A Look Back At Some Home-Brew Hubs
Once in a while, you run across something that throws you back to your good old mountain biking days. Such was the case when Kris Henry posted a picture of bike hubs he built while being a student at PSU. In the last year of my apprenticeship, I designed my own set of what later generally came to be called V-brakes. Years before Shimano and Avid brought low-profile V-brakes to the everyday mountain biker, Grafton, MRC and a few others made this style of brake. For a very long period of time, I ran my own set of MTB brakes.
While in college for mechanical engineering I no longer had ready access to lathes and mills, but new ideas were always on my mind. Ideas that were often put on mechanical drawings, were ready to be made whenever the opportunity arose to let chips fly. Memory is already a little fuzzy about the exact timeline, but around 1994-1996 I designed and machined a set of hubs for my Merlin mountain bike. I first machined a front hub and about a year later completed the project by making a matching rear hub.
Since everything I make has to have a name, I called them “Hedgehog Hubs”. The design was loosely inspired by Pulstar hubs of the early 90ies. My rear hub shared the same spoke lacing on the drive-side as Pulstar hubs did. Nondrive-side and front hub were radially laced, which Pulstar didn’t do. All spokes were straight-pull, double-butted by DT Swiss. The front hub was CNC machined out of aluminum and used two cartridge bearings and a floating 12 mm titanium axle. The rear hub shell was machined on a CNC lathe, then milled and drilled on a conventional mill. Axle, freewheel, and bearings came from a DT Hügi hub. Both were purple anodized by Aloxyd AG.
Most people would usually keep such one-of-a-kind parts, especially when they were made by them. But in keeping with my life motto to rid my house of everything I don’t use, I sold the wheelset with my “Hedgehog Hubs” in 2016. Why should they waste space in the house and collect dust? I’ve got a few photos of them on Flickr and lots of awesome memories. These hubs have taken me on many rides in Switzerland, through California, Arizona, and the Canyonlands of Utah. At the 1997 Grundig/UCI Mountain Bike World Cup on the Skyline course in Napa, an Italian sports journalist covering the race loved my Merlin and asked to snap a picture. Those “Hedgehog Hubs” also got covered with trail dust at Sea Otter Classic in Monterey. They went to Tahoe, Etna, China Camp, and Mount Tam, and called Annadel home for several years. Good times!
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Great! Someone Still Riding A Real Bike!
In the last couple of months, I have put 543 kilometers onto my Stooge MK5. For the last two years, I wasn’t able to mountain bike as much. Now that I have spent more time on trails again, something strange has been happening with regular frequency. Hikers comment about the fact that I’m riding with my muscle-power only. I have been mountain biking since the mid-eighties, and while I rarely had a negative encounter with a hiker, most of the time I met a hiker, we briefly exchanged a quick "hello" or "good day." That was usually it. Now, I’m regularly applauded for riding without the assistance of a motor. Yesterday, for instance, someone remarked: “Oh great, someone still riding a real bike!”
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Some Silly Strava Stats
As mentioned in my previous post, I recreated my Data Studio dashboard under a new Gmail account because Google’s G Suite legacy free edition, which became Google Workspace in 2020, will require a paid subscription this year. Three simple things needed to be done. First, I had to copy my Google sheet from the old account to my new account. Then, I had to create a new Zapier account, and share my zap from the old account with the new account. This was straightforward. Once logged into Zapier with my new account, I had to link the zap to my Strava account and also had to give the zap permission to modify my Google sheet. Pretty much the same procedure was necessary for the Data Studio report. I logged into the old account and shared the report with my new account. Then, I logged into the new account and had to replace the data sources to point to the Google sheet in my new Gmail account. Sounds complicated but was extremely simple.
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Back On 700C Wheels
In May of this year, I swapped my 700C Nox Composites wheels for 47° Nord hand-built 650B wheels. While I prefer the smaller wheels in combination with wider tires, I put the 700C wheels back on the bike for the fall and winter months. I did so for no practical reason other than that the 650B wheels needed new tires and the fact that I have the 700C wheels hanging in the basement with a few pairs of 700C tires sitting in my bike parts storage cabinet. In particular, I had a set of WTB Nano Race tires, which according to WTB aren’t tubeless compatible. For that reason, I tried to sell them, but I never found any taker. One evening, I got the tires out and tried them tubeless. Despite the manufacturer’s note, they were easy to mount tubeless. Easier, in fact, than some tubeless tires I’ve dealt with. For the next couple of months, I’ll therefore be on those Nanos. I have a pair of 42mm wide Teravail Washburn tires that may be mounted next.
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