Met up with the Bike Peddler group ride tonight since they were riding close to our house. We rode up the Water Tank Road, up Betty, up Fretty (my name for the new trail between Frank and Betty), up Frank to the Altar, then up Lament. Here we split - Bill and Nate went on to Dry Canyon while the rest of us went down Crank and Ireland then back down the Water Tank Road.
It was a good ride. I haven't been up in the foothills for over almost two months and since then it's turned from green to gold. The trails were in fairly good shape, but the recent rains had caused water to run down the trails in places washing away dirt and leaving loose rocks. But it wasn't bad and was less dusty.
The sun was setting as we rode down Ireland lighting everything in golden orange. I snapped this photo quick and was surprised how well it turned out. Nice pose, Josh!
It was good to ride with some folks I hadn't seen in a while and meet some new friends.
Bike Maintenance: Shift Cable
I did some work on the bikes before the Moab trip. I tried to get my old Prophet going for Moab, but stupidly tried to clean a shift cable only to get it stuck. The Prophet has a ghost shifting problem that shows up after only 3-4 rides of installing new shift cables. Talking to Mike at the UMB shop we hit upon a simple idea which I hope will fix it.
The bike has lugs on the downtube for the cables and normally there is a break in the cable housing here and bare cable between the lugs. But the front wheel flips dirt and mud up onto the cable which runs down into the housing, gunking it up.
So we installed solid, unbroken cable housing from the shifter all the way down to the rear derailleur. While at the shop I noticed that Bruce ran solid cable housing on his Prophet also so I'll bet he had the same problem and arrived at the same solution. I'll get the Prophet out for some test rides to see if this change fixes the ghost shifting.
I'm not certain why frame designers / bike manufacturers put these break in the cable housing. Sheldon Brown states that it's to save weight. I think that's a bad idea for a mountain bike - I'd rather gain a few grams in shift cable housing to get smoother and longer-lasting shifting.
The End
2 years ago
2 comments:
Luckily, you told me you were taking pictures so I had time to suck it in and pose. I'd make that pic of me and Paul into my Wallpaper, but I'm afraid my wife might get jealous.
Fun ride, thanks for coming.
I had the same problem with my rush. It would really get bad when I would ride with a bottle of energy drink. The sugar and salt would drip around the tube get on the cable and gum it up. Ryan at Revolution told me what the problem was and put in a new cable and I have not had problems in 2 years. Now they are just worn out.
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