Tale of Three Bikes: 2004 Specialized Sequoia Elite, revisited

I inherited the Specialized Sequoia from Dad in 2005.  Sam didn't need it and, frankly, I suppose I did.  My only bike at the time was the white IRO Jamie Roy fixie.  This is so long ago I no longer have a picture of that one.

The Specialized Sequoia

But here is the Sequoia of which I speak.

It is a pretty, aluminum, compact-framed, bike in extra-large.  This is back when the height of technology was to add carbon forks and seat-stays to dampen the ride.  Whether dampening was achieved is anybody's guess, but it looks a step more technical than just another aluminum-framed bike.

The Elite version was a Shimano 105 build and came with curvy "randonneur" bars.  (Drop bars with funky backward curves in the flats as well as outwardly flaring bar ends.)  It had an adjustable stem of the sort one uses when one is unsure of fit and needs to experiment for a while.  It had an old-school suspension seatpost, the kind with a rubber boot hiding a dampened spring.  It had a triple chainring and a cheap builder-spec. set of wheels that blew a spoke the first time I tried to ride it any real distance.

On the upside, the frame is an infinitely durable aluminum frame with a nice finish, three sets of water bottle bosses, traditional straight (not tapered) head-tube, threaded bottom bracket, external cable routing, and road spacing (130mm) for the rear wheel.  In other words, a bike that can be rebuilt with very little drama.

Dad bought the Sequoia with the idea it would be a winter touring bike, permitting him to traverse some of the southwest desert.  In particular, I remember Dad's interest in riding through Needles, California, which seems a little random -- but there it is.

Photo from viewphotos.com.  (No indication there of reservation of copyright, so reprinting license inferred.)

What to do with it?

I have not ridden this bike much.  One failed attempt at the Finger Lakes 400K in upstate New York in 2009.  One wildly rainy 200K permanent (really 140 miles) in 2013.  A handful of rides around town.  Maybe 500 miles in total over 10+ years.  Not really a use case for a nice bike!

Option 1 was always to find a good charity to receive the bike as a donation.  Here was my problem:  the Sequoia had enough nostalgic value, to me at any rate, that I wanted it to be owned by somebody who would appreciate it.  A donation to Goodwill, for example, would ensure this bike got sold for $75, locked up outdoors with a U-lock on some college campus -- until it was vandalized by some fraternity jerk wrapping the frame around the no parking sign to which it was locked.

You know, kind of like this.

From Wikimedia Commons

It used to be a capital crime to steal a horse in the American frontier.  Or, more likely, that is a rural legend.  I'd be happy to institute such a severe penalty for bike vandalism, however.  I mean, we don't see people randomly wrecking parked cars, do we?

A better charity would be one that used the bike for a needful purpose.  Think a bike racing team in a high school for students with insufficient means to bring their own bikes.  Personally, I'd love to found such an endeavor.  But I have been unable to find one currently in existence.  (I did find a group in Philadelphia that purported to use spare parts to build nice bikes to donate to inner-city kids. I e-mailed and offered to drive a trunk full of nice Shimano parts to them for reuse, but never received a response.)

Option 2 was actually to sell it.  The problem, of course, is that a 10-year-old aluminum-framed bike, even nicely built and tuned, might bring $500, on a good day.  I once sold my aluminum Novara Strada (S-105) to a guy who had just moved to town for $400.  That bike was from 2006 and I sold it in 2008.  The Sequoia would never bring enough to make it worth the candle.

Option 3 was to keep it handy for Sam to ride when he visited.  And once recently, we used it for just that purpose -- Sam and Mom were in town on a nice March day and we did some wine touring, with Sam and me riding 65 or so miles in total.  Not a bad ride for early in the season.  

Wine touring in Loudon County

But other times the bike was stored too deep in the closet or not quite built up or whatever, leaving it unusable just when we needed it.  

The Rebuild

Over the years I swapped the brifters to 10-speed S105 and the crankset, bars, stem, seatpost, and wheels.  That's the bike you see Sam riding above.  But it still didn't sing to me.  The Gunnar rebuild freed up:

• An Ultegra 6700 group, which is on the Gunnar in the picture in the last post;
• A Dura-Ace 7900 FD, which somehow found its way into my collection over the years;
• The 2014 Ksyrium Elite wheelset, including matching 25mm tires;
• A new Ultegra 6800 long-cage RD that I mistakenly purchased when shopping for the Gunnar rebuild, leaving me with a redundancy.

