It's Mallet Season

bladderhead

Zen MBB Master
Upgrade your mallet? Why bother? I still use an analog mallet. Do not be brainwashed into wasting masses of dough on an iMallet.
 

ratz

Wielder of the Rubber Mallet
Fedex notification manager says to the good stuff is on the truck for delivery today. I guess the building gets to begin this weekend; guess I better double down and get all my other stuff done around the house/office.
 

ReklinedRider

Zen MBB Master
Hmm i have those Ritchey bars in my garage, mocked up on my repair stand. Just trying to find the time to put them in place of the extant Soma Junebug's.
 

ratz

Wielder of the Rubber Mallet
4 x WCS VentureMax
2 x Evo Max

There's a fair bit more on the way. They are coming in the various widths so I can figure out which ones fit which body sizes. I suspect 2 or maybe 3 models are going to work better. We'll keep the sizes that work for us; the others will head to e-bay after getting offered up here for people that are smaller or bigger than us.

Goal is to get the hands down for aero, minimum width for safe handling; and comfort... The Ritchey were a late find and seem to be the most promising of course, but we'll look at all of them. Never can tell until you put them on the bike. The e-tap makes that a lot easier to do.
 

bladderhead

Zen MBB Master
I agree about the table. You appear to spend as much on your workshop as you do on your bikes. Puts my shed to shame.
 

ratz

Wielder of the Rubber Mallet
I agree about the table. You appear to spend as much on your workshop as you do on your bikes. Puts my shed to shame.
Kitchen table.... two parents; 5 kids; + visiting grandma and grandpa and we all fit... wise investment; center of a lot of family activity. Store wanted it gone; I fell over when they accepted my low ball price.

How much does the table weigh???
Takes four adults if you want to move it more than 5 feet.....
 

ratz

Wielder of the Rubber Mallet
Do you here that? yep that's the sound of a camera clicking; piper cutters; mallet strikes and only a little swearing. Perhaps there will be something to post tonight while everyone is a alseep.
 

Cruzbike Chris

Well-Known Member
An
Do you here that? yep that's the sound of a camera clicking; piper cutters; mallet strikes and only a little swearing. Perhaps there will be something to post tonight while everyone is a alseep.
And I woke up early to see pics, noooooo! Where are the pics @ratz?
 

ratz

Wielder of the Rubber Mallet
An

And I woke up early to see pics, noooooo! Where are the pics @ratz?

It's the battle between the wrench, the camera and the keyboard. Still in the mess but here are some snipets to hold people over; The actual installation of this stuff wind up in the build thread, handle bar thread and the yet to be created performance tweaking thread. So consider this behind the scenes stuff i this thread..

First up the changes I can show you so far to the base product.

The seat now comes predrilled with Head rest Adjustment holes.

DSC06422.jpg

The Headrest is now slightly shorter. It doesn't look like much but it is dramatically lower on the bike.

DSC06426.jpg

The slider clamp now has two cable feed holes, more clearance under the clamp for cables, and a proper two head screw bolt that that replaces the sawed off one that use to flare and jam all the time. Don't underestimate the value of these improvements. IMHO this should be sold as an upgrade part for existing owners. I have to ask Robert about that; It's a worthy upgrade even at $20; I need to get a better photo of it.

DSC06428.jpg

Better disc brake mounts thiner and welds that don't add lots of unneeded material. Despite the waving nature of this weld it's actually quits small and clean.

DSC06429.jpg DSC06430.jpg


The head rest pad now velcro straps to the pipes rather than sliding over the pipes. It's a little thing but it makes it a whole ton easier to work with. Again if you have to old style and still use it; this would be a worth upgrade just to make you life easier working with the headrest for mounting items. I don't know if there is inventory to support this as an upgrade part but we can ask and see.
DSC06437.jpg


The Sizing labels have been repositioned on the boom to provide a more useable range.

The 3 booms here have been cut down. Top one is the max cut down to still have the entire range of the etching useable. Zero becomes the point the boom hits the braze-on water bottle mounts at full insert; and has enough boom to leave 190mm overlap in max position 20. The two shorter boom are the max removal for Pluckblond and I to have 20mm remaining adjustment without compromising the over lap of 180mm.

Total weight savings on the max cutdown for our person bikes (the ones not practical to demo to tall people) is a full quarter lb of weight.

