The duo returns after a week off for the holidays. In the 5th episode they discuss the past year at Ruckus Composites: the highs and lows, the cheers and jeers, what it’s like to move an entire shop in two days, the challenges of growth and ultimately their favorite repairs of the year.
Dan: 00:00 Hello everybody and welcome to the fifth episode of the fiber side chats presented by Ruckus composites, the nation’s leader in carbon fiber inspection and repair. We’re your hosts, Shawn small. I’m Dan Stein stinely and on today’s episode we’re doing a year in review. 20 17 cheers. Cheers. Our favorite repairs. A little bit of history of what happened and other things that we found really interesting from 2017. It was a big year for us.
Shawn: 00:41 What? What did we do this?
Dan: 00:43 I think the first biggest thing that we did this year was we moved, which was crazy. I mean it was in March, February or March has like a whole month of overlap of panic. Definitely catching up, getting buried, learning how to tread very well. Tread tread water. Uh, yeah.
Shawn: 01:04 I mean there was just so much going on. We’re busy on the repair side. The nice thing, we’re kinda set up the new shop in parallel as an expansion more than moving.
Dan: 01:15 Yeah, because we really did move the majority of the shop and like two days, which was pretty crazy. Seeing how much stuff we put it in that box truck when I was 28 foot. Yeah, we moved it three or four times. I think it was four times was a lot of pallet racks if you. If you have never seen the old shop looking at the empty photo it, but it’s kind of crazy because it basically.
Dan: 01:40 It looked like a lego style. Cinder block, rectangle of a warehouse. That’s exactly what it was. At 20 foot ceilings in both hand. It was an old semi repair shops so you could drive a semi straight through. How’s it was a great job. The only thing that sucked was the. The heat in winter was not really a thing. There was the tunnel as it reflected off of the front wall. You could stand there, but we also had a smaller paint hood. It wasn’t even a room. It was just a little hood. Yeah, walking and so anytime we had to clear coat. Anytime Nick had to spray clearco, we had to open up both doors, which was pretty hilarious in January. Early morning it was a. The one of the coldest winters in Portland was really cold right next to the train tracks right next to the train.
Shawn: 02:30 There were a lot of things that weren’t great there, but there are a lot of work. There were a lot of things that were great about their three years. There was a big expansion, uh, for us to go from our shop before that was only half that size. So we doubled there and now we didn’t truly double coming over here, but why we added a lot more smart spaces. I said, now we have office space, shipping and receiving a dedicated service bay dedicated paint room pant room now, which is convenient. Get the air compressor tucked away. You never even been here. Run anymore. Oh yeah. I kind of forgot about that. And it’s one of. Was quiet anyways, but get that nice rotary screw. Cool thing about the new shop is that we got to really dial in the layout to. We set it up once and we didn’t like literally haven’t moved anything, which I have problems with.
Shawn: 03:17 How so? Ah, I just don’t feel like ever being sedentary is a good thing for anybody, especially when it comes to shop layouts, you know, just because you did something once. I mean, it is hard to re-move things, but there’s no way that we got it right the first time. We got like partially. Right. What would you change? Don’t know. That’s just it. I don’t know. That’s what I’m trying to figure out this year and how to make us more efficient. This is my big year focusing solely on operations and you know, getting really into the heavy side of lean more into lean. Obviously it probably annoying the hell out of everybody in the shop Moreso. Hey, uh, what if I move this to your right side, your left side, your left side. Let’s just try it on the right please for me. It’ll save two seconds.
Shawn: 04:03 That’s, we know that two seconds every day over the last 10 seconds a week, Dan. Yeah, I mean it’s always good to keep reinventing yourself. Right? So the new space does help us with that. It was, yeah. I mean, it allowed us to jam more people in here this summer we were up to eight, you know, we had some bodywork help and our summer intern and our normal full sized staff of six. I was, didn’t feel crowded, know the old shop, but it felt grounded and the old trump but have felt really crowded. We wouldn’t have had space for everybody at the front table. And that was another thing that was cool about this year is hiring new staff almost every well half in this photo. Yeah. I remain photo here. The other half still same. Still the same. Pretty good. What else did we do this year that was big for us and launch this podcast?
Dan: 04:49 We launched this podcast. Yeah, definitely. I think our greatest endeavour to date, maybe not. Well that’s because it was your idea pat myself on the back a little bit. You do. Somebody has gotten to a lot. Come on Wedding A. Yeah, pretty big expansion. You’re. We also, um, dove more deeply into the world of ultrasound about, you know, when we brought a Joel on, he, our repair technician is got, how many hours does he have an ultrasound? Like 1900 or something. Thought it was more than that. I thought it was like 22 or 23. It’s a lot hours, a lot of hours, but he used to do ultrasound dangling from bridges checking their structural integrity. So his operations using ultrasound or know much, much easier, I’d say safer, safer, safer. Not Easier. So that was a big expansion for us as well, you know, it’s an expensive piece of machinery played with a lot of, um, it’s not an easy thing to dive into but.
