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EWR Project – Phase Two – Cock…pit…check? Yes, okay.

Posted by on 17/08/2009 No comments

Cockpit check?
Yes, okay
Largactil, five milligrams
Largactil, check
Valium, ten milligrams
Valium, ten, check

Haloperidol, five milligrams
Which one’s that?
Little white ones, w, w, w for white
W for white, okay, check
Phenobarbitone, five milligrams
Check

Disipel, five milligrams
Check
Glass of water
Check
Our father, which art in heaven
Mea culpa, mea culpa, mea maxima culpa

I’m doing my best to keep this project Period Correct and it’s frustrating! I am fully capable and aware of what is required, having done so on many previous occasions….anyway….rant over

The original EWR catalogue shows the OWB with Club Roost Go-Fast bars (complete with superflouous add-on brace).

Original Woods Bike in 1994 EWR Catalogue


I figured this
would be hard work until my regular riding buddy pulled out a couple of
pairs from his gargantuan parts bin. Sure they are not NOS but they
will do the job and I’ll get the GOFAST decal reproduced for the brace.


Go Fast !!!



DX Thumbshifters….no man can live without several pairs of these badboys laying around and i’m no exception. Unfortunately I take it to the extreme and have several sets of NOS ones just laying around the place. They are very cool and work extremely well, who needs to be a sheep and fit M732 XT Thumbies anyway?….
I am still using a set of MT62 DX Thumbies that came new with a bike in 1991, they have shifted God Knows how many times through at least 10,000 miles of cycling and not once did I tell them I loved them, in fact they have never even been stripped, just had copious injections of GT85 over the decades and they are still silky smooth. This EWR already has a bunch of M650 DX stuff on it so lets go the whole hog and hang these little virgins in the Cockpit too…

NOS in the box

Smile for the camera children


EWR Project – From the horses mouth

Posted by on 11/08/2009 No comments

Cussing and critique-ing the EWR ‘Cable-stop-noodle-widget-thing’ and then inviting the EWR boys to look at my Blog was probably not a smart move but as a result I now have the answer from Kenn at EWR himself….and it makes perfect sense

from    Kenn <*****@*****.com>
to    ********<*******@*****l.com>
date    11 August 2009 17:33
subject    Re: Watch this (EWR) space….

Hi ****,
That is really cool!  You know, I had totally forgotten about the
cable stop thing-a-ma-bob for that generation of frames!  Glad you
found one though.  We used that thingy because we didn’t want to run
the cables underneath the bottom bracket.  There were two reasons for
this:
1. We do a lot of winter riding here in PA, and that obviously
means snow and ice.  Bikes of that era that the cabling went under the
BB were prone to having the cables freeze.  Not a lot of fun
2. We were trials riders and bashed the hell out of our BB’s with
rocks and they would have certainly been smashed at some point or
another.

 

Keep at it, I really like the follow along.
Kenn
Kenn Rymdeko
EWR Bikes, LLC
610.659.4430
www.ewrbikes.com

Keep coming back Jay and Kenn….any progress will get revealed here…

EWR Project – Phase One…

Posted by on 11/08/2009 No comments

I wasn’t going to post live updates of this build, but figured it might be good to look at retrospectively

There’s some real history with this particular frame and it comes with a fantastic story but this will be revealed elsewhere once the build is finished.

This project is a rebuild of a 1994 Eastern Woods Research ‘Original Woods Bike’. EWR is a small company based in Pennsylvania USA who produced three bikes back in the day and then vanished. In the last couple of years they have started back up and now produce ‘modern’ versions of the Original Woods Bike in 26″ flavour as well as some exciting 29er’s and SS frames (www.ewrbikes.com).

This particular frame is from the ‘2nd Batch’ of OWB’s and was made by Bill Grove of Grove Innovations, it features water jet cut rear dropouts and some of the best mitred joints and pierced tubes you will see anywhere. The frame is plain old straight gauge 4130 Cromoly, no butting and weight saving here, this is just brute strength. Anyone who knows EWR’s also knows they are no nonsense, hard riding bikes with their roots in trials and BMX so this build needs to be functional and reliable as opposed to ‘aesthetics and tinsel’, after all it’s going to be hammered round the woods here in England, just what it was designed for. Ideally the build is going to be as Period Correct as it can be but there will be the odd substitution (for example, who would fit a pair of $400 dollar NOS red Shimano DX pedals then thrash it round a muddy forest?)

The only theme with this will be small touches of red here and there to match with the red decals. I’m not revealing the full build here as things may change but if you’ve seen any EWR’s then you’ll know roughly what to expect

Syncros Revolution Cranks (175mm) with Crank ‘O’ Matics, Shimano SG rings (26, 36, 46,) Shimano DX front mech, DMR V8 pedals in ‘Code Red’


Shimano DX rear mech, NOS Shimano DX quick release, Shimano LX 7sp hubs laced to Campag Mirox rims.

