Homemade Sealant Check Time

I have been making my own tubeless tyre sealant this year. The recipe is:

1pt Liquid Latex - get mine from Hobbycraft
1pt Slime - the kind for car tyres
1pt Antifreeze - I use the new friendlier MPG type
2pts Water - you get this stuff from your tap !

I last filled the FANTASTIC S-Works Fast Trak tyres at the end of June. its now 4 months later and time for a look.

Front tyre, seems only the green colour from the slime is left and it's rather thin.
Lets get rid of it and add a fresh batch.

I just sooked it up with a syringe, new batch already made up and 60ml added.

Sorted.

The rear tyre was quite dry, with a thin skin on the tyre.

60ml fired in here too. I then pump up with a normal track pump. You here the tyre 'crack' when it seats. I pump up to 50 psi just to make sure, go for a wee ride about the garden and leave overnight. When ready to ride I lower the pressure to 27 psi and away we go...

Homemade Sealant Check Time

I have been making my own tubeless tyre sealant this year. The recipe is:

1pt Liquid Silicon - get mine from Hobbycraft
1pt Slime - the kind for car tyres
1pt Antifreeze - I use the new friendlier MPG type
2pts Water - you get this stuff from your tap !

I last filled the FANTASTIC S-Works Fast Trak tyres at the end of June. its now 4 months later and time for a look.

Front tyre, seems only the green colour from the slime is left and it's rather thin.
Lets get rid of it and add a fresh batch.

I just sooked it up with a syringe, new batch already made up and 60ml added.

Sorted.

The rear tyre was quite dry, with a thin skin on the tyre.

60ml fired in here too. I then pump up with a normal track pump. You here the tyre 'crack' when it seats. I pump up to 50 psi just to make sure, go for a wee ride about the garden and leave overnight. When ready to ride I lower the pressure to 27 psi and away we go...

Headset or Steerer Tube From Straight To Tapered Conversion.

All is not lost. If you have a lovely set of old forks and have acquired a new frame with a tapered head tube all may not be lost.

Now lets forget for the moment that the steerer tube may already have been cut too short for the new frame, because we are going 'glass half full' here OK :)

Well the company Hope do a converter for your race to sit on which takes the 1 1/8th crown to a 1 1/2.

However, I discovered a better solution.

First though I need to explain what I have done to the headtube on the bike. This was actually a straight 1 1/8th top and bottom but I converted the bottom to take a future tapered fork !

I used the Cane Creek 40 series converter called EC 44/40.

Now, that's what you get in the pack. headtube race, bearing and crown race.

On one set of 1 1/8th forks I installed the Hope converter and Cane Creek crown race.

When I installed the headtube race it was 3mm proud of the headtube due to the internal space being 9mm and there being 12mm on the cup. I removed it. I took it to a professional called Davie who removed the excess with a high tech machine while I watched in amazement !

He even out a champ-fer on it !

Anyhoo, back to the story. I actually found a better solution when looking for a race for another set of forks I found that Cane Creek do a converter/race in one for the 40 series headsets !

I duly got hold of one and fitted it to the lovely Reba SL forks.

Now we have a set of rigid carbon forks which will allow a 29er wheel, and also the Reba suspension forks in a tapered style to use on the 26er hard tail.

 More changes are coming, but lets have some fun on what we have first.

And So Began The Upgrading and Swapping Of Components

After running the 1x11 for a while I realized just how good it was. The Shimano XT M8000 kit is nice to use with very positive feedback from the shifter and mech. It also made the whole bike over 400g lighter, and there's only one shifter to worry about which in turn makes for a tidier cockpit.

I then set to work on other bikes.

The Rockstar

Now that's a 30t on the front, I have settled on a 32t at the moment but may change to a 30t for tough races.

The Prophet also got it.

I had now discovered that shimano did an 11-46 ( my original before the One-Up was 11-42 ) So I chose the 11-46 for the Prophet. 

However, I'm not bloody made of money so the full sussers got the 1x11 at the expense of the poor 'Test Model' the Cube, which went back to 2x10 :)

Now you can probably see something else has changed by this picture, that will be the subject of my next post.

Upgrading Mountain Bikes to 1x11

First of all let me tell you that upgrading to Shimano M8000 XT 1x11 is easy and should not pose any problems as long as you have a half decent bike tool kit.

I have built up a collection of tools over the years some have become obsolete and new ones have appeared.

I was quite fortunate as all my bikes have an BSA 68-73mm threaded bottom bracket.

I first started on a Cube LTD Race, 26er from around 2007. This had a Shimano triple. I bought all necessary upgrade kit from Evans Cycles.

When finished the bike was about 500g lighter ! I added some Absolute Black chainrings to my collection at this stage also.

Now the kits came with an 11-42 cassette, but I wanted more range so I purchased the One Up Shark which gave me 11-50 !! I also could increase the chainring to 34t or even 36t.

Above pic is not the finished article, this was a start there were more developments later on so stay tuned.

Flurry Of Activity and a Triathlon, Modifications and Mountain Biking.

Seems ages ago now but on 19th March 2016 I completed a Wee Triathlon. It was actually called 'The Wee Triathlon'.
I chose this one because, well I can't really swim ! Last October I got into the pool and could swim only 20m before I had to stop for a rest. This Triathlon had a 400m pool swim which I thought I might be able to manage. During training I managed to get my time down from 25 minutes to 16 minutes. During the Triathlon I did it in 12 minutes.

My finishing times were as follows

I'm happy I managed the swim without panicking/drowning. I also enjoyed the cycle and run, which were quite hilly.

I also got a new bike and did a lot of work on it and the other bikes since I had two weeks off work.

First changed rims on new bike and went Tubeless

Then serviced the Reba forks

Took the both the new bike and the Cube with the serviced forks out on a 48 Km ride with various off-road terrain types. The 26er hardtail Cube was better on steep uphills ( it's lighter ) but the 29er FS was a lot better on technical descents.

Overall they both did the cycle in exactly the same time !

We also took the 29er and a Cannondale Prophet 26er FS to a trail center and found them to be 'overall' about the same and as much fun as each other.

I my age, for anything really rough I'm going to use one of the FS bikes every time, for forestry roads with lots of climbs its the Cube.