So what have I been up to?
As you can probably figure out for yourself, cabling the Speed Concept has taken the lion's share of the time. As if a regular cabling job isn't enough of an annoyance on any "superbike" I wanted to up the ante a little bit by insisting on using my Nokon's and to really amp it up, set the brakes up with the USE Tula's. Nightmare mode for sure. (I've even found a couple of bends nokons will not allow you to make! Great!) Really though, despite the Gen1 SC's having some...not so well thought out designs (having to remove the rear brake to re-cable the rear derailleur is laughably annoying.) it's not that bad once you've played around with it a few times. That said, if this cabling job can last me all season, I'll be thankful.
While I've got my Fuji dialed in for endurance work on the track, I started thinking maybe it would be nice to have a bike specifically set up for mass start events. Well, my aluminum P3 was sitting on the garage floor looking awful pathetic not built up, so I figured it would continue it's faithful service by being my new pursuit bike.
Despite the fact that the paint would chip and crack at every available opportunity, I had some real trouble stripping this thing bare, even using some pretty nasty chemicals. Following that it was sanding it down (320/400/600 sandpaper, then a finishing pad) and polishing the heck out of it (Eagle One and Mothers) something I picked up polishing Torque Thrust wheels many years ago. Bringing out the shine in aluminum is a black hole... you can literally obsess over it forever and still not get it perfect... this is going to be a "beater" so I got it 5 footer smooth and waxed it. You can tell it's not quite on par with the bars, but meh, it's good enough.
It's not only the bicycles that have been getting put through their paces... I haven't let my 3d printer sit idle either. The problem is that I run through a lot of filament on designs that are "close" but eventually just are a few mm out of spec. It's annoying, but I'm getting a little better at it.
These plugs were just fun little things I made with our (Podium Sports) logo on them. Certainly not the bleeding edge of what is possible with a 3D printer, but hey, might has well add some bling where you can.
This on the other hand is something actually pretty useful. Since it's a no-no to have the computer in a visible area on the track, I created this handy dandy mount to fit behind the saddle of my Fuji, in matching blue filament of course. Having one made (a real pain because most track mounts are Garmin specific) is closing in on a Benjamin, so I count that as offsetting the cost of my 3D printer! (At least that's what I told my wife!)
It's a little tougher to see exactly what you should be looking at in this picture, but it's actually an (extremely) low stack dust cap. I didn't have any 1" caps that were low enough to work with my Cervelo, so I took a measurement or two and bam! Perfect fit.
So I've been pretty busy the last few days. I'm also quite excited to head out on vacation... but there is still a lot of work to be done between now and then... Next week I may just have a new review up unless I get distracted between now and then!
Until next time, thanks for reading, I really appreciate it!
-Christopher Morelock
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