Bruiser1

I took a nap for too long, and now it's very late and I can't sleep. So I thought I'd make a topic with some bodges I've done for my bike, to help you guys save a few bucks (or pounds). I'm a very thrifty person, so I don't spend money unless it's aboslutely necessary. That, and I like bodging stuff. So, here we go. The pedal bodge After a good year of hard use, the pins on my platform pedal were loosing their grip, which made riding a bit too slippery. Rather to spend $18 on new pedals, I spent a cool $2.50 on materials, and after some 30 minutes of work, I was left with these. This is what I did: - pull out the stock pins with some pliers - drill the existing holes with a 1/8” drill bit. I used a drill press which made it lots easier, but it’s fine to use a normal drill. - Get some ½” long sheet metal screws, with a round head. - Using a drill, or a ratchet, screw the screws into the holes in the pedals, from the inside. Tighten them down a bit. The grip on them is extraordinary. Absolutely unslippable, no matter if they get wet, muddy, whatever. As you can see, they are as dangerous as they are grippy. I can’t suggest enough that you wear shinpads with these. You’ll get mangled if your foot happens to come off the pedal... trust me on that one. My shin pads have some gnarly gashes in them from the screws, and after getting them into my leg already once, it’s not pleasant at all. Also, your shoes might get worn faster from these pedals, but nothing serious. Pics: The derailleur tensioner It seems that a common problem for normal single speed tensioners is that the spring tension on them is not as good as it could be, and the springs themselves are somewhat weak. My shop gave me the remains of a mint condition XTR derailleur, which some xc’er shifted into the spokes, so I decided to try the bodge on that. If you have a derailleur laying around, or if you happen to luck out like me, give this a try. I saw a picture of a derailleur tensioner, and decided to try it for myself, and I was very impressed. I didn’t have to do very much work at all, since the previous owner of the derailleur was thoughtful and removed the lower part of the cage for me, using nothing but his spokes. If you’re starting from a whole derailleur, this is what you can do: - take off the inner cage and pulleys, and cut the cage plate that is attached to the derailleur, so that it ends up in a good shape. - Then, just bolt the pulley back on. I got myself a cool Dura Ace pulley with sealed bearings. - I left the b-tension spring in the derailleur. It’s the spring that most riders take out. This way it has 2 springs pulling on the chain, and it works better like that. With the spring removed, there will be a lot of tension trying to move the derailleur up, so every now and then it will loosen and it will need to be repositioned. This doesn’t happen at all with the spring left in. you can also dial in the spring tension screw, and get lots of tension on it. The whole setup makes no noise, the chain can barely bounce up and down which is cool. - Shorten your chain, and install the tensioner. The tensioner has tons of spring tension, which keeps the chain tight all the time. I know a lot wouldn’t be interested, but this thing can also change a few gears. for this, you need to put a piece of steel strapping or any sheet metal after the pulley, so that it can push the chain down to the next gear Since the cage length is... zero, there isn’t much to take up a lot of slack in the chain, so its best to limit the setup to 3 or 4 gears max. it worked with 5 gears, but the tensioner got too vertical so the chain wouldn’t wrap too far around underneath the cog. You can use a shifter, or just the barrel adjusters. Give it a go, it works awesome, makes everything silent, and is cooler than a stick with a pulley. A lot of people run single speed with their derailleurs anyways, and you can make it work with gears if at comp time your bike gets checked. Pics: The pad bodge Most of you know this one, it’s to use narrow rims like Mavic D521’s etc on wide frames like Koxx LevelBosses. From the pics I’d seen before, riders were permanently gluing the backings onto new pads. I wanted to be able to reuse the backings, so I used only bolts to hold everything together. To do this, - get an old pad, and cut the remaining pad material flush with the plastic backing. For one of my pads, I decided to countour the pad material to the shape of the backing, just for fun. - Get some wood screws, ½” long ones with a flush head, and that have enough threads on them to hold the two pads securely. - Hold the backing onto the back of whatever new pad you’re going to use. Put the two pads in a vice, with the backings facing upwards. - Using a small drill bit, drill out 4 holes for the bolts. Having the backing and the pad held together ensures the holes are aligned. Make the holes ½” deep. - Then use a ¼” drill bit to carefully shape the top of the holes to fit the cone-shaped heads of the wood screws. - Use a screwdriver to screw the backing to the pad using the wood screws. Take your time, so you don’t strip out the holes, and so that the screw tips dig into the pad material, instead of pushing it out. The 4 screws give each pad a huge amount of strength. The backings won’t fall or break off. Also now that there’s screws holding everything together, you can reuse the backings, Pics: Well, I hope these bodges are of some use to anyone. I think I covered all the essential details. If anyone has anymore questions, just ask. Roman R.

45mm

thanks a lot for the diagram, I needed to see the pics again. one thing though. spokes? did you drill a hole cut a short piece of a spoke and glued it into this hole?

yes please put the pics back up I need to see these pics again. if anyone has them can they post them again please thanks

one quick question: how wide are the blades? they look to be wider than 10mm, but not quite 1/2" ?