A festival of kludges
I wanted to ride a 200 today, but, sadly, I came down with a cold this week and didn’t have the energy to do that. But what I did instead was to patch together the midlifecrisismobile to get it to the point where I could ride it again.
And then I took it out for a short 35 mile loop to see if anything would break and how it would feel compared to the project bike. The mlcm is pretty different from the project bike, and it was made more different by adding a low trail fork to the mix, so I can’t easily compare them, but I did notice that
- It’s a lot stiffer than the project bike. I suspect a large part of that is because the Archetypes are more rigid than the Open Sports that used to be on the wheels, but I don’t know.
- I can’t really detect any difference between the low-trail fork and the old high-trail fork except that I can actually ride the mlcm no-handed now.
- I need to raise the seat a little bit, push it back a little bit, and maybe get a longer 17° stem.
- The silver fenders have to go. It’s time for black polycarb all of the days and all of the nights.
- I need to braze canti posts on the seatstays and put a mini-V on the rear wheel.
The current mlcm build is
- Soma Speedster frame
- Soma cyclocross fork, reraked to ~70mm offset
- Chris King headset
- Swobo Novak stem (100mm, ±10°)
- Aerus AL seatpost (from the Shiromoto)
- Nitto B135 handlebars
- Berthoud saddle (no, I don’t know the name; it’s the 157mm wide one)
- UN26 bottom bracket
- FSA Vero crankset, with 50/34 rings
- Shimano Sora pusher and dangler, which have lasted three years and 20,000 miles.
- Shimano Tiagra 9-speed brifters
- some miscellaneous 11-28 cassette
- IQ Cyo headlight
- Spanninga Pixeo taillight (which appears to be failing now)
- Angry Bee+PV8 hubs laced to 32h H+Son Archetype rims, with Resist Nomad 28mm tires
- Tektro mini-V + travel agent on the front wheel, Tektro R530 rear