Specialized S-Works revisited again...

As you can now imagine, with a post like this, half of the bike fun is tinkering with setups. If the setup is not to ones taste a quick change of components can make all the difference.

About a month ago i had the opportunity to meet, complete bicycle nut and nice guy, Noah aka Bushpig when on vacation here in Holland. Noah probably owns the most amazing mountain bike collection you can imagine specializing in the bikes and components made by a guy called Charlie Cunningham and also runs a website dedicated to him. Besides being a fan he also is close friends with Charlie and his wife the legendary Jacquie Phelan.

Charlie Cunningham was part owner of a company called WTB which made some of the best components and bikes possible. Together with IRD i actually rate them as the most innovative company in the history of mountain biking. The bike they made was a steel hard-tail called the Phoenix which Jacquie rode besides her Cunninghams. For some reason Charlie left WTB in a bad way and the Phoenix was un WTB'ed and made a single speed for a new event called the SSWC or Single Speed World Championships in which Jacquie competed. Jacquie never won the race but actually won the price for the oldest bike in the competition, the price... a custom build frame!

The Phoenix was painted pink and all the references to WTB where masked by adding black tape, this probably to make everyone aware some love was lost between them. The other side of the frame has a big sticker saying "single speed outlaw".

Well to end this strange story Noah ended up buying it from Jacquie and put some amazing pics of this legendary bike on the net. To me this bike sums up mountain biking: it's raw, it's simple, it's independent, it's been used hard and the gearing just hurts my knees by looking at it.

Revisiting the S-Works again I was inspired by the pink bike and changed it in to a single speed. The rear derailleur, cassette and sti-unit where removed and a single cog with spacers, a tensioner and a normal brake lever where added. Now of course it lacks all the things that makes the pink bike a legend but the idea was there, really!

Noah i hope you don't mind me posting your picture of this amazing pink bike. It rocks!
(And yeah i know i need to mow the lawn...)

Specialized S-Works revisited

After riding the S-Works as a road bike for the last few months i have decided to refit it again as a mountain bike. The slicks didn't to it justice so it was time to rebuild. So i pulled out the Panaracer Smoke and Dart combo from storage and fitted a smaller chainwheel with 36 teeth. The stem was pulled out a bit and a mountain cassette was fitted. It will go a bit slower than before but at least it is a mountain bike again!

Portable stargazing setup

Besides liking to photograph the nights sky i sometimes just want to watch it directly through my telescope. This because getting the setup ready for photography takes a lot of time and care.

The setup i use is highly portable because of it's low weight and bulk. It consists out of a Vixen Porta mount and a Stellarvue SVR 80ED Raptor telescope with a Stellarvue diagonal and red-dot finder. The used eyepieces are Vixen NLV 20, 15 and 10mm.

The Vixen Porta mount came with my first telescope set i ever bought. The telescope it came with was crap but the mount is very nicely made. It is an altazimuth design meaning that for tracking objects you need to adjust both axis of movement. It's perfect for lighter telescopes heavier ones will cause to much vibrations and flex in the legs.

The Stellarvue SVR 80ED Raptor is a refractor type telescope meaning that it uses lenses in stead of mirrors for gathering light. It is also an apochromat with a doublet type lens. What that means is that it uses a lens that consists out of two glued together lenses. This ensures that the different frequencies of light will all come together in focus. They will refract to the same point ensuring that the color will be true. The lens has a diameter of 80mm and is housed in a carbon tube making it light and very usable.

IRD Switchback

They alway come in pairs...

As i wrote before i'm a bit of a nut when it comes to the component designs of a company called IRD or Interloc Racing Design. Especially the brakes are very well thought out and are very powerful to use. Already owning the Rotary and the Widget brakes the third one, the Switchback, was still missing. So you can understand how happy and amazed i was when not one but two of them popped up on eBay. One was a later version which, like the Widget, was drilled and shiny and the other an early version in black without the holes but including an IRD brakebooster. I straight away bid on both and won the early black version. 

The idea of the Switchback is to apply the brake power via a wire that is wrapped around two small wheels which are fixed to the brake arms. When pulling the brake-cable up, applying the brake, the wire around the two small wheels will make them rotate so that they will push the brake arms towards the rim. The wire will also slip around the small wheels pushing the arms together.    

IRD Widget

Back in 1994 the pages in Mountain Bike Action were filled with a multitude of fancy and colorful cnc machined parts. All of them claiming to be the strongest and/or the lightest! The best adverts to drool about them where CBO or Cambria Bicycle Outfitters and the legendary BikePro.com. Lots of hours where spend assembling the dream bike of the moment.

But then i read the review of the fascinating full suspension bike of IRD. While the suspension was not that good the rear brake was just incredible. It was the IRD Widget brake and to me right than other brake designs where not interesting anymore. And even worse i had to have a set of them as soon as possible.

So I altavista'ed their website (the commercial use of internet was just beginning) and mailed them. A day or so later i got a response from Rod Moses, the founder of IRD, who ofcourse was more than interested to sell me a couple of Widget brakes. But besides that he was also interested in trying to break into the Dutch market and so sort of asked me to interest shops in the products of IRD. A few weeks later after transfering money to him the package arrived. In it where two sets of the amazing IRD Widget brakes, a Rocketboy.inc t-shirt and a stack of catalogues and stickers for me to give to interested shops.

Sad to say my commercial skills where more than lacking and the market was filled with other US made products. So i did not even manage to loose even one catalogue!

The brakes however where magic. Although more than troublesome to adjust neatly the power and quality was just incredible! And flashing forward 17 years they are still stopping me every day on my S-Works bike. Although nowadays discbrakes have better performance they are still without a doubt the strongest cantilevers ever made!