Dan: 05:50 And it’s something that you’ve been been been investigating for a year, years.
Shawn: 05:55 Just, it’s not easy. There’s not a lot information out there. There’s definitely none. There’s no information about ultrasound on carbon bikes besides her friend from down under. And he’s pretty recent too. I mean he’s only been kind of recently started putting his unique message into the world. Definitely. So yeah, I mean we’re adding Oregon continuously add to that because it is an amazingly unique inspection technique that’s very definitive. How many machines did you look at? Paul got looking at like 10 or 12. I’ll just matter of finding the most useful one that works for our needs and finding the right transducer was really important. That actually was hearts there. Those things are unique and they’re like a thousand dollars a piece, so you don’t want to buy the wrong one. I mean not the end of the world, but it’s a thousand dollar mistake is still very painful mistake for those of you that aren’t familiar, the transducer is the part that hooks up to the machine that you actually run along the surfaces of the bike that puts the sound waves into the bike and bounces them back, allows it to be read in a graph form and that’s how we can kind of see flaws, voids, hidden damages.
Dan: 07:05 Um, and yeah, really anything that’s inside of a bike, uh, we can find it now, which is pretty cool. We were good at inspections before, but it took us to a new level. Yeah, it really did and that’s what I’m thinking. Well, you know, we’ll talk more about what you were planning for the coming year, maybe in a future episode of [inaudible]. What does it mean? Because we’re going to expand a lot on ultrasound that’s coming here, which just pretty cool. Um, we also did some thermal cam stuff earlier in the year and those right at the end of last year wasn’t it? Started that it’s got a fun little tool. I’m not always perfectly useful, but when you know it’s when you want it, you want it and it’s there. It also did help us find some studs in the office. That is a tool to create stuff that is actually better than those stupid walnuts like b, like I was.
Dan: 07:55 So apparently the study is 18 inches long. Uh, I am six foot one. Thank you. OK, sorry. Stolen that joke from the data deep and. OK, we’ll keep that in a. We also got a new printer or plotter. And what that is, is, you know, making remaking the art on bikes is really difficult. Decals, it’s crazy. Anything, everybody just assumes we get the files from the companies, but that couldn’t be farther from the truth, that it’s easier for us to remake it quickly. Um, I mean we work with a ton of manufacturers and they can get us files, but they’re never exactly the same. But what’s on the bike for some reason I’m like, they’re always just different or the wrong size or just adds so much time, you know, anytime you email back and forth for three or four days now it’s been, yeah, we can make it in house in 20 minutes in adobe illustrator.
Shawn: 08:47 It’s. Yeah. So this printer plotter is basically a full decals renter. It’s a full size machine, very expensive. But the cool thing is again, print in all colors, uh, even in white on top of a clear bias. So that allows us to do got some of these graphics and logos and restorations that I don’t think anybody else in this niche can do. I mean, some printers even have a difficult time doing white. Unclear. So we have the ability to do even what solo printing companies. Totally, yeah. On top of all everything we could do before, so it’s just, you know, just another tool. I’m not one we need every day, but I remember when he bails out some days on a couple of Pinarello is we had to remake the, you know, they do the Little Uci approved stamp and that, you know, would be right through damaged area and a half.
Shawn: 09:37 Many of those did we have to make. Yeah, definitely. Ironically, go logos, you know, it’s little or UCI champions drives is, you know, even if he didn’t earn them, what else do we do this year? Again, as I make this presentation for us a year in review is quite a bit. Um, I’m sure tons. I mean we had our first intern with our first intern. She was a great. Great. Yeah, we redid the brand. Yeah. I made our first lookbooks we presented, or you specifically presented in Denver with the pro bicycle mechanic association at the first technical workshop or hosting one next week out here in Portland. Yeah. And then we’ll do another one in first week in February. First Week in February on the DC, Washington, DC, Virginia. It’s adult Dulles technically, right? Yeah. That was cool. We field a lot of questions kind of indirectly, you know, both, you know, I guess the, a number of ways through our customers, through social channels, through hearsay even.
Dan: 10:39 But it was awesome to go out there and directly address and answer people’s questions. Yeah. That was a really rewarding and valuable experience. Something we want to definitely do in 2018 more is more face to face. You know, when you feel like it is hard to explain what we do and you know the best way to do it is actually show people. Some days I’m like we’re doing now on this podcast, we’re talking about what we do is a little more because some days I don’t even know what we do it feels like. But otherwise man, we fixed a lot of bikes. Right? Yeah. We did fix a lot of bikes. We what we evaluated almost 1900 this year. This year. Right. That doesn’t mean we fixed that many that which just means like that’s as many have we put messaging out to talk to, looked at, evaluated, quoted, inspected, even totally.
