Tag Archives: EWR - Page 3

Sunday Ride – Big balls and big logs….

Posted by on 18/10/2009 No comments

Wasted some time tweaking my rear mech so lost some valuable daylight, cutting down the ride time but I had a nice little 17 mile ride along the curiously named Clay Dick Track and across to Fermyn Woods which is a ‘working forest’ run by the Forestry Comission.

This was a MASSIVE load of dirt nearly as tall as my EWR that has been dug out by Foxes, Badgers or Rabbits…..I’ve no idea which


Badass MoFo Bull giving me the eye (check the size of his balls )

Woods Bike in the woods


Forest trail – Fermyn Woods

Original Woods Bike on the woodpile

EWR 1 – GoatSurfer 0

Posted by on 15/10/2009 1 comment

These new platform pedal things are still something of a novelty to me, I’m still stuck in 1990 using PD-M735 (XT flatties) and toe clips

I’ve heard the phrase ‘getting tattooed by your pedals’ and scoffed at it……..well the V8’s on my EWR did more than tattoo me last week, the damn things gnashed my shins up real good . I know there’s not much skin on your shins but those deep grooves in the pic below go almost down to the bone, thankfully with no pain though.

The cause: Riding slowly uphill on a forest trail, in the wet, in the wrong gear and trying to manual off a tree root……in the pitch black

EWR Project – Phase Six…Dial Time

Posted by on 09/10/2009 No comments

Another week, another configuration and I’m back in that pine forest again for some more shakedown time, it’s a shame the place is a 100 mile round trip from my house else I’d be blasting round there all weekend….sadly I only get to go once a week and after work as it’s near my office

Last week was the first ever ride on my EWR and it highlighted some ‘handling weirdness’ that needed ironing out….and fast, so last weekend I pulled the front end apart, switched from a 0° rise 135mm stem to a 10° rise stem, lost the 1″ rise Club Roost bars in favour of some Race Face Air Alloy in 1.5″ rise flavour, moved one poker chip above the stem (leaving 20mm of spacing below), dropped the saddle height by 20mm, nudged the rails back and bled the back brake so it’s now ultra vicious

As much as hunting down elusive bike parts is a whole lotta fun, there’s nothing more satisfying than dialling a bike in so the ride is El Perfecto. Plenty of bikes look good in pictures but ride like a wheelbarrow full of runny shit…

So, it got blasted round the woods in the pitch black and wet and gnarly tree roots hidden by freshly fallen leaves focussed the brain   

That aside, my OWB rides 100% better than it did last week but I think these bars are a bit too Cowhorn for my liking. Since 1988 I’ve ridden flat bars and bar ends so this whole riser bar thing is a little freaky to me full stop and these Race Face bars are about a mile wide ……

I suspect that if they stay on the bike they will be saying hello to my little friend….the Sandvik Hacksaw for some ‘amputational correctness’

Cowhorns in the pines

Good job the trail was wide here…

Cowhorns in the pines Part II

EWR Project – Phase Five…Testing in Eastern Woods

Posted by on 03/10/2009 No comments

So the time has come to test ride my baby…….where better to test a bike like this than some woods in the East of England 

I rushed out real quick before we got riding to snap some pix cos the light was failing fast (and so it turned out were my camera batteries), so excuses again for the lame picture quality but here is my EWR, where it belongs, back out in the woods again.

It’s still in testing mode so the stem spacers and stem are not permanent fixtures and the jury is still out on the handlebars….the bars are certainly ‘down in the weeds’ on this bike. Those blokes at EWR really know how to make a bike though, it rides beautifully and just goes where you point it. At slow speeds it is really ‘Trialsy’ and very responsive and at speed it just rolls and rolls and is just screaming at you to manual it off some tree roots and humps….this bike makes you grow horns 

This bike is going to get well used and to endure the British winter conditions I
have fitted Gore RideOn GoreTex durallier cables, these are PTFE coated
cables that run in a continuous, sealed sleeve which runs inside the
outer cable and is sealed with rubber ‘boots’ at the mech ends. They
are expensive but if you want to keep the mud and shit out and have
silky smooth shifting then these are the babies to fit.

