Bike Fitting Tools

I was talking to a friend the other day who was building up a bike. He asked me how to choose the right stem length. After finding out that he may have to swap out his first choice to get the right fit, he wondered out loud if eBay was chock full of barely used bike stems being sold by new bike owners. Maybe. Purelycustom.com is trying to change that. They've got adjustable stems and cranks that they machine and anodize. The price is steep, but not so steep that a team, club or shop couldn't buy them and use them to fit riders bikes. The cranks work in a unique and non-obvious way. The left crank adjusts at the crank hub and the right crank adjusts at the spider. You'd think they would have made telescoping shafts, but the adjustment mechanism then probably couldn't withstand the load of someone who needed 185mm crank arms!

pictures form http://www.purelycustom.com/

More from Grammo

As you can see in the above picture, there are two angle adjusments to this Grammo stem. The website gives the indication that the product is meant for bike fitting, probably not for long term use. I am assuming that the two angle adjustments, when fiddled with properly, allow the fitter to adjust both angle and height of the handlebars. Although it looks like a Ritchey adjustable stem, it's not quite the same. The Ritchey has splines that engage and prevent angular slippage, making adjustment rather time consuming and that stem more of a long term use item. The new Grammo stem seems to compete more with the long manufactured Look adjustable stem and is likely a temporary component.

Would you like to be what you drink?

Hey there, I have a YAWYD steerer tube cap / beer bottle cap holder from Niner bikes. You can use it to put the lid of your favorite long neck (or short neck if it's Negro Modelo) right on your bike and give you a little motivation to finish the ride.


They sell for $12.99 at Niner, but I'll ship it to you for $10 with postage. Email me and we'll work something out. paul (at) nippleworks (dot) com

*This product can not be used to hold the champagne cork from a fine bottle of Belgian beer.

Riding the hoods can be hazardous to your health

The pictures above show the results of last weekend's cyclocross race.  The first picture shows how my bars looked after the race.  The second picture shows what they looked like after I straightented them out.  The course was loose and sandy with good barriers and pavement riding, but had several bumpy downhill segments.  I was riding with my hands on the hoods and heard a loud crack noise.  At first I thought something had fractured, then after the terrain flattened out, I took stock of the situation.  My bars had rotated downward.  Now that I think about it, there's a lot of torque on the handlebar clamp when your riding in the drops, and that spikes when you're leaning on it during a bumpy downhill.  You rarely see handlebar rotation on mountain bikes because they are more or less straight and you generally don't hang on to bar ends during a descent since there are no brakes there.  

So what to do?  Whell, I finished out the race using my bar top brakes, and I could have been using those all along.  I also probably should have been descending in the drops for the best control and leverage on the brakes.  I don't think that any more clamping force would have prevented this unless the mating parts were splined (as in a bottom bracket axle).  I guess I should be happy to have learned a technique lesson with all my facial features intact.

Mudflaps for your mountain bike

No, not this kind of mudflap, or even this kind -
But along those lines...



And this thing, which is basically a skull shaped grapefruit-sized block of aluminum:

And then this, which will appeal to your peyote smoking microbus driving Southwestern mountain biking friends:


All this bicycle finery was spotted at Ales and Trails, for sale by a NorCal outfit by the name of Dirty Dog MTB.

Sticker image from www.northernsun.com