Dan: 11:29 A lot of times we inspect a bike bike will show up for inspection and then using the ultrasound technology people are like, oh, the top tubes is broken, and then we’ll go through an inspection and find out that it’s not only the top tube, it’s the down tube and seat stay as well. Yeah. So that’ll happen and people decide that repair isn’t worth it. Which that’s fun. They’re like their money. Um, yeah. Pretty big growth year for us as well on that side. You know, we’ve been growing every year since day one, so we feel that almost 1900 requests and we actually, this number is floats a little bit. It doesn’t, it, but we actually fixed around 665. Yeah, probably closer to 700 ones. Everything’s closed and finished. Finalized for the year even though it’s January, but let me start some customers to close out, pick up.
Shawn: 12:18 But yeah, that’s a two point seven bikes today. Honestly, the more I to say the bulk of those being in the summer months. Yeah, a little bit of a little bit of the numbers. And as far as brand breakdown, our biggest performers, we did 91 trex, we did 61 specialized, we did 41 cannondale’s and we did 48. Server bellows was definitely the biggest numbers as far as grouping that we saw. As we said earlier, we saw 27 Pinarello. Shanwn and I were kind of talking off off, uh, off Mike. Then we realized that that’s still a lot. Twenty seven. Pinarello is for kind of a smaller, not niche but more expensive brand is just as a caveat with these numbers is, you know, people are like, oh, does that mean that brands bad? No. It means they probably sell more. And like we see a lot. We see, we’ve seen from day one the most tracks that has never sold, that has never changed, never changed.
Shawn: 13:21 And they’re the biggest bike brand in the world. So of course we’re going to see the most. They have the most out there. So we always take all of our numbers. Not a, you know, you got to take everything with a grain of salt, you know, or you know, we have relationships with certain items that you know, inflate these numbers with us as well or you know, there’s certain writing clubs, you know, we’d do those pin or ells so perfectly, you know, we have the [inaudible] and the [inaudible] which is really annoying and rare and we can restore those just a pure perfection. So I think that’s why we get a lot of those and now it’s Kinda like they’re, you know, they’re expensive bikes and you want to get them to people that can do them justice. He looking in here, I’m also seeing, we saw canyons that was that Canyon cf Canyon frame and frame.
Shawn: 14:05 And that was the mountain bike, right? Yeah, it was, you know, I think what’s more interesting on the numbers basis is what part of the bikes did we fix? This is really the only interesting number in here and you know, we run it as a pie chart and maybe we should, we could even publish that because that doesn’t matter. Um, you know, to brand independent. It’s more just like what breaks on a bike and you know, our big movers and shakers from day one have been top tubes, seat stays, chain stays, you know, regardless of the material, you know, on any bike. But there’s Thai or steel, aluminum or carbon, uh, you know, your top tube in your seat stays there. Your thinnest tube, where the budding on a metal bike is, you know, a steel bike. It’s the thinnest. Some of those steel bikes are like point five millimeters thick, which is crazy.
Shawn: 14:54 That’s like two soda cans. It’s. Yeah, it’s unbelievable. Some of the stainless steel, I mean, it’s amazing. It’s really cool, but a top to you, but also seems to be the most exposed and damaged prone with the handlebars. If you go down and the crash, it’s big people. Maybe we’ll lean up their bikes not so carefully against a brick wall to the café or something. Hold on. Yeah. Car Racks. Hold them. And it’s a tube that sees, you know, it’s the thinnest tube and if there’s any sort of impact, it sees the, some of the biggest bending moment stresses or the down tube is typically the way I think of most bikes. And explain it to people. You have the upper portion of a bike, which is your top tube and your seat stays, and you have to down in portion, which is, you’re down to her lower portion, you’re down tube in your chain stays, and you’re down to being your chain stays there.
Shawn: 15:45 Typically where most of your material wise down tubes are thick. They’re huge, they have a lot of carbon. Atom chain stays are thick, they’re huge, they have a lot of carbon atom. Um, that’s where all your power transfer is. The top part of the bike, the top tube and the, uh, seat stays are thin. They’re more of your comfort, um, that translates a lot of your vibration and bumps from the row. That’s why everybody’s bikes have something wacky and the seat stays, whether it’s marketing or whatever, or track has their ISO coupler or specialized has. There’s the alerts, you know, they try to separate the writer from the road and you do that through the seat stays at the top, who primarily you’re down to being a chain stays as strong as you can make. Hmm. Or we were looking at the, the cannondale that was not the, their new, remember they called it the [inaudible], I forget the name of the bike, but the x, Z cannondale redoes x, z.
