Out of Respect
b.O.b now has the new crankset and it's soooooooo smooth. Getting the existing bottom bracket off proved to be a chore. I ended up taking a hammer and chisel to the thing. Not the brightest idea as my index finger got between the hammer and the chain ring and then proceeded to bleed all over everything for about 30 minutes. The good news is when I went over to the cycling guru's house for a tool, he asked me if I wanted an extra stem he had in the tool drawer. Just a $60 Bontrager Race 4130 stem. Are you kidding me? After a couple hours securing everything, finding the right length of chain and rewrapping the tape on the bars, I took it out for a spin. Sweet as honey and 99.9 percent pure honey at that.
I rode b.O.b. into work this morning and it was awesome! The hills weren't so tough, as I changed the chain ring from a 48T to a 42T. It was a very comfortable ride. The new stem actually put me two inches forward which needed to happen to fit properly to the bike.
So out of respect to the bikes, a.k.a. PSB (Pawn Shop Bike) and b.O.b. (Bucket O' Bolts), they will now be called Salsa Verde and Salsa Roja. There are too many good components on the bikes now to call them by crappy names or acronyms. I passed a roughly 45-year-old guy wearing an Oakland Raiders cap near the Whole Foods Market on the way in and he recognized what a great bike was before him. "Sweet Ride" is what he said. Ya Man, 99.9 percent pure honey! Salsa Roja is one bad-ass beater bike.
Labels: b.O.b., beater bike, commute, cycling, PSB
Meet b.O.b., Bucket O' Bolts
After completing
Pawn Shop Bike, I realized I was going to need another bike as a commuter and for the trainer. Building PSB left quite a few parts on the garage floor and I thought they would make a fine beater bike. I put $10 into an old Schwinn le Tour Chicago 4130 Chromoly frame and $16 into the Shimano single speed 16T sprocket. Ah, and $4.50 into some old-school black cloth tape. All the rest came from spare parts or were gifts.
I tried to keep the styling in the "messenger bike" style, even though it gears with a freewheel and not with a fixed gear. I did put one break in the front and after this morning's commute (14.84 miles), I'll be putting a back brake on as well. People with one front brake must only ride on flat roads. I hit my first downhill this morning and quickly went through the used pads. My next hill wore the front part of my old road shoe through the leather. I was screaming all the way down the hill, not able to stop approaching the cross street, praying an 18-wheeler wasn't coming across the intersection. Luckily it wasn't and luckily I was able to make a fast right turn. I then detoured to the nearest bike shop to get some more brake pads.
Labels: beater bike, cycling, Schwinn
