Messages

196

The Bike Shop / Re: gsport uniguard & oddy duggan pedals

« on: February 02, 2015, 10:37:17 AM »

Uniguard should be out in March. Price should be very reasonable but I dont know an actual number yet. It IS chromoly and heat treated and shaped to stiffen itself so it shouldn't bend in too easily. Its a very complex curved shape so it stays as close as possible to the peg and dropout and not hang down like a ridiculous scrotum like the Eclat one does...
There was a picture on a bike check Broc Raiford's

http://www.odysseybmx.com/dailyword/2014/02/broc-raiford-bike-check-2/



But this was nearly a year ago now and it has changed a bit since then.


Dugan pedals will be a bit longer yet, probably early summer. Price should be similar to our existing pedals like the twisted and Trailmix.

 

G.

197

The Bike Shop / Re: Steerer Tube Threading/Compression Bolt Size and Fork Failure

« on: January 28, 2015, 08:30:46 AM »

I'm responsible for the 24mm thread.

When I first came to work with Odyssey and we started on forks, I wanted a big enough top bolt to run a front brake cable with the housing and be able to withdraw it without messing with the brake too much. But I also wanted to remove the heat and stress concentration of a welded insert. So that led me to looking at threading the steerer directly and using a big hollow aluminium bolt.
M25 was the nearest off the shelf size, but in a 28.6mm steerer that left a wall thickness of just 1.8mm and WITH the added stress raisers of all the thread tips. So instead I drew up the steerer as a multi-butted tube with a "thick bit" where the bolt goes and to use a 24mm (non standard) thread. This leaves 2.3mm wall thickness whilst keeping the weight reasonable.
I also added a longer "fat" section at another critical area just above the bottom headset seat where there is a lot of stress.

Our competitors obviously looked at these forks and took them to Cyclogic and CWI and said something along the lines of "copy this". But butting the steerer is expensive and difficult, commissioning a 24mm custom tap is more money and more work than just picking up a 25mm off the shelf and so they came up with the brilliant plan of just using a plain bore and shoving the tap in... OK so its massively weaker but it "looks" the same and who REALLY gives a shit right?!? 

So now, our forks are one of the more expensive options, but mysteriously everyone else's lifetime warranties have had to be scaled back and have lots of caveats attached... wonder why that might be...

We aim to make the best, strongest, safest forks we can. We work damn hard at it and go to the added expense of having an actual engineer (me) design them, doing proper testing and not cutting corners. Because snapping forks isnt just "annoying" and might leave you with a warranty claim that doesn't get honored... its fucking horrible.


G.

198

The Bike Shop / Re: What did you do to your bike today? (v2)

« on: January 26, 2015, 02:29:29 PM »

lately during every session i've been hurting my right ankle, my right hand at the thumb/forefinger junction , and my upper back to the point where i can't ride or do much for a couple days after. i'm almost 32, and the healing process is slowed down to a snail's pace. in an effort to make my bike less thrashable, i removed 4 pegs and my rear brake and put on my tallest bars/stem combo. it didn't help me take it easy, i went apeshit on a mellow bank after some 360 fakie sliders turned into 450s which turned into a couple sketchy 540 nosedives to flat. i almost never fuck with brakeless riding, my finger is always on the lever for manuals and hops and damn near everything and it's something i thought i couldn't overcome. so now i think the pegs and eventually the brake will go back on and i'll try to only pull the lever for fufanus and maybe sparing scooter kids lives occasionally, and i'll just lock my bike up in the garage and make my wife keep the bikelock key for a couple weeks while i take it easy and try to get in to see a doctor about my injuries.

in "new parts" news i got some gum revenge industries customer friendly grips and they're the answer to my sweaty hands that have been blowing off my worn-in edwins lately. i also got a 25t fit keyguard for when my ankle can tolerate relearning sprocket chunk barspin fakies on this bank to skinny ledge subbox spot.

Inactivity is the worst thing you can do (for your back particularly). Go see a physio and get some advice on exercise and stretches that will help you keep shredding.


G.

199

The Bike Shop / Re: Ghetto Fab Springfield Brake Mounts.

« on: January 26, 2015, 05:48:47 AM »

That's a creative way to mount them on the drill too, but really someone should give you a lathe.


G.

I've been thinking about trying to find one for awhile now, but I was holding out for a milling machine.  I've just recently learned that you can get milling attachments for lathes, so I might try and save up some cash and find one.

There are a couple different things I can think of that I want to try and would be pretty trivial to make on a lathe.

A lathe is more useful than a milling machine in my opinion, but maybe I am just more geared up to thinking of making things that can be turned because I have had one so much longer than I have had a mill.
Cheap combo machines are pretty worthless, and decent ones cost more than the two machines separate. If you have more money than space then they are good.


G.

200

The Bike Shop / Re: Ghetto Fab Springfield Brake Mounts.

« on: January 24, 2015, 11:34:00 AM »

That's awesome, good job. I really wanted to do something like this and effectively change the brake mount "standard" when first designing the brake but it really wasn't practical given how small the market for brakes is anyway.

That's a creative way to mount them on the drill too, but really someone should give you a lathe.


G.

201

The Bike Shop / Re: my antigram is ghost pedaling

« on: January 16, 2015, 05:59:00 PM »

solution?
i may have dabbed a light bit of lithium grease in the pawls, but way less than ive ever put in my ratchet, ive thrown globs in the ratchet with no ghost pedaling.

