I am looking to sell my 2008 Felt FC.
I have a price in mind, will disclose to interested parties upon request.
I did a bunch of work in the garage today after the ride and pulled out my Trek for some photos (was shooting my Felt anyway, see next post).
After a great ride today where I tested the bike out, I planned to move my SRM over to my new Trek Madone today. Since I didn’t see anything concrete on installation (and the bearing set ordered from SRM didn’t have any instructions), I decided to blog a step-by-step.
Step 1. Removed SRAM Red crank and pulled the SRAM GXP bearings (I had to use my bearing puller to pull them out, so much for pushing in/out easily).
Step 2) Got FSA bearings ready
Step 3) Pressed in bearings. I needed to improvise a rig using my Enduro bearing press and a front wheel quick release. It worked well to push the bearings in on both sides in steps (close quick release, open, tighten nut, repeat).
Result: drive side
Result: non-drive
I was surprised that the bearings ended up being so recessed in the frame… but it all came together okay. Metal cover is drive side, wave washer on non-drive side.
Step 4) After verifying all was fine, I took it apart again and setup the magnet. Since the Madone doesn’t have a bottom bracket cable bridge to put the SRM magnet under, I just taped a magnet on the chainstay.
Step 5) Re-installed the crank and bolt on the non-drive side.
Post Script (3/14/10 17:20)…. I didn’t check to see if the crank was free spinning (as it should be with new ceramic bearings)… I rode it today and checked it after… not so much. My teammate Rick has the same crankset/bike combo, he put a wave washer on both sides. I did that and it seems better. I will have to ride it and then check it again to be sure, but it seems good.
By special request, here is the procedure for exporting a file from MapMyRide.com to the courses folder of a Garmin 705. It is pretty straight forward, just need to know what to do.
The following is done using Firefox on a Mac, it is basically the same on a PC.
(1) Find your route… and open it from the list (or make it new)
(2) Find the “ROUTES” menu when in map view.
(3) Open ROUTE menu… Select: “Save to GARMIN/CRS”
(4) Enter target speed (just guess, not that important) and select TCX file format. Hit “SAVE CRS” button even though you are downloading a “TCX” file.
(5) Save the file to you computer (somewhere where you can find it)
(6) Move this file to your Garmin mounted as a drive on your computer. Under GARMIN/COURSES folder.
When you startup your Garmin 705, the course should be available in the Courses menu (under the main menu item “Training”).
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The course will be highlighted purple on your map screen(s) for you to follow. When in a course, a few more screens are added to the rotation. The speed selected will the constant speed “rabbit” that will go 18 mph all the time (or whatever speed you select): that is up/down hills and through traffic lights. It is sometimes interesting to chase him and try to run him down on a long ride (the Garmin will show how far ahead/behind you are). I also think that history files can be used as courses, but I haven’t tried that. I normally use this feature for new routes and when I am riding out of town.
I have had a pair of these Pearl Izumi winter gloves for some time, but they have always had an issue where the insides were getting bunched up every time they were washed. Sometimes I would spend 10-15 minutes trying to straighten out each glove inside. Lately (this winter) it had gotten much worse where some of the fingers were very messed up to the point that gloves were unwearable (due to comfort and limited function for shifting, braking etc).
So I decided to do some surgery on the gloves to try to understand what was up. It turns out that gloves consist of an outer cover, a latex like vapor barrier, and in a fleecy inner glove. The issue was the vapor barrier was getting all messed up not allowing the fingers to go into the correct spots all the way. So my new process is to disassemble the gloves after washing… And then built them back up from the liner outward (over my hand). It is a bit of a hassle, but much less than the process of trying to straighten out the fingers.
If you try this, it is imperative that you hold the finger tips when pulling your hand out if you plan to wear them again. This is especially important if you are on a ride and stop. If you mess these modified gloves up out in the field you will have to repeat the entire process…. Also watch when you put your hand in, because the in parts are no longer attached to the cuff (need to hold the liner with the other hand while putting your hand in).
The bunching problem is a huge deal breaker for a very nice and warm winter glove. I hope they got this straight in the last year or two, because this design needs some help.
I rode the early morning Peddler ride today. I normally use my old headlight with a rebuilt battery pack. It had been a month or more since I had done the ride (and used my headlight).
When I tried to switch it on, it didn’t light up. It normally is pretty reliable. This was all before the ride, so I stopped to check the connection… then I noticed heat building up on my back. I pulled out the battery pack from my jersey pocket… it was smoking. Obviously it shorted out and was overheating. I carried the battery back to the car and set it on the curb (carrying it like a dead rat by the tail / cord). I pulled out the cord and one of the 5 cells out and left it a safe distance from my car and did the ride.
