Photodump

So far this summer...

Broke my Pro 2. Broke my Pike. Learned pretty much nothing. Duran's learned to grind. We made a video. Fuck me sideways.

Whoa

We slacked a bit. I've got a picture backlog, so I might as well do one a day, drag it out a bit.

And for the hell of it, a few photos from a looooooong day back in the day. Check the weather.

Riding a bit

Went on the West end drag looking for spots.

Visited the legends....

And some of the less-known, hidden gems.

Essentially started at one ICC spot, and went West for a bit, stopped at Dufferin for a bit to get my sesh on (get it?!!), bombed south to Wallace Emerson (another ICC spot I guess you could say), then southwest to another ICC jam locale, one of my favourite spots in the city. As you may be able to tell, it took me several hours, and I ran out of daylight before I ran out of energy.

Although I was running out of energy, mainly because I chose to run singlespeed. I realized that gears and fakie tricks really don't mesh well, and that riding singlespeed everywhere just sucks. but tearing my bike half apart every Wednesday wasn't too much fun either, so I had to come up with some kind of compromise....how do I make the gears work for me, or at least how do I cut a good hour or so out of my swapping downtime? I figured it out.

Now I have a freecoaster with two gears and 48 engagement points. I haven't had to service it in over a year, and it only weighs 400 or so grams.

Speaking of energy, Arizona can hit me up any time they want to get some product flowing, would save me god knows how much money.

Team Bike: Phase 1

So bright it hurts (pics do no justice)



Hopefully to be rebuilt to it's original form as seen here:
vimeo http://www.vimeo.com/4015253

More to come...

Vishneviy is on Black Market

About time he starts getting some recognition.

fun winter edit from Vishneviy on Vimeo.

Lite park riding from Vishneviy on Vimeo.

К10 - Эпизод Шестой и заключительный from kaunet roxx on Vimeo.

Review – Rockshox Pike 426 Air U-Turn

The product that can survive my riding for a year and keep begging for more is rare; the product that can survive my scale is even rarer. We’ve all read a review of the this fork somewhere, maybe ridden our buddy’s Pike around a parking lot, and we’ve all seen Pikes bolted onto the front ends of decidedly not all-mountain bikes. Which brings us to my Pike.

Having broken my Dirt Jam, I was casting about for replacements, and the Pike seemed like an obvious choice: burly, 20mm through-axle, adjustable, light. Perfect for a street/cross-country (strange mix, I know) rider in Toronto. Wading through the options, the choice was fairly simple: Take the weight penalty for the solid crown and strength of the 426, keep the weight low with an air spring, and keep it all adjustable with the U-Turn travel adjust feature. So on she went. After a quick bit of fiddling around with a shock pump, I had it dialled in for my mix of urban and trail riding. I may be in the minority, but I think that air is the way forward in fork applications like this – 5 minutes with a pump is infinitely preferable to about an hour swapping our springs.

Does it do its job? Yes and no. Technically speaking, the Pike more than fulfills its responsibilities as an all-mountain fork. The bump sensitivity was up to expectations for a smaller fork; with air removed it ate up the bumps and ruts and held a line fairly well, with no harsh bottoming during low-speed compression no matter how little air it contained (this probably wasn’t the best idea, but I was curious). When removed from its home environment, with a fair amount of air added and the travel dialled down, the fork did a fantastic job on the pumptracks and streets. No popping or pumping energy wasted, but none of the harshness or stiff, unwilling compression the traditional jump forks (Argyles, Dirt Jumpers, etc.) tend to exhibit. Durability, however, is where this fork hangs up. As Chris Taylor or any “Wednesday Night” regular can attest to, I’m a fairly abusive (I prefer the term “progressive” or “demanding”) rider, and Rockshox obviously did not have me in mind when designing the fork. Structurally, the fork has held up well. I have noticed some flex when preloading and carving into spins aggressively, but there are no cracks or breaks so far, and I’ve never felt afraid for my well-being on this fork, which is pretty damn important when landing backwards from 5 feet up. However I have been blowing through seals at a ridiculous rate. Luckily Terry at Solutions has kept the fork and I plugging, but he really has his work cut out for him – this fork, when the seals go, leaks more oil than the Exxon Valdez. Interestingly it still holds air and performs well for a few months after the seals first go (again, don’t try this), but I can’t deny being disappointed when every few months, the fork starts to glisten. I also somehow broke a Maxle, the amazingly handy 20mm QR system. Through my own stupidity, I snapped the threads off, but the fork amazingly still held the wheel firmly in place.