Shawn: 16:39 and it was flex days. All right. Yeah, well that’s a whole other thing I don’t like. Hey, I’m going to go on the record. I do not like it all right. But what they’re trying to do is what you just described. Yeah. They use the flex of their seats day as part of their suspension linkage. And Yeah, carbon is a great material. You can design like a racing cars and vehicles can have leaf springs made out of carbon and yet again, you can tune them to be an amazing spring, you know, laugh made an entire four out of that same property. Yeah. So that’s where we’re going with this. Oh yeah. So the top tube and your seat stays there thin, you know, they’re mainly, they’re just to hold your seat tube as I always joke is there is there to hold your butt off the ground.
Shawn: 17:26 And uh, they’re thin, they keep the road out of your butt. So when you crash on them, they break, they break especially the seat stays. The other thing I think about is there out of playing, you know, the only thing that comes out, you know, a seat to a top tube, a head tube in a down tube. They’re basically planar. You know they existed only in an x, y axis. You know, they have a little depth, but your seat stays in, come out in the z direction and they give that three dimensional effect. And when you fall on them, you know, your days are generally protected by your crank. Actually sticks out a little further. Your pedals do so that way when you fall, the pedal might have, should hit. Not always, but it likely will hit the ground first and actually pivot the ground of the bike away from the ground.
Shawn: 18:13 But the sad news is that it pivots your seat stays straight into the ground and you throw a even a hundred pound or 200 pound person doesn’t matter, you know, and they fall on, you know, very wispy, 60 grams singular seats day. It doesn’t stand a chance in metal bike. Doesn’t stand a chance either. Honestly, anybody falls on a seat stay. It’s. I mean if it’s a racing bike, obviously you’ve certainly crosstrack you can ride it with only days just getting whatever that would look like and probably ride terribly. Obviously we look like the inflatable tube person coming down the road.
Dan: 18:48 Another interesting thing, I’m looking at the shots of the pie chart or what we fixed seven point five percent of our repairs. We’re down to seven point three percent of our repairs were dropouts. Quite a few. We did a lot of no idea what it, that many dropbox. A lot of dropouts. We’re really going people that do and half from the beginning and we have, I don’t know, I do 100 something a year and you know, we do them all at the same way, you know, where we are very uniquely 3d print dropouts and then machine been solid carbon and install them in the bike and Jacob them and very labor-intensive in short. But yeah, we’ve done it for years now. I mean sometimes it involves shaping lugs around the dropouts, the artistic side. That BMC, that nick did. Oh, the impact. Oh my God.
Shawn: 19:34 Impeccably hard. Yeah. I completely unknowing. Yeah. Yeah. I mean we do a lot of body work that people want us to, to glamorize anything. As I say, it takes a lot of time, you know, it’s like find sculpture work at that point. Yeah, we do, you know, their thing, you know, seek tubes and you know, we have tube slash seat mass there. That type of damage is very similar. It’s always almost always a front derailer mount that someone over clamped a clamp front derailer and crushed it. Or it’s a bottle cage. Yeah. But those go under a different category actually, if it’s a solely a bottle cage. Yeah. But we have seen a lot of cracking around. Starts at the boss and moves out. And that’s true. I guess I do remember some of those. But yeah. Again, the bottle, I mean we do replace bosses all the time. Yeah. And I think that’s probably the miscellaneous category is or that’s also a seat tube clamps. That’s another one that falls under that category. Basically the c tube just takes a lot of clamping and you know, someone’s driving home a m five and you can just go tell you. Hear that sweet, sweet cracking sound.
Shawn: 20:45 OK. Back to part. Now back it off a little bit. And perfect. First craft your torque specs loose. Snug, tight too tight. Oh Shit. Yeah. And then back it off a little bit and then it’s fine. Yeah, tighten it until you hear crack. And back off coordinator clamps are my least favorite repairs and it’s not that they’re exceptionally hard, like it is around too, but it’s like not always. Sometimes there’s a real weird. That’s true. Cut out around there. Yeah. But we need to always make it perfectly back while you probably better than it was this shape. If it’s a seat to clamp for the front derailer, it has to be perfectly round and it’s so hard to do a repair within like a tenth of a millimeter and still put paint on it and clear coat and have it be perfect. We’ve gotten good at it, but I’m just still not fun to do it.
Shawn: 21:38 Just like a little bit. A little bit too much. Too much. Too much. If you want to. You want to hit this with another clinic? Ah, Shit. Now it’s too much. Yeah, totally. All right. Let’s above the clear coat. Damn it right back again. That sound goes. Ah, I’m pretty interesting. What were some of our more interesting repairs out of there for you? Dan? I think maybe not the most interesting, but the repair that the repair surgery that I liked the most this year and then probably got most traction I’d say was when we did that specialized torch that s works torch. Yeah, I mean the color changing, the color change. And if you don’t know this bike, this bike colored, you’d like legitimately fully color changes at what? Seventy eight degrees. Seventy two. I remember we were both because we guessed wrong. Yeah, we guessed wrong.