I already had:

• The silver Thomson Elite seatpost in 25.8mm, necessary to fit the seat tube with a glued-in spacer (which the shop must have added when building with a suspension post at point of sale);
• The WTB Rocket saddle;
• Black plastic Planet Bike "Hardcore" full coverage fenders, currently $38 from Amazon;
• The Ritchey stem and bars which may well be the exact set originally spec'd on Sam's Habanero from Harris Cyclery (see picture at right) -- Sam sent them to me years ago after one or another rebuild;
• Ample cable and housing to finish a build without drama;
• Plenty of WB cages to go around;
• An older-school silver Ultegra 6600 crank with 175mm crank-arms originally built on the Gunnar in 2007 (the U-6700 crank I pulled off the Gunnar was 172.5 mm);
• Crank Brothers egg beater pedals, the pedal of choice for all but the racing bikes in my basement;
• Gold anodized cable-crimps.

It takes about a day, if you are relaxing while doing it, to strip, clean, and build a bike.  As I've reported here recently (see "Wham-O"), I had many days since last April when riding was not really an option.  Here is what came of it.

The forward motion part.  DA7900 FD, Ultegra 6600 crankset from the original Gunnar build; Origin8 carbon cages, Crank Brothers pedals.  And a gold cable crimp to set it off a little.

The front end.  Ritchey bars and stem and a black label brake caliper with ample room for fenders.

Ksyrium Elite front wheel and a Paul Components barrel mount for a headlight.

Planet Bike front fender, Ultegra 6700 10-speed brifters.

The fender runs easily under the brake and fork crown.  It does *not* fit with 28mm tires, to my distress, so these are the 25mm Ksyrium tires.

Rear fender fits nicely over the Ksyrium wheel and 25mm tires.  Like the front, this will not clear a 28mm tire.

Rear view of front fender.  Plenty low to protect feet and gearing from spray.

The front end.  That's a tall head-tube, making for a fairly  small drop from saddle to bars.

The pretty Thomson Elite seatpost.  It looks a little thin entering the seat-tube, but one hopes the 25.8mm post will provide dampening for bumpy roads.  To make up for the skinny tires and all.  That is a WTB Rocket saddle in the medium width.

Closer look at the FD, now-classic chainring, elegant Origin8 WB cage, and fender interface at the front end.

The Ultegra 6800 RD with a gold crimp on the cable end.  The 11-speed RD works fine with the 10-speed gearing.  Plenty of room for a large cassette, too.

Crank has been used, obviously.  The Crank Brothers pedal is not new either.

Finished product and a new use model

I have not had a wet weather bike in the house since, well, ever.  Instead, I ride the nice bikes until they start to grind and then I hose them off until they are shiny again.  This should serve very nicely -- and when Sam comes to visit, it should serve well for him.

I can't get over thinking it's a little awkward looking.  That skinny seatpost really sticks up there.  The 25mm tires make for small looking wheels after years of riding 28s or larger.  (Wait until you see the sweet 38mm tires on the Ritchey in the next installment!)  The Ksyrium wheels are a touch bling for a classic-looking bike.  That head tube, plus spacers, gets really, really tall.  I think this bike would look good with much larger tires -- but nothing bigger will fit with the fenders.

I'm also wondering if I should go whole-hog and add front and rear racks for panniers.  Reason for:  I don't have a bike that carries panniers.  Reason against:  I don't use panniers.  Though there is a chicken-egg problem that may need resolving.

Lines are a little odd compared to, say, the beautiful Habanero depicted on the left.  Oh well.

All in all, quibbles and minor regrets aside, I call it a successful rebuild!  In my opinion, the 2004 Specialized Sequoia Elite is a now-classic bike, ready for real use!

Tale of Three Bikes

As Digby noted in a comment to the last post, we've been absent for some time.  Not off the bikes, but out of the blogging habit and all that.

Some cool things to report.  Here is one of them.  My "Tale of Three Bikes."