After about a year of use, I started to modify it. I had Terry drop it from 110-140mm to 80-110, to better suit my frame (the fork has at time of press outlasted 2 frames), and the fact that I can retain the travel adjust even with the fork dropped is a godsend. I shaved the gawd-awful PopLoc mount off the crown (every Pike comes with an unsightly cable guide for the optional handle-bar mounted lockout system), and put a sticker over the resulting silver patch, to prevent further wear and cable rub. I have noticed a bit of “King scoring” on the steerer (from my Chris King headset, no doubt), but nothing major.

For the pure all-mountain rider wanting a bombproof fork to shred the mountain up and down, the Pike will be absolutely perfect. Freestyle riders, street and dirt jump alike, know what you’re getting into when you buy this fork and you will not have any cause for regret. Although RockShox has supplanted it on the freestyle side with the Argyle, on the freeride side with the Lyrik and Totem, and on the all-mountain side with the Revelation and Reba, the Pike still has a place on my bike, and I suspect it will outlive many more frames, even if I end up putting Terry’s kids through college in the process.Some visuals:

The bike the Pike is hanging off of. Like the Pike, burly and light at 26.8 pounds.

Nice and light at 5.1 pounds (lowered, steerer cut)

Nice and low: 80mm travel, 12" BB height, 1" bars compared to 2" bars, 140mm travel, and a 13.5" BB height.

Thanks for reading,

CR

And introducing....

....TS team rider Gabor Szalay. Our budget unfortunately doesn't cover haircuts.

Bikecheck

Alright, so here's a FULL bikecheck.


Frame: 2009 Specialized P.3. I got this on warranty after breaking a previous warranty frame. Specialized, for such a corporate company, has awesome warranty, and the frame rides great and looks awesome. Very light, hopefully this one holds up.
Fork: 2008 Rockshox Pike 426 Air U-Turn. Got this piece after breaking my previous fork. Since then I lowered it from 110-140mm to 80-110mm, to better suit the frame. I also shaved the poploc mount. Great fork, currently around 5.2 pounds I think.
Headset: Chris King NoThreadSet 1.125", red. Replaced the Specialized OEM headset two frames ago (Damn! that long?!). Since then, I flipped the cups so the text is upside-down....because I can.
Stem: Black Market Underboss, polished. Impulse buy, when CORE couldn't get me an Atomlab Pimplite. I flipped it to get my bars lower. Hardware is a bit soft but it looks good, especially with a polished King topcap up top.
Handlebar: Answer Pro-Taper, ti Satin, 1" x 26". Pro-Tapers are the best handlebar out there. I have plowed into posts, and this thing is fine. Scarily light. Perfect angles.
Grips: ODI Rogue. Only grip I'll run. I replaced the lockrings with some red ano ones.
Front wheel: Sun S-Type laced to Novatec 20mm, MEC 26x1.1" tube, Kenda Small Block 8 1.95" Kevlar folding tire. S-Type is heavy as hell and prebuilt, but it does its job I guess. The tire and tube keep the weight low.
Cranks: Primo Powerbite. Fantastic crank. I might get some ti bits for it.
Pedals: Blackspire Maggy, black. Just rebadged Wellgo MG-1s, meaning they're amazing.
Sprocket: Profile Imperial, 33t, polished. Only sprocket that fits a 22mm spindle and a 9-speed chain. Looks awesome.
Chainguide: E13 LG-1. I may weight-tune it, maybe not.
Chain: KMC X9SL Ti-N. KMC, best chains out there.
Rear wheel: Hope Pro 2 Trials/SingleSpeed, 32 Atomlab red spokes, Mavic 729 rim, MEC 26x1" tube, Kenda Small Block 8 1.95" Kevlar folding tire. The Hope hub is incredible, steel freehub body keeps it tough, and after replacing the stock female axle bolts with steel items, I have no complaints. Hope also has great customer service. The res tof the wheel, a 729 and A-Lab straight-gauge spokes, puts up with my shit and looks good. The spokes were an impulse buy (thanks Chris) because they look awesome. Put a CORE sticker on the rim for that factory look. Chris at CORE built the wheel for me, and it holds up as well as any wheel under me could. Kenda SB8 to keep things light and rolling fast.
Cassette: Shimano HG80 Saint/SLX cassette, reduced to 6-speed (11-18). Reduced to fit the singlespeed hub. The top 3 cogs are on a common carrier, and silver, so when I ditched them I was left with 6 Ti-N coated cogs. Awesome.
Brake: Avid BB7. For street I only trust mechanical brakes, and BB7s are the last word in mechanical calipers. I'm currently running Shimano cable, which sucks but works, linked up to an Odyssey Monolever (rootbeer!!) that I got for 25 cents. Monolever stays out the way and is super tough, can't catch the lever on the ground. I run it in a few inches because I have big hands and so that there's no overlap with the grip. Out back there's a Hope 140mm rotor and Hope ti rotor bolts to keep the weight nice and low.
Post: 2009 Specialized
Seat: 2009 Specialized Fuse SL. Specialized gave both of these to me, so I figured why not run them. Interestingly, I have a stripped 2005 seat and a chopped 2005 post from Specialized, and they are heavier than this full-length combo.
Derailleur: SRAM X.0 short cage. I replaced the limit screws with bolts scavenged from an E13 chainguide, for looks, performance, and weight reasons.
Shifter: SRAM X.9