Dan: 22:26 No, we didn’t guess wrong. We tested the 78, but it was actually at 76. And was that what it was? And then we had to buy the 72 because it wasn’t was. Yeah, it wasn’t close enough. Yeah. But we can nailed it though. Yeah. And that one came in. It had a broken chains to chain stay on the driver’s side and seed Satan it. Oh, antici say yeah. It was both on the drafts out because the guy got hit on a training ride from behind. That’s what that was shattered? Yeah. So not only did we have to do the repair, makes the repair was perfectly smooth. We had to match the undercoat, the topcoat and temperature color. Jane. Which they changed. Yeah. That one was, what’s the term for that? Again? A thermo. Thermo. I mean a thermo chroma graphic or something. Chromic therma. Cromer their name. I don’t really know what that falls under, but I think we’re about to find that stuff. I think it’s Greek actually get out of here. Close temperature, thermal kronos time there. That was um, isn’t Stanley the God of Thermo’s?
Shawn: 23:37 That company did not create. You could see you just see me, like thinking it out of my head. I’m like, how do I work at a Stanley Thermos? Jared started out the window, pulled outside a. That was cool. I mean that one man. I blew up the Internet for us and what we ended up paint surprising you with your bike with the thermal chromic pain while you were gone and now you have a color changing bike. You guys got me with that. You didn’t see account. I had no idea. It was awesome. And it still is awesome. Yeah. Now it’s permanently orange because it’s cold. It’s cold, but when it’s not cold it’s a nice pearlescent blue, light blue, dark blue. And then when it’s cold front half is that sparkling orange, deeper blue it. So that was awesome. Yeah, it’s very, it’s surprising how much that changes color.
Shawn: 24:29 Yeah. Did we? Was it this year or the beginning of this year or last year? We did that, uh, other specialized sparkle horse or whatever it was called by Tony. That was this year, but it was like in February or January before we moved. There was a. yeah, so it had been February or January. That was another beautiful bike. Yeah. And that one was crazy because it had never even been built up. That was one. I don’t know if it was purchased, broken at. We don’t, we don’t know. But was that a binge? That’s works crux. It was across that which was awesome. That was Tony Bauman’s, famous purple color purple and pink triangle. 18 different sparkles. I mean that must’ve been hard to paint in the first place when we gave it to nick and he’s just like, ah. I mean it’s beautiful, but it’s just burdensome.
Dan: 25:25 I mean that’s what I was going to say. That bike was obviously difficult to paint in the first place, but I can’t imagine having to do having to Redo somebody’s work that’s like Tony’s in the first place. That was pretty crazy. So that one was another cool one for super cool. I love that bike. Yeah, it was so pretty. I mean, I love the sparkle, but have therma chromic. That’s what is. It’s hard for me to say. Yeah. It reminds me of a Paul Simon Song. Thurman. Ooh, I got a shoe. That’s another cool thing that we did. Another one of my favorite things that we did was working with rob English number of stuff around is one of our favorite frame builders. Yeah. And the nicest guy. Definitely the nicest love working with him. We’ve done a lot of stuff with rob hembry here. Yeah. We’ve got three or four or five projects.
Dan: 26:15 Sorry, I’ll stop interrupting. Oh that’s OK. We do. He, you know, he does all those really fancy steel and carbon builds so a lot of times will help with sourcing to tubes or you know, mitering out areas of the tube. So they match the bottom bracket shape or helping him bond them in or adding mounts to the back of the seat posts extension. I mean we do a bunch of a bunch of stuff and we hit. There was that bike earlier, the sword bike or what? It was called [inaudible] for the English show. Yeah, actually British bespoke UK. Yeah, totally. Yeah, and that was when we were where we just took an NB fork and wrapped it in foil. Wrapped it and yeah, they just wanted a [inaudible] look. Awesome. That one was just a lot of pattern, very specific pattern making and that’s hard to big a seamless, flawless twill pants.
Shawn: 27:14 I mean, obviously it’s doable, but when you have to do it once you’re like, all right, it’s been a lot of time making a pattern here, but that one was cool too. Another thing that we, that we did for rob that was great was it was hard to do, but when we made the aerodynamic gearbox for his trans-am attempt. Yeah, for Carbon snapbox what? I mean, what did you put in there? I mean we told him to put chips in it. Well, he told us he was putting chips in it and none of his chips got crushed. So we put this as number one. Yeah. We treat chips very seriously up here very seriously, but that started as a foam mold. Yeah. Joel did not like that. Why is it hard to lay up on a full mole and just hard to keep a shape?
Shawn: 27:59 A lot of things. It just not as easy. I mean it’s just, you know, if you’re doing one part like we were, it’s really cheap to make a foam ball. It’s really easy to shaped foam. You just sand it. The downside of that when you’re trying to make a good match, a bottom in your hand shaping things. There you go. It’s hard. Yeah, and especially if you want a tighter fit. I mean if you want something really sloppy, obviously you can do it. But did we, did we then make a second mold? Know we spent a lot of time covering the outside of the phone with like a harder finish. Oh that’s right. And then prepping that and doing as much work as we could on that before because we did a wet lay upon it to cause that we couldn’t use pre preg which Joel headed as well.
