Weekend wrap-up

Nothing much to report here. Work had me on a short leash but I did get some saddle time in, or since I was SS riding mostly, out of the saddle time.

In fact, Friday night I accepted the veritable gauntlet throwdown by Ed the Tall to ride a local hill climb on the SS. It has a bit of a warm-up and then climbs steadily and steeply into a park/woodland area. It hurts on a geary, so the SS seemed foolish there. Perfect challenge, actually, for a quicky after work ride. It actually was not that bad, 35 minutes of so to the top. Fish tacos soon followed.

I have been thinking about what wheels for the SS make the most sense. I have been dabbling with the thought of running a freewheel type hub like a Paul's combined with a White Industries freewheel. It is not really that much cheaper since the freewheel is knocking on $100.00. that kind of eats up the initial cost savings on the hub over, say a Hope SS cassette hub. Still, I do like the wider hub flange spacing on the pure SS hubs. Very nice.

It works out to be around 131 grams heavier for the Paul/Whites combo though. Ugh. Over a 1/4 pound of added weight. More work to change gear ratios, harder to remove freewheel, etc. Well, I think there is room for improvement in the SS hub world. Why stick with a thread-on freewheel? Give me a decent weight hub with a cassette body that accepts a splined cog and allows for maybe 3 cogs width of chainline adjustment. Something like this, but with higher quality (sealing), lighter weight and lots of options for axles...bolt on, QR, thru axle like a 10mm set-up.

Meanwhile, I weighed a few front wheels I have on the three bikes: The Hope/Flow/Race Kings tubeless on the Lev, the DT Swiss 7.1TK/DT Swiss Onyx/Mtn King w/tubes on the Jabber, and the Giant branded setup on the Giant XTC test bike and a Kenda Karma 2.2 with tubes. All of them had the QRs installed in the wheels and 160mm rotors

The results:

4lbs 11 oz for the Jabber's wheel

4lbs 15oz for the Giant's wheel

4lbs even for the Lev's set-up.

Wow. Amazing difference. No wonder the Lev feels so nice when I am climbing. I never thought that it would be such a difference. I figured half that maybe. It explains a bit to me on why the Giant feels a bit lazy when climbing. I really want to upgrade the SS wheels now!

Next up was the brake howl/turkey gobble on the rear brake on the Giant. There is an amazing thread on the MTBR Brake forum about the Avid rear brake noise here. I am waiting for some replacement parts from Avid to see if I can break the Juicy 3 in properly, but meanwhile the silly fishing weight has shut up the turkey for now. How funny. See post #429 for my pics of the 'cure'.

The new Serfas pads on the Shimano brakes on the Lev were the next to get my attention. I have been less than thrilled about the amount of braking force the pads are giving me, but worse than that, the rear brake was squealing nicely. I noticed that the pad looked to be catching the rotor vanes (actually, I think the rear rotor is wearing thin) so I spaced the caliper up with a washer. No noise so far. I really could use a bigger rotor in front with the mediocre performance of the pads. They are quiet for a sintered pad, but the Shimano versions offered a lot more bite.

Now, if I can get the pulsing demon out of my BB7 brakes on the Jabberwocky, I will be much happier, but I have plans for that too.