Introduction

With fewer miles since the April wreck and most of those commuting, big rides have given way to lots of fun in the basement workshop.  Three bikes are either rebuilt or being rebuilt and need to be publicized.  Here's the plan:  a four-post series.  Or maybe more than four.  This one says what is coming.  Post two will be about the Specialized Sequoia.  Post three about the Ritchey Breakaway.  And post four, or maybe four through six or so, about the Gunnar Roadie.

Specialized Sequoia

I inherited this aluminum-framed touring rig from Dad in 2005.  Sam already had more bikes than he could justify and at that time I did not.  I've never quite known what to do with it.

The most recent rebuild may have clarified all that for me.  Look for the next post in this Tale of Three Bikes series for a full report!

Ritchey Breakaway

I purchased this as one of a two-bike set for my and P's 10th Anniversary, which we celebrated by riding loops around the east end of Grand Cayman Island, stopping occasionally to snorkel and to drink Mojitos.

The Breakaway has never been a go-to bike in my stable.  I have not got down the packing and unpacking thing -- one issue, which I will discuss in a later post, is that a 60 cm Breakaway is a very different packing chore than is, say, a 56-incher.  What the bike does have going for it is huge tire clearance.  And it is a pretty, thin-tubed, steel-framed, bike.  Look to the third post in this Tale of Three Bikes for a discussion of the rebuild.

Gunnar Roadie

This bike, my present for P's and my third anniversary, has been my go-to cycle for nearly a decade.  It is, in my opinion, simply beautiful.  It rides nicely.  And as a classic steel framed bike, it can be rebuilt easily to keep up with the times.

Here is the Gunnar after an early repaint and rebuild.

And here it is, ready for transit back to the Waterford factory.  Time for a return to its original color scheme of "Sunset Red over Fine Gold" -- and a few other updates as well.  In particular

• The factory will be installing internal brake cable routing along the top tube;
• The factory will be painting my Easton EC90 forks, which I inherited from Sam when the steerer tube did not fit his head-tube, to match;
• The factory will add hand-detailing reflecting the nostalgic value of this bike.

I also have in the house a substantial collection of parts gathered over the past several months.  Suffice it to say the Gunnar Roadie will be the nicest bike I have ever owned when finished.

Summary

Blogging is back at huffmanbicycleclub.  Keep an eye out for further posts in the series!

Wham-o

I have had a good year commuting by bicycle across Indianapolis, to and from the airport, up north to Carmel for PT, and generally finding any excuse to ride a bicycle in all sorts of conditions.  Then the spring came and bike commuting has been fun again.

Until Thursday.

Thursday was a rainy and semi-blustery morning with thunderstorms' having moved through Wednesday night.  I needed to get to the school for a handful of meetings and some work finishing up my final exams.  It was a fun morning riding.

There was construction and equipment and c. was piled in the bike lane.  The picture is from DC, but Indy commits the same sins.  Build the lanes and then use them as a place to stack stuff without impeding the flow of car traffic.

Where should the cyclists ride, exactly?

I merged out into traffic to avoid the hazards.  So far, so good.  Cars are not a problem for a cyclist if you work hard to make yourself visible, to obey the rules of the road, to be highly alert in all directions, and to ride as near as possible to the speed of traffic.

Hazards cleared, I looked to merge back to the bike lane.  I was behind some cars and could not see the tarmac, or at least not well.

Note the edge that is not quite covered by the asphalt ramp.

There was a metal plate in the road, of the sort that road crews leave behind to cover a hole that is not ready to be filled.  Like most of those plates, this one was not well blended to the road surface.  Metal plates are the kind of urban hazard that can be fun with advance warning.  An excuse to try out that high-speed bunny hop.

My metal plate was nearly unmasked, presenting a 1" wall of heavy metal above the road surface.  The wheels intersected with the plate at precious close to 0 degrees, at which angle the bike had no chance of surmounting the edge, especially in wet conditions.  I hit the ground and slid through the intersection on wet pavement.

Thankfully, cars stopped, or at least the ones that would otherwise have killed me.  Most of the plush-seat commuters simply altered course to avoid the downed cyclist.  One jerky even slowed, looked closely, and scooted his car through the closing gap as I stumbled back to the curb dragging my bike. Not everybody was indifferent, though.  S__ saw the wreck, circled the block, and pulled up to the side offering to help.  He called the police, then the ambulance, and offered to babysit the bike.

This is sort of what the X-Ray looks like, except that x-rays are neither in color nor drawn in pencil.