Dan: 28:39 There’s a wet lab with tech string to totally. Yeah, because we have a bunch of that. I wanted to use it as we made it all the text stream and you know each other materials to kind of bulk it up and going for anything lightweight. It was more or less just a cool shape and I mean it was really light. I think it was, was not a sole intent of art design was to make it lightweight. No, it was very lightweight. Do even when I don’t remember. I don’t remember. I mean it was a lie. It was probably a hundred 50 grams. It wasn’t heavy the way that he installed the [inaudible] with the rails to the seat, to the seat post. Yeah. Pretty cool. Was pretty awesome. Little aerodynamic shape, et sat behind them hopefully to clean up is down wash, you know, as far as trans am attempts and I mean he was.
Dan: 29:17 He was looking to haul very quickly everyday. What was he trying to average 200 and eighty miles a day or something crazy. You talk to them almost. Yeah. I don’t remember the. I know it was over 200 miles a day. Yeah, it had to be. It had to be like 2:50 or more. I thought he came out hot. I was bummed that he got hurt. I mean, nobody’s more bummed that he got hurt and that he got hurt then him. No welcomed about. He prevented himself. I mean he smart. Yeah. I mean I think he was probably in a lot of pain when he stopped doing the Trans-am is insane. Yeah. Self supported and what I mean, what did, who wanted this year? I forget. I kind of stopped talking to be honest. Somebody from out here, I think who has the record label by mail. She is the women’s record now. She had the overall record before duty this year. He wanted new inserted. Yeah. And it’s like 11 days or something crazy, right? I think that’s less than 14. Oh, it’s way less than that. It’s.
Dan: 30:18 Yeah. I don’t think any part of me you could handle that. Mainly my but like good saddle, shammy, whatever. But well obviously been legs couldn’t handle it either. No part of me can handle that now. I mean, Kudos to anybody that tries, even if you, even if you do it in two months, who cares? Oh, that’s probably across the centuries. The feet. I’ve never done it, but I think I want to. I’m not sure. Anytime I go touring it’s like 10 days for me is like my really good and after that I kinda get bored. Bored of being on vacation. I mean, I’m a workaholic obviously, but like, do you get bored of being on vacation? No, I just like when I’m not working, I’m networking. So there’s still that for me on linkedin that’s connecting to connect with us on linkedin. A kudos. Kudos. Anybody that does that?
Dan: 31:15 Oh yeah. We really, really enjoy, uh, working with Rom. Hope to do some more projects with him this year at check out an English cycles. He posts up all of his bikes. They’re all thing I like most is probably the most creative frame builder. Obviously. There’s, um, I was like, I had a Minnesota that builds like insane, more artistic. Lee endeavored bikes. The carbon [inaudible] no, no, no, no, no. Peacock peacock roof. I’d say he’s a. He would be tied for rob on creativity. They’re very different creatives. Very rob has more of the engineering, creative and a guy’s name. He’s very creative gentlemen. Both of their frames are both creative and the design and finishing. Yeah. And what do they occupy? A different realm. Yeah, and you’re right. It is metal. He had. They both work in steel and just do stuff. Nobody else is doing.
Dan: 32:13 Yeah. What was the peacock groove? Prince bike and Schwinns. Prince bike. I have purple rain, rain. And then the other one that I love the most just because I’m in a little more of a nerd as his evil dead bike from years ago. Was that a track bike? Yeah, but instead of a chain, like a normal bike, tanny was a chainsaw chain and it worked. I’ve seen. That’s terrifying if you’re gonna use it, but like a show. Ah. So cool. Yeah, totally. Obviously, and that’s exactly what I want to be. What? Remember our film in tandem bit, the big tandem tandem ammonium in the Mon. I do remember that. He Is also another ridiculously talented builder. He’s in england, the uk, yeah, and I forget what the name you would use to do that was. That was amazing when he built a beautiful tandem for a call-out here in band, all carbon, everything.
Dan: 33:12 I’m absolutely gorgeous bike. Ridiculously ligHt to have you ever picked up a normal tandem. It just steel tab in tandem and then pick up a curb in tandem. You’re like, ah. Yeah. And this was even on the light realm of carbon tandem, so it was, it was pretty crazy. But that’s what the customer roof racked it bad. Just not even paying attention. Smoked week old, right? Yeah, they just got it. Just built it up. How do you put a tandem on a roof? I don’t know. I don’t know how you drive it into a garage door either, but absolutely obliterated the fork in half. And so we sourced the new fork, paint matched it, did a full ultrasound inspection and then a little bit of clear coat touch up on the frame. And um, we were talking. I also don’t remember his name, but yeah, we ultrasounded the frame and the frame is actually fine.
