberglass.

Close up of the bottom bracket area.  Also tacked together by fiberglass for the moment.

Close up of the top tube, seat stay and seat tube junction.  You can really see how much they’ve roughed up the bamboo tubes.

The seat-stay/chain-stay area is wrapped in carbon fiber.  Not sure if this part is completed or if it is going to see further wrapping.  A cosmetic outer layer can be applied as well.

The Finished Bike

Done and built up.

Locked up outside the studio on the street.

This bike has a twill tape cosmetic topcoat.

Thanks again guys!

My buddy Sara (pictured in the article) forwarded this link to me: http://www.asylum.com/2010/07/21/the-ladies-of-nyc-bike-polo-pictures/. So funny. I’d actually stopped by the Pit that day to talk about god knows what and Emily Ann Epstein (the writer of the article) was shooting the ladies. It was published on Asylum.com, which is a content provider owned by AOL that I’d never heard of.

Total babes!

Harry and the rest of the Bike Jumble will be at El Museo Del Barrio this Saturday for the Super Sabado kids free day! They’ll be running a race course for the kiddies and it promises to be a great time!

(By the way, if your child is a convicted doper, please leave him/her in the car! This is a no-doping event!)

via Bike Jumble

I came and went a bit over the weekend, but I was lucky to catch some of the amazing match ups from the Ladies Army on Friday. The level of individual and team play was damn fantastic and the double elimination bracketing made for an exciting finale. Congrats to the organizers, Fiona Ryan (the lovely and talented lass behind Fifocycle) and Cecily Upton (recent emigrant from New York to somewhere else that isn’t as cool) for doing such a great job.

Court Set-Up

Unloading of the boards.

Setting up the boards.

Zack (pictured) had welded the goals together and was installing the net.

Finalized goal in action.

Post competition group shot!

Organizers Fiona and Cecily handing out prizes.

Pictures above by John Birdseye

More pics in a bit!

If you are not familiar, New York is hosting the East Side Polo Invitational (aka the ESPIs) for 2010. Competition is scheduled to take place the weekend of June 26th somewhere in North Brooklyn. New York last hosted the ESPIs in 2007 and a lot has changed since then.

In 2007, all gameplay happened at New York’s home court in Manhattan, The Pit (factoid: the Parks Department named it The Pit, not the players.) This year, with 48 teams coming, New York Bike Polo is fielding three courts in North Brooklyn.

Paul Chunk, in charge of building the boards for the courts, estimates that they’re building somewhere in the neighborhood of 760′ of boards to make up the court walls. That’s a lot of wood to handle by the 26th.

Paul explaining the plan for the evening

Sara measures

and cuts 2x4s

Impromptu right angle for board supports

Lee Perry

Sideboards, already made. This pile will grow.

Supports for sideboards

Work crew; Nate, Paul, Chris and Sara

All photos were shot by myself or Nate Mumford