The Bikes

The Bike. It is the central tool in pursuit of our craft. A Velominatus meticulously maintains their bicycles and adorns them with the essential, yet minimal, accoutrement. The Rules specify the principles of good taste in configuration and setup of our machines, but within those principles lies almost infinite room for personal taste.

It seems in some ways like a kind of Stockholm Syndrome, the way we honor our machines. We love them to a point that lies well beyond obsession. Upon these machines upon we endure endless suffering, but also find an unending pleasure. The rhythm, the harmony between rider and machine, the outdoors, the wind in our faces and air in our lungs.

The Bikes is devoted entirely to our machines. Ours, The Keepers, and yours, the Community. It features articles devoted to our bikes, and proves a forum for uploading photos of your own machines for discussion. We will be harsh, but fair; this is a place to enforce and enhance our observation of The Rules.

If you’d like to submit an article about your own beloved bike, please feel free to send it to us and we’ll do our best to work with you to include it.

  • Rule #12 and the Cascade EffectRule #12 and the Cascade Effect
    That is a very reasonable opening salvo for the Rule about bike ownership. Three is good and certainly a minimum, and we are talking road bikes here, if there was any doubt. They naturally become ordered: the #1 is ichi-ban, top dog, go-to bike for every and all rides. #2 was the old #1, ...
  • Guest Article: Black Is Not The New BlackGuest Article: Black Is Not The New Black
     @kogalover is singing my song here. Bikes are beautiful. ’nuff said. VLVV, Gianni With all those posts on riding in winter and being visible, either by putting Eyes of Sauron or other car melting devices on one’s steed, or by even considering a YJA instead of donning plain black kit, it was about time to finally get ...
  • Dialing in the StableDialing in the Stable
    This was going to be an article about Rule #45. It is amazing how much time is wasted and matches burned when professionals stop for that second bike change to get back on their #1. With all the jigs available to team mechanics it would seem they could set up five bikes exactly the same. And ...
  • Matching the drapes to the rugMatching the drapes to the rug
    As a longtime titanium bike owner, I’ve always been jealous of a beautiful painted frame but Ti and carbon frames don’t need paint like a steel frame needs paint. But I want some painted beauty. It’s like buying a white car; I can’t do white, need some color. So between a Ti frame and a ...
  • Festum Prophetae: Waiting for the HourFestum Prophetae: Waiting for the Hour
    Everyone has a plan until they get punched in the mouth. – Mike Tyson The one thing everyone should always plan for is that however well-conceived a program might be, things will never go to plan. The high level plan for my Festum Prophetae Hour Ride was as follows: Have a custom Hour Bike built by Don Walker. Because reasons. Reasons like custom ...

15,871 Replies to “The Bikes”

  2. @roger That is bee-uu-tee-ful.  Ride the piss outta it.

    In addition to a shim, try putting some assembly paste in there, the grit can’t hurt.

  3. It isnt perfect but i dont know how anything 20+ years old can be.  Im going to tear it down and clean lube grease polish top to bottom.  add some new leaders tape saddle and cabling.  That should take up a month or so.

    But oddly enough these campagnolo gamma strada rims and the old tires ride like sew ups.  Maybe it is the steel i have no clue, but what a feeling.

    frank, spare me 20mm of your femur?  Damn that bianchi is tits.  This bott has all campag, except cinelli stem and bars.

  4. I think @frank will disagree, but I don’t think one needs every kind of bike in every material.

    It’s good enough to have something carbon, something titanium or steel.

    Of course, then you might fall in love with a material and need more of that. I see another titanium bike replacing one of my aluminium bikes sometime in the future.

    The steel people almost had it right: Titanium is real.

  7. @thebaron The main breakage is not one of ours, it’s the rules of photography – don’t backlight !

    Apart from the pedals being at the wrong angle I think it is relatively clear. And nice looking non-nonsense bike – I like the simple black and white, and I also like that you use it for everything. If I was buying another race bike I think I would probably go for a high-end aluminium rather than pay five times as much for carbon.

    Purists may object to the Garmin but it’s only a 500, and that looks like a compact chainset, but you won’t get grief from me for that. I ride one too and at the end of the day what matters is whose legs get ripped off, not what gearing was involved. Can’t see your rear skewer angle because of the blinding light.

  8. @thebaron cant quite tell, but it looks like you have Shimano hoods and a campy wheelset??? I got some sick in my mouth.

    Your tyres dont match and for gods sake tuck up those pyjamas (sorry, channeling Doug Neidermeyer) – I meant to say cut the steerer tube.

  9. @ChrisO The rear skewer is in line with the chain stay, i think its supposed to be in between the chain and seat stays. Sorry about the light, its the sun.

  11. @DerHoggz Hope you noticed I revised my opinion on the bar set up once I’d noticed how far from the bars the levers are.

  12. @piwakawaka

    @thebaron at least three

    Skewer position (between seat/chain stays and behind fork), mismatched tyres, valve position for photography purposes (six o’clock), stem not slammed and 10 mm spacer above stem (5 mm), photo taken with chain on small ring, doesn’t look like 4 cm drop from saddle to bars.  Can’t really see but it looks like the cassette and chain are pretty dirty.

    It’s a nice looking bike though and it sounds like you use it plenty.  At the end of the day you only need to follow the rules if you want to be a Velominatus.  Paraphrasing Captian Barbosa. “You must be a Velominatus for the Rules to apply.”

    http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=b6kgS_AwuH0

  15. @snoov

    Yeah, yours are properly set up.  They have a really sharp radius right where the levers should be mounted, and @motor city’s levers are mounted high above that point, so the bars bend back away very sharply.