Shawn: 34:06 I think just the fork, just the way it was held in the roof rack or how it hit or how, you know when your roof rack a bike, there’s so many already crashed. Anything. There’s just a million different things that can go wrong or. RigHt. You know, it depends on the height of your garage. Just speed your car, the mountains, and just luckily only the form of smashed. I mean probably because that thing, that bite was made it down to was bigger than the chassis on my truck. Yeah, absolutely. Gorgeous. Gentlemen. Gentleman’s name is rich. That’s right. And hE was so, so nice. Beautiful bikes. Is that another one? Yeah, this is the tandem t t frames. Yeah. Crazy looking. There’s three. Three. Yeah. Yeah, that’s. Yeah, that’s the glittery pink, remember? Yeah. It was glittery. Paying think was surprisingly light through axles, flat mount desk. I mean it was beautiful and hilarious having it around because it was huge. I mean, holding a tea, a carbon tandem. You’re like, it feels like you’re holding a ladder. I woUld say it’s the closest feeling ever. I remember it reminded me of the machines you get in to do dead lifts. I’ve never been to a gym now. Stepped through the middle of the frame, grab the seat tubes and you Know. Yeah, that’s fine. That’s what it reminded me of. Obviously we more beautiful. Yeah, I remember that one. Is it bespoke dead lIft machine?
Dan: 35:26 We mark it up as we go here to here first launching in 2019 and the other bike that we saw that wasn’t really an interesting repair, but that we really was that focus as alco max age to our disk addition. Yeah, flat mount. It was like the newest of the new must have been. Last year’s model wasn’t. I thought it was this year. I mean I guess the last year being 2017. Well I think it was a team addition. It must be the same model that came out earlier. Know the thing we liked about it was just. I’ve never seen a bike that clean that clean inside and out. Yeah. It was absolutely gorgeous and flat mountains were beautiful. The through axle was beautiful. Every two was just perfect. And The thing I like about bikes like that one is that most of the tubes are fairly traditional, like the round were very subtly not routing number.
Dan: 36:20 I mean I, it ticked all the boxes, ticked all the way to modern. It wasn’t too old, it was so clean. The paint was amazing. That was one of the nicest painted frames that we’re seeing from a factor we, it. but I forget what it was and it was like 650 grams or something crazy. It was stupid light for disc brake bike and just like, I just can’t get over the fact of how classic it looked. Yeah. Next to all these other time trial bikes we get, which I can understand, they’re more purpose driven. But like, you know, I, I love classic looking because I love traditional steal bikes as well. And I’m like, I’m not solely a carpet guy, but all bikes and just seeing that one, it’s just like, you know, always call on a call them neil classic, you know, it’s like new material.
Shawn: 37:03 Classic shaping. Oh that was so light neo classic. Retro future. You got it. Yeah. With flatman break and. Oh man, those chain stays were so cool to. Sorry, I’ll go back to it. Just a perfect bike. Yeah, it really was. I would say that would be number one. If I ever needed a bike, that would be mind. It switched me back onto the focus brand. I’d say the same here with their cross bikes, you know, the, the shape of their fork where it meets the bottom cup of the head tube. Not really bulky, beefy am not as. I mean I understand the purpose of it but it was never really. I didn’t aesthetically like a lot of what focus was doing for awhile, but that one won me back. That was a hassle, you know, love age to ours. So yeah, they got your focus back.
Shawn: 37:52 My favorite bike at this year that also made me the most nervous and paranoid was we had a radio shack edition. We had lance armstrong’s radio shack condition bike signed by lance armstrong. How can I forget about that? Went up and I was like, oh god, nobody touches. Hold on. Get all the staff together. We got to have a quick talk. Seriously. Everyone get gloves? Nobody. Nobody. I shouldn’t say that. We can bleep it. Alright. Yeah, I forgot about that one and I think I blocked it out because it was so stressful. Maybe really stressed out. Yeah. And I was like, we can’t a had a quick talk with everybody to be like, I was so anxious about it. I mean we did a full drop-out replacement on, right? Yeah. And we stripped the live strong full seats. Lift on everything else would touch, stayed the same but it had lance armstrong name and a sharpie.
