I leave early tomorrow morning for Oregon, where I’ll be spending two weeks learning the in’s and out’s of bicycle frame fitting, design and building. I’m planning on a brazed CX style frame, we’ll see what I end up doing when I’m actually there. After about a dozen different designs in BikeCAD, here are the two finalists which are subtle in their differences. Wish me luck!
I’ve been battling a cold for a few days now, which gives me lots of down time and time to continue my OCD adventure in measuring various parts of myself and trying to turn those numbers into a workable bike frame.
In my previous post I was pretty damn sure of myself. Over the last couple days, after comparing those numbers with bikes I already have I’m a little less sure. The top tube length, specifically, is giving me pause. So while I may be able to stand over the bike, I’m not entirely sure my hands are going to hit the bars once I’m in the saddle.
I ended up back at the tape measure today and fine tuned a couple variances I found. A few mm here, a few cm there and I got some new numbers. These numbers give me a top tube closer to what I think is realistic. Maybe I should stop screwing around with this.
With only a couple more weeks before my trip out to Oregon I’ve been doing a lot of frame design homework. UBI dedicates a few days to this, but they said the more I prep the better off I’ll be. With that I made a small investment in AccuFit and have been pairing up the specs I get out of that with the free version of BikeCAD.
The above is what I’ve managed to come up with as a basic blueprint of my frame. This is based off 8 measurements I did in AccuFit and various other calculations I did from some existing bikes I have. AccuFit spits out some solid numbers around seat tube angles, top tube length and seat tube length. From those 3 it’s fairly easy to figure out the rest in BikeCAD. There was a lot of trial and error, I did around 2 or 3 frames before I figured out where I was making some math mistakes. The above frame is pretty close being correct. When you’re done the stand-over height is a good indicator as to whether you did all of your calculations right. Even a few cm off in key areas will throw the whole thing off. My initial design came out with a stand-over of around 36″ which was clearly wrong and sent me back to AccuFit and the tape measure.
I’ll probably fuss around with this a bit more, but I’m pretty confident the above is close enough that I’ll only need to do some fine tuning once out at UBI with the help of the instructors.
A few random shots from various rides this week, as well as some process shots from the Continental build for Erica.
With my journey to UBI quickly approaching I’ve been spending a lot more time looking at the work of various custom frame builders and reading the frame-builder forum over at Vsalon whenever I have time. Richard Sachs is by far one of the most influential members of that community and is constantly sharing his wealth of knowledge and experience with everyone. While inspiring at times, some of it makes you want to avoid frame building all together, he’s very much a realist about what a lot consider to be a dying art.
I’m a few weeks away from the trip and still am a little unsure what I’m doing. I’ve considered a road bike, another mountain bike, a cx bike, the list goes on. Today I’m pretty set on a CX style bike, something good for long gravel rides or places maybe a full blown mountain bike is overkill, something I could also slap some skinny tires on and do some epic touring on.
I bought AccuFit today to help figure out some measurements and frame geometry stuff. I’d like to go into UBI with a pretty solid idea that just needs fine tuning and a final set of drawings. Plan on using it to fine tune the fit on a couple other bikes as well.
Component wise I’m also pretty unsure, pretty much SRAM vs Campy. I love my Campy setup on the Traitor, but Greg at Reser was also selling me on SRAM today. Thinking Chris King hubs laced to some HED C2′s as a wheel-set. I’d like to keep the weight down on it, even though its going to be a steel frame.
Spent the weekend down in Nashville riding with Nathan. Had a pretty awesome/painful/educational pre-ride on Saturday which was then followed by me bailing on the Sunday race due to some pain associated with a fall I took Saturday.
Logged the pre-ride on my Garmin
pushing myself a bit harder this weekend when it comes to avg speed. usually if i chug along close to 15mph i’m happy, this week trying to push it up to around 20+ and also sustain that in climbs.
some observations -
Finally got a dry day at England-Idlewild and got in a few miles of riding and some much needed time on the Yeti. Did some trailside maintenance and finally fixed the sticky front caliper.
Other notes-
I’m not sure I actually posted any photos of the finished Traitor. It has a few miles now and has had most of the bugs and fit issues sorted out. Overall I’m super happy with it, so happy that I have no idea what to build at UBI now b/c I don’t want to swap this out for something else. For UBI I’m leaning towards some sort of CX/touring type bike, with cantilever brakes and whatever else I can braze onto it.
The frame for the continental has mostly just been sitting here staring at me over the last month or so. I’ve not had a lot of time to work on it and I’ve been rather tentative about how I even want to approach it.
Tonight I finally made some decisions and I think I’ll be putting 700c wheels on it and going with a Sturmey-Archer SX3 Fixie 3 hub for the drivetrain. I need to sit down with Erica and go over other fit details, but she seems to be leaning towards some nice VO Left Bank or Montmarte handlebars. I think VO will end up being the source of a lot of the parts once we’re done.