The demo bikes sport 1 cut down boom. That one will support the maximum boom insert where you can't go in any further because it reach the point of trying to insert the curved portion and it would jam. And the other one one with the max of position 20 extension, anymore than that and with a medium chain stay the derailleur hanger would hit the boom and be non functional. Way is the boom too long to start with? well it's not; if you are using the long chain stay or if you need to bring the handle bars way back for a tall person. So it's still a one size all; and cut it to the size that makes sense for you. Not a big deal; DF have done that with seat posts for eons. A piper cuter makes short work of the project; just make sure you think it through and measure twice and cut once.
DSC06440.jpg
 
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ratz

Wielder of the Rubber Mallet
An now for the carbon tailbox. I will have more details on this over the next day or so. But here are my initial thoughts

  1. Super thin walls take max benefit of the carbon fiber.
  2. It could have been bigger but not really smaller; I think bigger would have been a bit heavy; seems to be in the sweet spot to appeal to the most people
  3. Intersting use of Velcro to make the water bottle slings.
    1. User removable
    2. User replaceable
    3. Light weight
    4. Simple and functions
    5. Some people will think it was cheap and sloppy; they will be wrong because 1-4 are very important. Pretty fragile and no-replaceable would be bad
  4. I don't like the screw on cover; for people that go in and out of the trunk a lot it's sub optimal; I get it that it errors on the side of security but it's definately a version 1 idea. Like everything we gotten over the years; it will meet our needs but I expect in 2 years it will be better; not a reason not to buy

Now because of 4 I immediately had to make it better for "me". I had purchased 2 years ago some Sugru magnet kits for the bikes. I never used it because I always found better ways to do what I wanted. But the Sugru magnets are perfect for modifying the tail box for our use model. Understand the stuff I have on hand is past it's expiration date so it was drying out and was a bit sloppying to mold. The stuff is still hardening from puddy to rubber (takes 24 hours) once it's rubber I'll sand it down to make it smooth and pretty; right now it looks like messy silly puddy. If it can't be cleaned up; I can just cut it off with a knife and get some fresh stuff; but the following was a perfect proof of concept.

I used total of ten magnets with five being useful for mount something else on top of the tailbox to boot.


DSC06441 (1).jpg

DSC06442 (1).jpg
DSC06443 (1).jpg
DSC06444 (1).jpg
DSC06445 (1).jpg


So how does it work. Well here you go

 

ratz

Wielder of the Rubber Mallet
Ok that's about what I have time for; the bikes are torn appart and coming back together; but I must keep cranking as it's interfering with both my sleep and training.

IMG_6026.jpg
 

Rick Youngblood

CarbonCraft Master
An now for the carbon tailbox. I will have more details on this over the next day or so. But here are my initial thoughts

  1. Super thin walls take max benefit of the carbon fiber.
  2. It could have been bigger but not really smaller; I think bigger would have been a bit heavy; seems to be in the sweet spot to appeal to the most people
  3. Intersting use of Velcro to make the water bottle slings.
    1. User removable
    2. User replaceable
    3. Light weight
    4. Simple and functions
    5. Some people will think it was cheap and sloppy; they will be wrong because 1-4 are very important. Pretty fragile and no-replaceable would be bad
  4. I don't like the screw on cover; for people that go in and out of the trunk a lot it's sub optimal; I get it that it errors on the side of security but it's definately a version 1 idea. Like everything we gotten over the years; it will meet our needs but I expect in 2 years it will be better; not a reason not to buy

Now because of 4 I immediately had to make it better for "me". I had purchased 2 years ago some Sugru magnet kits for the bikes. I never used it because I always found better ways to do what I wanted. But the Sugru magnets are perfect for modifying the tail box for our use model. Understand the stuff I have on hand is past it's expiration date so it was drying out and was a bit sloppying to mold. The stuff is still hardening from puddy to rubber (takes 24 hours) once it's rubber I'll sand it down to make it smooth and pretty; right now it looks like messy silly puddy. If it can't be cleaned up; I can just cut it off with a knife and get some fresh stuff; but the following was a perfect proof of concept.

I used total of ten magnets with five being useful for mount something else on top of the tailbox to boot.


View attachment 4393

View attachment 4394
View attachment 4395
View attachment 4396
View attachment 4397


So how does it work. Well here you go

Cool that. It's nice to see the cf tailbox come full circle. But the hug surprise is the cost. $285 is just plain ridiculously L O W. I know, because I made one, mine is much more simpler (made) due to obvious reasons. The new CB cf-tailbox has complex curves and corners, which is not easy to do in cf, and beyond me. I would have expected the cost of these to be at least double...at $285, these are a steel. A typical canvas aero seat bag comes in at $130 and up. Good job Cruzbike, thanks Bob for sharing. As a note, I totally get the magnet idea, as I have one thumb screw to deal with on mine.
 

mzweili

Guru
having some experience with rare earth magnets, I hope they have a good corosion protection. Normally they come nickel plated, but the plating has tendency to crack and peel off. I recommend to seal them against humidity with a grease or silicon layer.
 
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