When I got back (~1 hour later), it had cooled off (probably discharged completely). I am not sure what the exact mode of failure was, but somehow the light shorted. I started only when I tried to turn on the light, so it is likely that it is a bad switch in the light assembly (and not my rebuilt battery pack). I plan to troubleshoot it further, but I suspect the light will be thrown out.
I haven’t touched my X-Fire since the Outdoors Inc race in mid-October… in fact it is still rocking the Michelin Jets from that race and has been sitting up in the trainer room (real estate agent had called it a bonus room…) since then. A few things had got in the way, namely mountain biking, road riding, and a little thing about getting married.
In most cyclocross areas of the country, I would imagine that ‘cross season is wrapping up or over by now, but in Tennessee, there are races until late February in Knoxville. During January, there is a pair of weekends in Columbia (south of Nashville), a Chattanooga weekend, a Cross the Way weekend (Nashville), and the state championship weekend in Johnson City.
What I can do, remains to be seen. My January promises to be a tough one at work, so I probably will have to race when I can. All of the weekends are compelling in their own ways (Columbia and Cross the Way are well run and day tripable from Memphis); I lived in Chattanooga for 5 years before Memphis; and JC is the state championship race (although you couldn’t get any further away within Tennessee.) And then there is Southern X. I raced it last year, but I am about 90% sure that I will not be able to make the date since it would mean taking off Friday and heading to North Georgia. Andrea does plan to race it and looks to improve on her heartbreaking 2nd place.
The road season for 2010 is still a bit fuzzy, but I am looking forward to joining a solid group of Cat 3’s on the Marx & Bensdorf cycling team. We should do well and take our game up the Cat 1/2 by the end of the season.
Andrea and I ordered a pair of Trek Madones with SRAM Red. With one of our own the regional rep for Trek, it was pretty obvious who would be our bike sponsor. Maybe if we step up our game, they will give us the frames…. We are looking to sell a couple of frames/ complete bikes.
I will probably make a more detailed post about the Felt in January, but if you are interested in any of these, let me know (website@roadcx.net). Make a reasonable offer.
I had some issues with SRM (installation as it turned out) and therefore had it off my road bike with plans to send it off….
I had just gotten this crankset back as a warranty replacement with fresh batteries back in August. I opened it up to take a look… 3.65V on the battery (3.5V rating), no problems there. I was looking for a loose wire on the reed switch as another possible problem, nothing there. Once I put it back together, it seemed to be reacting just fine when hitting it with a magnet… so, I decided that it wasn’t the SRM itself (and therefore didn’t need to sent it off to Colorado..).
What I did do, was move my 46T ring off my SRAM Red crank on my X-Fire and install the SRM on my cross bike. I should be riding this bike almost exclusively for the next 5 weeks, so why not?
I had to reverse the 46t chain ring because it needed to have recessed spots for the chain ring bolts on the inside (130 BCD for large ring, 110 BCD for small ring, both are attached from the inside). It is not perfect, but it does shift and may have to do until I can get the chainring modified for this installation.
It even matches…. It worked flawlessly on my first ride earlier tonight. Cyclocrunk #2 is tomorrow night… I am interested to see how that file looks.
Unfortunately, my speen* front derailleur adapter didn’t fare so well on it first ride… the little tab on the front derailleur that the adapter relies on broke off clean, meaning that I had to recable/revert to bottom pull via the pulley.
The part/screw didn’t break off, just the small tab on the Force front derailleur that the Umlecker pulls on to operate the derailleur arm.
Got this today….
Basically it is a stupidly expensive (15 euro each for ~7g of metal) adapters to turn a bottom-pull front derailleur to a top-pull (eliminating the pulley). They are made and sold by a German company called speen*.
Before umlenker!
After
After II
Although it does save a few grams by eliminating the pulley… it solves two problems that I had. Grass and/or mud packing around the pulley and the extra force required to throw the front shifter due to the friction of the cable wrapped around the pulley.
I also bought the vereinfacher single speed spacer kit. I haven’t played with it, but it doesn’t include any sprokets….so it is a bit pricey for what it is… Maybe it will work better than the aluminum spacer I already have… well probably not.
Andrea got one for her upcoming 2×9 MTB build (using Red front derailleur). They threw in a cool bottle opener / spoke wrench / valve core removal tool. I wasn’t so lucky….
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