Grease on the pawls shouldn't cause ghost pedaling. It might make it skip, but not ghost pedal.
Take it apart and see what's what.


G.

202

The Lounge / Re: some dude built a cargo bike

« on: January 16, 2015, 05:56:59 PM »

ridiculous.

if you could be bothered to read through that, you'll probably appreciate this (cars and fabrication-related)...

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7hCPODjJO7s

This needs a warning. That:-

1. There is hours of that stuff. and
2. It isnt finished yet...

Really enjoyed watching it, but now I need to see it finished...


G.

203

The Lounge / Re: some dude built a cargo bike

« on: January 15, 2015, 05:25:56 PM »

This is mine:-

http://www.instructables.com/id/Long-John-Cargo-Bike/

ridiculous.

if you could be bothered to read through that, you'll probably appreciate this (cars and fabrication-related)...

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7hCPODjJO7s

Holy fuck that's ridiculous... will watch later..


G.

204

The Bike Shop / Re: dh bike that rides like a bmx

« on: January 12, 2015, 10:22:10 AM »

Under $1k? Look for a 5-6 year old used bike.

Rides like a bmx? Nope. If you try to make a mountain bike ride like a 20", you just end up with a really crappy feeling MTB.

This.

However, I think maybe this isnt what you are asking about anyway.

Do you really want a downhill bike? Or just a mountainbike? What are you going to ride on it?

Personally, I started out trying to end up with an MTB that rides more like a BMX but quickly learnt that: A. Thats very hard to achieve, and B. Even if you achieve it it isnt going to be much fun.

What I am now working towards, is an MTB with a very short back end and higher that typical BB, but still with a nice slack head angle. This has it's own downsides. but it does allow you to have a bit more input in how it rides in my experience without being too compromised at speed.

$1000 is definitely a wildly optimistic budget though. You definitely need to look at second hand and you need to find clueless fucks selling cheap


G.

205

The Bike Shop / Re: New odyssey stampy video

« on: January 11, 2015, 05:30:57 PM »

G: any comments on the different frequence ?

You are right the frequency was increased after the first 50k cycles (I think, going from memory here). This was to give everything a chance to settle in before ramping up.


G.

206

The Lounge / Re: Shred! Extreme mountain biking (awesome game/app)

« on: January 11, 2015, 05:25:29 PM »

So the guy pretty much gave up on this then? Shame.


G.

207

The Bike Shop / Re: New odyssey stampy video

« on: January 08, 2015, 04:55:05 PM »

The standard "industry" test setup for forks is: +-650N, with force set perpendicular to the fork, <25HZ, 100.000 cycles. Immagine attaching the front wheel to the wall, then pressing and pulling (only with 65kgs), few times a second, 100K cycles. Any entry level mtb 5us$ fork made of cheap steel should pass this test. Make no sense to test bmx forks this way.

Odsy setup looks good. Stampy jig with build resonable headagle, and force direction like real landings. Resonable 500-600kgs force. Love it.

G, it still weird to see so many competition forks snapped clean at the steertube. In real life I see them cracked mostly at the welds e.g. blades/steertube junction or sometimes dropouts. Not too many snapped steertubes around for the last few years. I hope the new forks are not too light/too thin in this critical point.

One more... G, I think I see different frequencies used [0:50-1:10]. I dont think the video is speed up... I'm guessing only. ?

The industry standard tests biggest problem is that they dont mount the fork in a headset, they clamp the steerer directly. This is absolutely ridiculous and makes the test almost completely worthless. Since we started testing this way several MTB companies have followed suit and now test using a proper headset mounting.

Dropout weld cracks are mostly due to peg use and landings off straight, although this may be a fairly common mode of failure it shouldn't be. We very rarely get forks back on warranty with this issue unless there is obvious evidence of peg use with a crappy hub axle (ie. heavy indenting and deformation of the inside of the dropout) the refinements to the 41 thermal process welding and the greater use of big female axles have fixed this for us.

The base of the steerer is where I always expected to see failure. This is where there is maximum bending moment and the unavoidable stress concentration of the headset seat, but different loading regimes will always have the potential to change the mode of failure. If a fork "sees" more side and torsional loads then weld failure is possibly more likely.

Yes in an ideal world we would test multiple scenarios, but we have to deal with the realities of the cost of testing.


G.

208

The Bike Shop / Re: Full-face helmets

« on: January 06, 2015, 05:29:19 PM »

some other company did that like 5 or 10 years ago, cant for the life of me remember who though

Possibly this Giro SWITCHBLADE.

Hardly the same, that looks like it would take 10 minutes and an allen key to fit the chin bar and back of the head looks left pretty exposed, whereas the Bell:-

The new Bell convertible helmet looks like a neat idea. http://reviews.mtbr.com/spotted-new-bell-super-2r-trailenduro-helmet-with-removable-chin-bar

Looks pretty good to me, and from what I have heard they have done some decent testing on it.


G.

209

Product and Sales Announcements - For the BMX industry ONLY / Re: Hiring full time BMX Mechanic Canada

« on: January 03, 2015, 05:10:51 PM »

Can I come?

You probably could. You would probably get a work visa for Canada.


G.

210

The Bike Shop / Re: aluminum nipples

« on: December 24, 2014, 03:07:01 PM »

I am really happy that people like my nipples. They were a huge ballache to develop and have never taken off as much as I would have liked, but I am very pleased with how they work and I am glad other people are too...


G.