Overall I am REALLY pleased with how it rides although I need to nail that bar/stem configuration and my back brake is non-existant, despite me bleeding it twice . The bottle cage is on there solely for my Lumicycle Halogen lights, this time of year we ride in total darkness. My buddies have ‘outgunned’ me with lights recently so I’m feeling a little inadequate…..one has the HID (Halide) Lumicycle lights and the other has Hope Visions AND some helmet mounted Ay Ups .

I guess I could even things up and buy a Lumicycle LED system


Back in the Woods again….where EWR’s belong…


Up close and personal….my Woods in the woods


Then it got dark….we had nearly two hours of flat out night riding

EWR Project – Phase Four

Posted by on 21/09/2009 No comments

Sorry for the lack of recent updates, have been busy and got a little sidetracked on riding bikes instead of building them

I’m still on the hunt for some NOS Mavic 231’s to lace to the NOS DX hubs I have in transit but in the meantime I’ve switched back to the Campy rims I was playing around with before. They were drilled for Presta but a little encouragement with an 8.5mm drill and now they fit my stash of Schrader tubes.

The idea with this stage of the build is primarily to find out where the bottom bracket height is as I want to re-create the exact ride experience the bike was designed for. As a result of this I have grabbed the first pair of tires that came to hand that are going to be similar in height to the end product. I don’t think it’s quite where it needs to be as it currently measures 12.5″ to center of BB axle and I think the measurement should be to the base of the shell (I’m just checking this out with Kenn and Jay from EWR). I figured I would be about 20-25mm out with these forks anyway so it’s no real surprise.

This is the first time I’ve been able to throw my leg over this bike since I bought it and its great to have gotten this far. I’m part way through setting up the brakes and next on the list after that is fitting the gear cables and chain and taking her out for a test ride

It’s bike shaped Jim, but not as we know it

The sun sets over my yard….my OWB basks for the first time 🙂

EWR Project – Phase Three and a half :-)

Posted by on 09/09/2009 2 comments

Not much to report today, ran into several problems that I need to resolve before I go any further

The tyres I had down for this are too big (certainly for the back anyway).
I bought some Mavic/DX wheels from RetroBike and when I fitted them they were very badly out of true .
So I tried a spare set of Campy/LX rims I had stashed in my shed but these were Presta drilled and all my tubes are Schrader .
Also my rear hydraulic hose is about three inches too short so I’ll have to make up some fresh hoseline and bleed the rear brakes.

All this is a drag because I was planning to take it for a test ride this Thursday in my local forest……..you don’t mind while I scream a bit do you?

I’m off to find some Zen like calm (and some more bike parts…..)

My big steel pig is putting on weight…

But doesn’t she look cool…?

NOS DX Thumbies and Magura ‘Tomac’

Overcrowded looking Answer Accu Trax

EWR Project – Phase Three

Posted by on 08/09/2009 1 comment

Finally after a few quiet weeks some progress with the EWR Project

The temporary Accu-Trax are now fitted and I want to see where the Bottom Bracket height ends up once it gets some wheels on, then take it for some test rides and see how it handles. The steerer has intentionally been left long for now so I can try out a few different stems and bar height combinations, then I will cut it again when I have picked a stem/bar height. Apologies for the poor pictures, I was losing light rapidly, wanted to avoid using the flash and the camera produces poor pix when you turn it off

Steerer/spacer mock up prior to trimming the steerer

Saw guide time!!

‘Test’ stem configuration (lots more to be cut, don’t worry!!)

Handlebars…..finally !!

