Sunday, February 15, 2009

Zenetic Crank Forward Build





Today I spent a few hours assembling a crank forward bike that my friend Nanda, owner of SpinCyclz, gave to me a few years ago. Part of the time I spent at his "shop" since he had a bunch of extra brake and shifter cables. Sue (my wife) was out for a walk at Shollenberger Park http://www.petalumawetlandspark.org/HTML/Shollenberger.html and stopped by the shop to get her ride back home.

I had a Klein Quantum Race that met an unfortunate ending at a Crit race a back in 2002 (dented down tube) and decided to strip off all the components for the Zenetic. The Klein was just being used on an indoor trainer and was just about fully used up.

I built up a set of new wheels using some left over Shimano hubs and some Velocity Deep V rims in black. I tried something new on the lacing pattern; a 3-leading, 3 trailing pattern pulled off of Robert Torre's web site http://www.geocities.com/spokeanwheel/lacingcl.htm#3l3t and this site http://www.baldurdash.org/OtherStuff/3leading3trailing.html (nice basic pictures of the process and final results). I built up the rear wheel using the same pattern and am of the opinion that it was not the best choice. The spoke tension on the drive side is excessive and the spoke tension on the non-drive side is just barely acceptable. This wheel will probably not stay true very long, but it does look cool!


Another cool thing I found while searching around the web for interesting bicycle ideas was this, Diamond Handle Bar wrap - or also known as Harlequin Handle Bar wrap. The pattern that results is very interesting. It takes a good deal of practice to get perfect (which I did not) but the results are worth it. I did not have any cloth handle bar tape so I used what was in the garage, the result is not great but will suffice for just a run about. If you are interested in this style of handle bar wrap check out Jim Varnum's web site http://www.wastedlife.org/bike/harlequin/index.html and Brian's Bicycle Banter here http://briansbicyclebanter.blogspot.com/2007/05/shellac-handlebar-tape.html (This was where I first found out about the Diamond wrap pattern.)

No comments:

Post a Comment