Big ups to Chris at Core for the hook-ups and keep this machine running for the past year or so, friends for putting up with me always putting the bikes first (Arden and Fluder, ahem), and I guess Specialized for giving me new frames.

See you all on Wednesday.

This is cool

Nice edit and I like his spins.

Tom Silins / spring '09 from Toms Silins on Vimeo.

Bike riding.

Gotta find the spots somewhere, since Streat is always hiding.



Expect interviews with bikechecks soonish.

More Belevskiy..

...Skip the first 10-odd minutes of Russians partying with Chinese hookers.

Untitled from alexander belevskiy on Vimeo.

Way too good.

Belevskiy

I wish I was this smooth throwing bangers this...bangin'.


LS майка и Саша Белевский типерь вместе))) from LSMmax on Vimeo.

The WEDNESDAY NIGHT RIDES will be back soon...after some heated conferencing, it has been decided. Get stoked and bring ya skillz.

24" Trials video

....No, not that one.


разминка 2009 ch.k. from ch.k. on Vimeo.

We are going to try taking TS in a different direction, post non-original content. We'll keep going with the Toronto news, ride postings, our own content, but also post cool videos like this, just to keep things moving.

Hiatus

How could we have nothing to write about in the first weeks of spring? Pretty simple....sick for a week and a half, sprained wrist for two weeks, shit adds up. Kenneth is done fiddling with his Cove and has nothing cool to write about on the tech department, and our so-called team apparently does not know what their responsibilities...responsibility, singular, that should be. Anyways. Maybe they'll figure it out.

Anyways since they've been slacking, my injured ass has had to step up, and Kenneth's working ass and olddd camera have had to help. Fooling around with a sprained wrist:

Cassette progress, V1-V2.5

So you saw cassette V1.0 ages ago -A SRAM PG-950 (used), 11-34t, weighing in at a pound clean.

V1.5 came fairly quickly, and with it came some positive results -160g with a steel lockring, 6 gears and an 11-23t stack. Competitive against road cassettes in both spread and weight. I rode it for a bit, and found I wasn't using the easiest gear, so I proceeded to V1.75 -

110g with a steel lockring, presumably around 103g with an aluminum item. Very competitive weight. 11-20 spread, 5 gears at this point. But it shifted like utter crap, spitting my chain around at will. So I bought another cassette, a Shimano and a road unit at that, because presumably this would improve the shift quality. Cassette V2.0, 213g with steel lockring. 12-24t spread or something like that.
However obviously to fit my SingleSpeed hub, at least 3 gears need to go.
I opted to keep 6 gears as the stack would be harder - 12-17t. 116g with a steel lockring. Not satisfied yet, but hopefully it will shift well. My ultimate plan would be a new chain and a reduced Shimano 11-28 cassette with an aluminum lockring.