 

EWR Project – Answer Accu Trax Re-wired…

Posted by on 07/09/2009 No comments

If you’ve been following this you will recall I wanted to use an Answer Accu-Trax fork on this build. I wanted a rigid EWR and I believe this fork suits the frame well as it has nice chunky legs and is made of the same 4130 Cromoly as the frame, another thing I dig about Accu Trax is having the offset in the dropout as it gives a nicer ‘straight’ look to the forks, as opposed to the alternative which was a Kona Project 2 which have the offset at the crown.

I picked these up from the USA via eBay and got them for a great price as they are 1″. Also they were threaded so I had a bunch of work to do getting these converted to threadless (see HERE FOR DETAILS) . The whole thing is a temporary fix cos the EWR is 1 1/8″ and is suspension corrected so these 390mm forks might drop the front end too much.

Long term I will get the geometry/BB height 100% with a cunning plan….

I got a fellow RetroBike member to strip and repaint them yellow so they matched the frame better, I didn’t leave the frame with him so all he had as a reference was a tiny chip of paint. The result, plus some repro decals is ok for me and when I go for the permanent solution I will leave him the frame so the next set of forks can be matched 100%.

Some progress shots of the work:

Back from Dave Yates Cycles with ahead steerer conversion

Sandblasted ready for repaint

First coat of yellow over white base coat

Finished article with repro decals

EWR Project – Phase One…Remixed with Bonus Tracks

Posted by on 21/08/2009 3 comments

A Groundog Day update, didn’t I just do all this shit a week ago?

EWR Project – Yard Trauma Compact vs. Standard paranoia story (see below) now put to bed
A quick switch to a 122mm BB cured all the woes. Everything from Phase One has been stripped, replaced and rebuilt, nice clearance now on the chain rings…..my Q Factor looks ok so I won’t end up walking like John Wayne and pedalling like a duck on valium…… The Magura spares I was short on last week arrived in the mail so the rear is complete and the front set are prepped and ready. A sweet Chris King ‘Classic’ headset has just been freshly pressed in and the elusive cable-stop-widget-thing has been attached to the Front Mech so I don’t lose it…..

No chainstay on the breakfast menu today


Fit-Kit graduation….My Q-Factor is ok, is yours? (Macro shot disaster…)



Mmmmmmm Chris King


Jay DeJesus killed my downtube…(I’ll forgive him)


Magura’s with new Cool Stop pads

More Magura

Even more Magura (fronts ready for forks)

EWR Project – Yard Trauma

Posted by on 19/08/2009 No comments

Ahhh the joys of retro builds, one minute your are Soaring Angelic and the next you are Fathoming Hell when you hit a glitch, still, these seemingly insurmountable obstacles are there to be overcome…

This particular bogey is perhaps to be expected, my frame is 1994 and therefore on the cusp of the transition to Compact Drive (or MicroDrive if you worked for Sun Tour ) from the long established Standard Drive 5-bolt 110 mm/74 mm BCD.

Me being a dumbass goat didn’t factor this in and blindly specced some nice 110 BCD Syncros Revolution cranks (see pix below), lovingly spent an hour putting together the chainset from a bag of bits, offered them up to the sufficiently long enough BB (118mm where Syncros Revolution’s should only need 117mm), tightened up the Crank O’s and….BUMMER, the rings wanted to eat the chainstay . Overlooking the obvious (well I am a goat ) I showed this to my buddy and we came to the conclusion that the chainstay ‘indent’ (what the hell is the official name for that?) is positioned for Compact Drive 5-bolt 94 mm/58 mm BCD

This was confirmed by offering up a 22/32/42 chainset which fitted nice and snug in the indent with sufficient clearance. So, the search is now on for a very rare beast indeed, Syncros Revolution Cranks in Compact Drive. I’ve only seen two sets for sale in as many years so this could prove a difficult task…..onwards with the search!!

On a plus note I’ve managed to score a wheelset more suited to this build, sure the Campag Mirox were nice but not really EWR material. The current replacement is a set of Mavic 231CD’s on Shimano DX hubs with 7sp cassette.

More build pix coming soon….