Magura HS33 Tomac Hydraulic Brakes, NOS Syncros Hardcore seatpost 425mm

Dig those fat tubes…



I’m already thinking about not using the Campy rims and switching to some Mavic 231CD’s laced to Shimano DX hubs, what do you think?

Here endeth the search…..eureka moment!!

Posted by on 04/08/2009 No comments

Sometimes the smallest things are the biggest pain in the ass and this is no exception. For reasons best kept to themselves (and not fully understood by this poster) EWR omitted a downtube cable stop on the Original Woods Bike and opted for this weird little widget instead to get a Bottom Pull front mech working as if it were a Top Pull .

Anyways, I didn’t have one and have been trawling the Net trying to find one for the last two months…..well I struck double lucky in that not only did I find one but it was THE widget that was originally attached to the yellow beast below and came as a Karma Present

This does mean I guess that something yellow, heavy and steel might now be unleashed on the world.

The wheels of progress turn slowly….Accu Trax style

Posted by on 29/07/2009 No comments

Been waiting on these pups coming back from my friendly neighbourhood Frame Builder Dave Yates who was turning them from threaded to threadless steerer for me. I used his Priority Book Ahead system to ensure I had a slot and they wouldn’t sit around his place waiting to get done and it was perfect, in fact they contacted me over a week before my slot was due to tell me they had completed my work

I’m gonna be getting them powder coated in a new colour so I’m on the lookout for someone local who can colour match powder…..and quickly!!

The planets are slowly coming into alignment on this little project finally

Give it to me hard and rigid baby….

Posted by on 20/07/2009 2 comments

In 1997 Pace designed the F6, it was another iteration in a long line that went back to the RC100 in 1988/89. That year they also brought out the RC36 Pro Class suspension fork, probably the best suspension fork ever designed by Pace. Supposedly it matched the frame (in that the frame was suspension corrected for this fork) but I have always thought that is was slightly on the long side (axle to crown – 450mm), making the front end light/twitchy.

So…..boredom and experimentation reared it’s head and I ripped off the RC36’s on my F6 and replaced them with a second generation RC30 (axle to crown – 400mm) and the bike rides so much better. Obviously the ride is harsher, Pace’s are a hard ride anyway, let alone fixing them up with a fully rigid front end

The RC30’s look very nice on the frame too, due to their chrome plating and go nice with my King Ti headset

Yes I know my hoses need trimming….

Old Metal, Cool bikes

Posted by on 15/07/2009 No comments

Here is my RetroBike buddy Bas from Amsterdam’s Blog site, it is all about the Retrobike addiction we suffer from. He is currently building a very nice white Serotta Ti-Max.

http://old-metal.blogspot.com/

Also check the rest of his blog, there are some lovely bikes and cool articles there…particularly an EWR article written by my ‘virtual EWR buddy’ from Florida, James

Honey I wrecked your seat collar

Posted by on 13/07/2009 1 comment

sac-ri-lege
Pronunciation [sak-ruh-lij]

–noun
1. the violation or profanation of anything sacred or held sacred.
2. an instance of this.
3. the stealing of anything consecrated to the service of God.

Hunting down and stealing parts from under the noses of a brace of Fat Chance collectors on eBay is always good fun. Throwing said part in an acid bath as soon as it arrives from the USA could probably be called sacrilege or blasphemy of the highest order

Trouble is I need a black one and NOT a turquoise one, so it got it’s ass dipped then sent along to the anodisers for its new coat. It came back looking cool.

Before:



After:

Sacrilege or just getting a job done?

Dances with Wolves

Posted by on 13/07/2009 No comments

Based on the fact that I’m typing this I still have all my fingers and toes…..The goats went to walk with the wolves and indeed it was cool…

First up was some history, then some serious Do’s and Don’ts about how to behave when we were with the wolves, then we were off across the fields with two wolves. These things are VERY strong and kinda go where they want to go and everybody else follows !!

When we got back we had to go into the enclosure and hide food under heavy logs, bury it, fix it to the fence etc, then they let the wolves back in and amazingly quickly they go forage for it.

I sat and watched Cheza the Alpha Male crunch his way through a whole rabbit in a matter of seconds

Loads of photo ops were available all through the visit, here is just a few….

Thanks to all the handlers and staff at the Anglian Wolf Society for a great visit

Pennsylvania Steel – Eastern Woods Research

Posted by on 10/07/2009 No comments

I have a big bunch of bike projects and I’m slow at building them, something I get ridiculed about at RetroBike .

To make things worse I recently picked up my ‘Dream Bike’ a 1994 Eastern Woods Research – Original Woods Bike.

The EWR has now pushed itself to the front of the queue and is consuming most of my spare time hunting down parts.

This is the bare frame…..watch this space for updates.