Gears...again

Long time no posts. I put my gears back on today, considering I'm the technically inept half of TSS I think I did an OK job for my first time. Instead of limiting the derailleur the classic way, with the limit screws, I used the shifter to limit the derailleur. Say 1 is the hardest gear and 9 is the easiest...I only run 5 gears so I only want the derailleur to move from 1-5, or rather 5-1, in terms of cable tension. So I set my shifter to be in gear 9, all of the cable slack pulled in, and mated it to the derailleur which was sittin' at 5. Done.

Three noteworthy things...It doesn't shift very accurately, although I have yet to ride it. This is probably a combination of an old, still kinda rusty, cheap cassette, and my mostly nonexistent mechanical skills. The derailleur I'm running (thanks Rob), a shortcage 20th anniversary X.0, is bent (courtesy Mr. Fraser racing Worlds DH on it), so I remedied that by throwing a washer from my female axle between the hanger and the derailleur. The derailleur still makes all vital contact with the hanger, and it'll finally reach the 11t. Perfect. Finally, the one issue NOT related to the cheapness of my set-up (derailleur + cassette....$30) involves the b-tension adjustment. When it's dialled into an optimum position, the cage rides the dropout a bit. I suspect this has a bit to do with my frame, which is mostly intended for singlespeed use, and a bit to do with the afore-mentioned washer, bumping the derailleur out by a few mm. I'll see how it affects things while riding.

Foreplay

...see what I did there?

Devil's Advocate

I love Toronto's scene. That's why I'm always critical, because I want to see it back at the lofty heights it reached before. If I come off as being overly harsh to Dropmachine or Pinkbike, so be it, I want things to change.

By extension, I want to support Canada's small-time bike scene in any and every way possible. I'm waiting for the day I can proudly say I bought a local frame. As some of you know, all of my life I've been riding Specializeds. I love the feel, and with the most recent iteration, I feel like I'm riding the best street...er....streat frame out there today. But come on, I'm riding a frame designed in California and welded in Taiwan. Hard to be proud of that.

Enter Dobermann bikes. They founded their company on the premise of not being a big guy, like Specialized is. They brought with them the new school of street geo, high BB, tiny back ends, and steep head angles. Really continuing where Norco left off with their Reynolds frames. But front and centre was the idea of customer service. You bust their shit? OK, they'll weld it up. Alain and Gabo prowl Pinkbike, looking for their beloved Dobermann name. They do custom shizz, if you so desire it. This, to be perfectly honest, is the frame I'd like to be riding. Specialized geo made in Canada. Perfect.

Look around online. No, look at Pinkbike. The Dobermann riders are essentiall an army of yes-men, and ANY criticism of the company or frames, no matter how trifling, and you are swarmed with angry Dobermann riders. This is where I come in. It's come to my attention that Alain wants to discuss my Dober-hating. Well then...

I want to see Dobermann progress into more than just "the next .243". I choose to criticize because I want to see them move forward. If no-one lights a fire under their asses, they'll get lazy and stop progressing, only to become stagnant like .243. Are they even still in business? Who knows?! That's my point. Don't want to see another promising Canadian brand go down the tubes. Yes, I am very often hard on them, but someone has to be. Not everyone has the online confidence or online eloquence (if I do say so myself) to speak against them like I do. So obviously I have to be the Devil's Advocate in almost every case.

Alain, ya dig?

Spots!

Bickford, at Christie and Bloor, is a freakin' goldmine. No pics, sorry. I have a massive headache.

Tomorrow 12-1PM Dairy Queen @ Pottery Rd.

Meet there for a downtown ride.

You saw my bike, now check out the progress of team rider Khaled's Riot:


Still waiting on a few parts, but that's the rough essence of it. Black Market Riot, rawed with hints of paint throughout, baby blue bits and pieces, freecoaster and peg. Mounts castrated as needed.