Break in the "femoral neck" just below the hip joint.

Dr. V__ cut a 2" incision and drilled three screws straight through the broken femoral neck to hold the top of the leg-bone together.  If, as we hope and expect, the bone heals neatly from here, I will be riding again in 6 weeks.  If, as is possible but unlikely, the femoral "head" -- the part in the hip socket -- dies due to the break, I will be having my hip replaced.

High notes?  I think I broke the bike's fall, so the beautiful black Neuvation lives to ride again.  Remarkably, the Rapha city clothes -- pants, wool briefs, and wool t-shirt -- all survived the wreck with no observable trauma.

And searching for a platitude with which to close:  "it had to happen eventually"?  "We're all between falls"?

Going One-By

1x Builds

Eleven speed cassettes have convinced some that a single front chainring is a realistic choice.  With cassette ranges going as big as 11-36 (road) and even wider for mountain, a single 46, 48, or 50-tooth ring up front is usable on even varied terrain.

From Sram's website.

The most lovely road 1x that I know is Specialized's super-sweet Allez.

Allez 1x11.  Is that a bike -- or is it a bike?

I keep the Neuvation full-time in Indianapolis where a hill is what an ant makes in loose dirt.  If I'm really mixing it up I may go through four or five gears in the rear, but I never, and I do mean never, drop down a chainring.

So what the hey.

Sram's 52-tooth Force X-Sync Crankset, 172.5mm arms

I selected the Sram chainset.  One thing I like about Sram:  the components look pretty badass.  Campy is pretty and Shimano is functional.  Sram is what John Travolta might have mounted on his car in the musical Grease.

Two ways to achieve a 1x 

Sam gave me the options when I first went down this road.

First is to replace the existing double rings with a single 1x ring, keeping the same crank.  You can find a 1x ring, even a Sram ring, for a reasonable price online.  The downside, of course, is that you lose the benefits of the centered chainring for chainline purposes.

The second option is to replace the entire group.  I was able to piece together the entire Sram Force 1x group for about $700 with parts from different sellers.

There is a non-option:

Ramps.  Beware!

The choice that seems obvious but is not is to keep either your outer or your inner ring and just remove the other. The problem is that chainrings on 2x or 3x cranksets have "ramps," which are tapered teeth designed to make it easier for the chain to move between rings.  Sam tried the "just remove one ring" approach on a single speed several years back and found it prone to derailing.  (There is an old story about a TDF mechanic removing the front derailleur to save weight, and the rider's -- it may have been Tyler Hamilton -- derailing without the derailleur to help guide the chain.)

Cheap but not that cheap

I took a  different, third, tack with the Neuvation.  Instead of a wholly new group, I kept the 10-speed Shimano rear derailler, which works like a charm, and simply replaced the chainset with the Force 1x.  I kept the 172.5mm crank-arms, because I like to really spin it up in the stoplight sprints.  I went with 52 teeth front.  I mean, if you are going in, go all in. 

Sram 1x on the bike.

The Sram Crankset cost $250 from Art's Cyclery.  For $150 you can get the same thing in Rival.  I probably should have done that.

Brifters is brifters.

Those are the original S-105 brifters.  Shimano does not make the ergo-lever for the left like Sram does, so I just removed the shift cable and called it a build.

Producing a clean build

Going 1x means no front derailleur!  That permits you to pull the derailleur cable as well.  In my case I left the housing, trimming it at the end of the handlebar tape.

One day I will remove the tape and pull the cable.

In an ideal world I would have a real chain tool.  That world is not this one.

Of course, you need to break the chain to remove the derailleur.  The old days of front derailleurs that can themselves be taken apart are gone, probably for the better.  When you are going to reconnect the chain using a quick link (which I recommend), you have to remove the "outside" link at both ends.

Bolt-on mount going in the bin.  Probably the parts bin for a while before, ultimately, the trash bin.

With the front derailleur gone, I was happily able to remove the "braze-on" mount, which on the Neuvation is really a bolt-on mount, producing a nice clean BB cluster.  Most modern bikes seem to have clamp-on front derailleurs which would be even better, leaving no bolts remaining.  It would be a tad annoying to make this 1x switch with a true braze-on.  You would be left with the mount.  Not that it matters, but it matters a little.

Nice tight tolerance with the centered chainring.

