I Heart Iglehearts
Miriam's Igleheart is finished. This is, quite honestly the most I've enjoyed building up a bike ever. It is both utilitarian and astonishingly beautiful. It is a Super-Commuter, a fixed gear with front and rear disc brakes. Thanks to Chris Rowe for the slick paint.
The bike is built around Surly's Fixxer, it converts a regular freehub to a threaded fixed hub and does it in an aesthetically pleasing way. I respaced a Shimano XT hub to 130mm. Mounting it can be tricky if you are building up a new wheel, I recommend mounting an old disc rotor to the hub, clamping that in the vice and tightening it that way. Otherwise it will be tough to apply enough torque to the thing.
The Honjo Koken fenders are a pain in the frickin' arse to mount, but so worth it you can't actually calculate how worth it it is.We wanted to build a bike which was a fixed gear (not to be confused with a "Sweet Fixie") with dual disc brakes. Not normal I suppose. The rear dropouts are Paragon sliders, they allow the relationship between the Disc Caliper and the rotor to remain constant while tensioning the chain. The caliper mount and the dropout are on the same piece of stainless steel which slides in a slot. There are two rear facing tensioning bolts with locknuts thrown in for good measure. I used this system on my Independent Single Speed, I had problem zero with it. The advantage over an EBB other than weight is that when you tension your chain you don't effect your fit on the bike. It is more finicky getting the tension correct but once you got it, it's going to hold adjustment.
The Component Breakdown:
- Frame and Fork: Custom Christopher Igleheart Steel
- Fenders: Honjo Koken 45mm
- Crank: White Industries Eno 170mm
- Rear Hub : XT converted to Fixed Hub With Surly Fixxer
- Front Hub: White Industries MI5 Disc
- Seatpost: Thomson Elite
- Stem: Thomson Elite X2
- Rims: Dt Swiss X470 29"
- Brakes: Avid BB7 Road Disc
- Brake Levers: Cane Creek ScR-5
- Headset: Cane Creek s-8
- Tires: Jack Brown 33.5
- Water Bottle Cages: http: King
- Handlebar: Bontrager Fit VR OS
- Wrap: Fizik Microtex
- Saddle: Selle Italia LDY GelFlow
Christopher calls these Disc Brake hose guides "Alien Ears", I 'm loving the new logo on the fork leg.
Silver was the theme.
Enjoy it while it lasts, this bike won't be looking this clean for very much longer. It is designed to be a beast of burden. Like a pack Unicorn.
Surly 17t cog mated with a White 38t chainring, the chain is a Sram PC991 3/32 9 Speed chain. Don't get me started on 1/8 drivetrains. Seriously, I try to be nice but it's hard sometimes.
Brown and Light Blue, it's the new red and black.
Chris' Cable stop placement allowed for some very clean routing, these things make me happy.
Paragon Sliders so very nicely integrated into the frame.
White Cranks, yes they are square taper, which was plenty good enough for Magnus Backstedt and Tom Boonen pre-Campy-Ultra Torque. The chainring which mounts to a spline on the center of the crank arm with a lockring allows you to have a perfectly round and smooth drivetrain with absolutely uniform chain tension. With no chainring bolts to loosen up on you. White makes some gorgeous stuff.
What else can I say? Except I want one too.
Wowoweewow.
I like my fenders like I like to spend my Saturday nights...hammered.
7 comments:
That combination caliper mount/dropout part is a fantastic idea. I probably just haven't noticed them before, but it solves a lot of problems for singlespeed/fixed use.
Sweet fixie.
A genuine work of art! I'm currious about the rear disk brake. I built up a disk specific Dean Ti 'cross bike a few years ago. I never got the rear brake to work satisfactorily. It was always mushy. If I turned pads in a bit or tightened cable, I'd get annoying brake rub. I tried cable re-routes, even Problem Solvers cable multiplier doohickies to no avail. I hate brake rub, so I just accepted that the rear brake lever pulled to the bar without much stopping power being generated. I don't think Avid got it quite right with the road specific caliper. The STI lever pulls very litte cable relative to a V-brake lever, so the road caliper needs a lot faster actuation ratio. The front is a little better. I put a 8" DH rotor coupled to a road caliper on the front of my tandem. It is the only brake I need on that bike. But dialed for good stopping means I do get some rub. So how do Miriam's brakes feel?
Miriam's brakes feel tight and snappy with very little rub, with a bit of truing of the rear rotor there should be no rub at all.
My method for Avid Mech set up is this:
Mount caliper, bring pads in evenly centering the caliper on the rotor. Get it pretty darn tight then tighten the caliper mounting bolts.Back off inner pad as little as possible just shy of rubbing, the closer it is to the rotor the more awesome the feel, if the outer pad is causing the rotor to bend too much on its way to contacting the inner pad they will feel like poo. Snug the cable, sometimes I move the arm up slightly as I snug the cable, this seems to give it better return. Back out outer pad until you have desired lever feel.
This is the first time I've used the road calipers, with the Cane Creek levers and they work just dandy.
Wow. That is gorgeous.
Lucky girl.
Wow...That really is a stunner of a bike.
Lucky girl.
What a lovely bike! Best of all, you're givin' the Dirty South some love with the Thomson stem, post and Cane Creek levers and headset.
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