  16. @Nate Im trying not to think about it, because of my utter embarassement. The rear tire is also a sore spot for me, both will be fixed in due time. As for the slamming of my stem, im waiting on a fitting to make sure that lowered level won’t make me pass out from the inability to breath.

  18. Okay, so forgive me if this has been covered elsewhere, but I’m looking for advice on my carbon frame (Look 595). It’s been creaking for a while, albeit intermittently, so this weekend I decided to remove the seat and clean the spacers etc from the integrated seat post. While looking at the inside of the seatmast I noticed two hairline scratches or cracks, one vertical (about two inches), the other horizontal (about half an inch). To be clear, the seat mast looks perfect from the outside, and these appear to be marks only on the (inside) surface. While the vertical line could conceivably have been the result of sliding the seat post into the tube, I’m a little concerned about the horizontal one, since it’s not possible to swivel the seat post at all. I’m going to take it into the LBS but I just wondered what others thought about this. Should I be concerned?

  19. @DerHoggz

    @snoov

    @motor city

    @motor city

    @snoov

    I like them, the flat tops are very comfortable.

    I have those bars but looking at this photo my shifters are in a poor position. I run Campag Chorus so it may be the shifter shape but they are sitting around 2cm lower on the curve of the bar. They’ve never felt quite ‘right’ and this photo illustrates why.

    Actually, my shifters are sitting way too high on the curve of the bar so I’ve angled them forward to compensate. It was only seeing @snoov’s photo that made realise what was wrong.

    It looks like i’ll be learning how to wrap bars sooner than I thought I would. Any definitive guide worth looking at?

    I think there’s no wrong way to set up your bars and shifters except having the shifters kind of pointing up, which makes your bike look like it has a hard-on. I went for the top of the bars and levers being horizontal. The way you have yours set up is the way I’ve seen pros who use the Ergonovas do it. That gives you a lower hand position when riding on the hoods. I’m going to do that to my set up soon as I’m much more comfortable in a lower position these days.

    The reason I have that photo is because it was my very first attempt at taping the bars myself. You’ll find plenty of videos online to help you but the bit I had most trouble with is the start where you later put the end caps in. My second attempt on my CX rig didn’t go as well as the job above although it was with much thicker cork tape and I reckon that’s why I struggled with it.

    Keep it tight, keep it even, job done! Oops, thought I was an expert for a moment.

    There is nothing right about how those bars are set up.

    I’ve sorted my shit out:

  22. @sthilzy That’s a lovely, fascinating and thorough piece of industrial design evolution vis a vis ergonomic positioning that you have referenced.

    If it’s appropriate in this context (it is in my world): chapeau to you.

  30. Can we all agree that no good bike should have FSA stuff on it?  The crank/BB that came with my bike are conspiring to drive me mad.  The seatpost is okay I guess, but by association I hate it.

  32. @DerHoggz

    Can we all agree that no good bike should have FSA stuff on it? The crank/BB that came with my bike are conspiring to drive me mad. The seatpost is okay I guess, but by association I hate it.

    I have FSA SLK Light hollow carbon crank. BB30. 53/39 and 172.5.  Turns beautifully. No problems. Looks great. I prefer it to the Ultegra compact that I sometimes swap to for very hilly rides. Even with hills I prefer the FSA.

  34. has anoyone had issues with corrosion between carbon and aluminum? what do you use to protect againt that?

  35. @RedRanger It’s possible as there is a galvanic differential.  Carbon assembly paste might help, depending on the application.

  36. @RedRanger Carbon is pretty much inert, so it could be that the aluminum is oxidizing into Aluminum Oxide (a ceramic, which will look like a white powder) and then riding vibrations or something is knocking it loose and it is collecting between the surface of the carbon and aluminum.  Once the oxide forms on the aluminum, it stops any further corrosion and it stays just at the very surface and doesn’t degrade the aluminum in any way.  Similarly, the top coat of the carbon could be scratching off minutely?

    How to stop it?  Well, it forms nearly immediately with any raw aluminum, so there isn’t really a way to stop it.  You could, as Nate suggests putting a paste or anti-seize of some sort on it, but you are really just accomplishing something aesthetic and superficial.

  38. im not actually having issues. i was just reviewing soke composite stuff for school and it came to mind.

  39. While not a race rig, this is a project I just finished for a Developmentally Delayed couple. They donated it to the local Blind School. Story here: http://www.columbian.com/news/2013/may/07/couple-tandem-bike-stolen-donate-bicycle-vancouver/

    [dmalbum: path=”/velominati.com/wp-content/uploads/readers/scaler911/2013.05.07.17.55.18/1/”/]

  42. @Nate True – I’m only thinking this could occur at 2 places:

    1) seatpost/frame connection, in which sweat will probably not be making contact as it should be umbrella’ed by the saddle

    2)  stem/fork/bars, but if any of these pieces are Al, they are usually anodized or coated, and the frame, if aluminum, is usually protected by the headset and headset cap

    Either way, RedRanger should not worry about this on bike, in my opinion.  Especially if routinely wiped down and kept even half-ass clean.  But I’m sure he wouldn’t do that since it would be a clear violation of Rule #65.

  44. @scaler911 Very cool.

    @Tartan1749 Right, it should not occur on the machine of a Velominatus, who of course properly cares for his gear.  But I’ve seen sweat induced corrosion among the bikes of the unwashed masses.

  47. @scaler911 wow you did a great job with it. Its great to help people out and get those who need a little bit of help onto the road.

  49. @scaler911

    Man, you and David should have given that thing an epic shake down on our ride last Saturday before giving it back..

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