At the end you use the quick link to reconnect the chain.

Interesting factoid about the Sram X-Sync chainring:  it has an intimate fit with the chain.  I am accustomed to simply laying the chain over the ring and its meshing with the teeth, ramps and all.  With the X-Sync I had to guide the chain onto the teeth.  I almost thought the warning "Sram Chains Only" printed on the ring was accurate.  Of course, it is not.

Then I put the quick-link in place and prepared to step on the pedal to tighten.  (The link needs to be engaged with maybe 30-50 lbs of force, more than I can apply by gripping the chain and pulling.)  I accidentally turned the pedals before the engagement step, running the chain over the ring.  Lo and behold, the X-Sync ring engaged the link on its own (see picture).  I may find on the road that the engagement was not robust, but it sure looks fine to me.

May need a new chain if I go with a larger cassette!

It is a nice, clean-looking build, all put together.  Total time required <1 hour, and that includes making and drinking four cups of coffee.  Total cost $250 -- just the new Sram Force X-Sync chainset.

And here is the bike

Regretfully not riding

After recovering a tad from the Natchez Trace 444 last October, I jumped on the bandwagon and signed up for the Sebring 24 Hour that takes place every President's Day weekend in Sebring, Florida. 

 
Damon has raced this twice with great success.  I had my eye on a respectable but realistic 420 miles -- a 17.5 mile per hour average pace.

Three things have gotten in the way.

• First, I'm running a lot relative to 2015.  That is not inherently a negative, but it is a time and energy suck.  Unless it is the month before an Ironman, a weekend day can pretty much accommodate a long ride or a long run but not both.
• Second, I planned to join Sam to ski in Canada the week of the race.  That would obviously have ended things right there.  Until the Canada trip fell through.  (For me.  Not for Sam.)
• Third, work.  Three weeks out from the race and I'm unable to get a moment on the bike outside of the (short) commute.  I can finesse a lot of things.  I've even finessed the occasional marathon.  I cannot finesse a 24-hour bike race.

One hopes there will be a makeup opportunity in the not distant future!

Snowbiking

Snowy day on the Monon.

I got the fatbike specifically for the purpose of riding in this kind of weather.  Unfortunately, the rear wheel went bad after a very few hundred miles and I failed in my attempt to shame BikesDirect into standing behind their product.  (BikesDirect:  "you get what you pay for.")

Too bad, too, because this would have been a cool ride in the 3" of powder coating the Monon Trail yesterday.

The ill-fated fatbike.

And both tires on the Salsa are flat, with no 28mm tubes left in the house.

What to do?  They are 25mm, to be sure, but the Schwalbe Marathons on the Neuvation are crying to be ridden in the dead of winter.  So ride them I did.

It was a balmy 18 degrees at 9 am heading north along the Monon. 

The y-axis got cut off, but that red line is running between 15 and 20.  Green is the dewpoint, whatever that means when it is too cold to have dew.

The plowing stopped suddenly in Broad Ripple, leaving me alone with my road bike and my thoughts in 3" of powder snow for the five miles to Carmel.  A little more use of the trail made the ride back slightly more challenging, with random packed snow and occasional ruts from a mountain bike or XC ski.

Things went south as I rode south of Broad Ripple.  Loads of rock salt had turned the snow to slush and water, but the noon temperatures were still south of 25 degrees.  (Mission accomplished:  three uses of a word, with different meanings, in the same paragraph.)  Now I was riding with soaked feet in freezing weather.  There were more than a few raised eyebrows as I heated my feet in warm water in the faculty lounge.

Finally, a badass day

Last winter it was easy to craft a post about some badass ride or another, with temps regularly in the single digits and occasionally starting with a hyphen.  This winter so far "badass" has meant riding home after dark or out before light.  So not badass at all.

Until today.  I landed in Indy with temps at 6 Fahrenheit.  The roads were covered with ice where the salt had not yet done its work.  And the bike was locked up in its usual place. After cycling through the Pretenders for long enough to psych myself up, I headed home into a headwind.  Eyes iced shut in a mile before I turned east with the wind at my back.   From there it went well until . . . the low traffic on my back roads meant rutted ice.  Cycling became one leg cranking and one foot skating.

Something like this.

I rolled into the office 90' after leaving the airport for a personal record slow commute.  Rock on.