Shawn: 38:39 Right? A silver sharpie was. Yeah, it was a silver belt sharpie signature. And usually we cleaned bikes when you first come in because usually they’re disgusting or we just want to. Oftentimes they’re just going to say, well for our standards of repair, we liked them to be clean. Oh I see what you did and thank you. So, you know, in the grand scheme of things they’re just, you know, disgusting search to dig into that for a minute. Trench myself. And I was like, oh, how are we going to clean this? I was afraid to even put mass. I don’t want to put masking tape over it just because anybody that’s ever taped up bikes for painting for restoration, you know that sometimes even the lowest strength tape will spur some reason, pull certain bikes, clear coat off. I hate it. I’m very upset when it happens, but I also know that it happens and with this one I was like, oh my god, what do we do? s
Dan: 39:27 So what did we do? I don’t remember, but I’m really good at blanking out stressful things. We use our most favorite shop tool. A pool noodle erupted in pool noodles and that’s the whole bike covered it and we will move along and it worked. They woRked and it was like a clown brilliantly id that we fixed it. Got the new dropout in it, got it all set back up and got it outta here. Yeah, I mean, yeah. We didn’t have a single problem with every. We tagged you in it a bunch of times to lance. We know what was yours. Yeah, we do. Yeah, it edit your signature on it. That wasn’t the first bank. We’ve had a hits. No, we had that truck earlier on. The the one that he wanted the time trial on. That’s right. And the guy didn’t want to restore and he didn’t want to restore it.
Dan: 40:14 I tried to buy it off of them because I wanted it. I mean it was just. I would never ride it, but just say, what about the guy? It’s a piece of cycling’s history where we held the first aerodynamic time trying to help them individually held a frame that the dude one a time trial on that alleged. That pretty much made him when the tour. Yeah. What year was that? Ninety seven. That’s what I thought too. But yeah, that was. I forgot about that was this year too. We had to lance bikes this year. Yeah, we quoted by class here. Right. We did have as clued in. Spike like that was another one. I was like, whoa, buddy. Todd. Nobody mess up now that we do, but just you’re like on like red alert shields up. Sure. Yeah. A definite moments. I forgot about those. I love those.
Shawn: 41:05 Yet again, love hit the guy, whatever. It’s still a cool bike to work on. What else did we do? The big ones that we are thinking of. I mean obviously there were almost 700 bikes in there, so it’s hard to remember. And the days go by so fast where you’re lIke, what else are we flipping on the graham here? I mean, every repair you could ever think of. A lot of bottom brackets. We did a good amount. Not any more than normal though. I don’t think. Pretty normal year. I think some cool paint jobs and you know, make that a lot of beautiful restorations. Um, we did that one taxi cab bike that was hard to remember. We turned this phillips felt from red to day glow, yellow every single thing down to the decals on his saddle, even to the tiny detailing on his red shifters.
Shawn: 41:50 He didn’t know we were going that far with it. Every single, even the tiny, like two millimeter stripe on his have we turned to yellow. That one was awesome. He jumped up and down a lot, but I think you would do that anyway. I’d say it was a successful year for memes as well. Yeah, that’s why we, ellen noble commented on one of our meetings. Remember that the bunny hopping one versus the person that told you not to worry about was very. Yeah, she’s awesome. cyclist to follow. Excited. We should’ve gotten good at it and we shipped out biden bottles this year. I was last year. That was this year, wasn’t in the old shop. I thought it was last like last october. That it. It was last december, but we shipped them in the new year, so I’m counting it. You can count it and I’m counting. The eclipse happened a little off topic.
Shawn: 42:45 Yeah, a lotta. We got better at instagram stories. If you haven’t followed our instagram account and our stories, they are your age. I find them adorable. I’m always delighted to see it. It’s one of those you’re just like, oh man, you guys are good at this. Always a good feeling as a boss. I mean, when you love your employees work well. I mean just put it out there and patting You on the back. You have that full circle back to your recording this podcast and go edit it. Get back to the me. Mine’s. I met. Oh yeah, it was a good year. We are out here. Happy to be done with it then. I’m happy to be done with it. Excited for 2018. We’re putting some. Got all of our goals coming up. If you’re in portland next week for the pbm, ah, come by. The shop going to shop.
Shawn: 43:32 Give us a shout. I’m just reach out to us on anY, any way you want. Phone, any forums, social media, email, carrier, pigeon, carrier pigeon, or if you’re going to be coming to the, uh, Washington dc or the dulles, a workshop in february, let us know. We’d love to meet up. We’ll be out there. You And I will both be out there for what? A week, right? Yeah, we will be. We’re gonna. Go see the space shuttle. I’ve never been to dc, so that’s right. Very excited to go out there and there many times. I love dc. Definitely want to see the spatial. I haven’t been there since the administration change, so I don’t know when that’s going to feel like. Yeah, I definitely want to go moon the white house too, but there’s not supposed to be any full moons in february than there will be a day moon.
Dan: 44:15 I heard too much less. Um, you should get out in the sun a little more. No, it’s january, but uh, well that wraps up episode five, our first podcast of [inaudible]. thanks for following along. Next week. We’ll be getting back to our normal episode. Lay up this. We can repair this weekend cycling. And as always we want to hear from you, get at us, um, on all forms of social media. We’re at ruckus comp with your questions. We call it the carbon queries. We love to hear from you in the new year. Thanks again for listening. Make sure to share, like, retweet and give us five stars on the podcast. We’ve gotten a lot of good reviews and tips so far and we want to keep going with it. So we need your help to do it. Like I said, please share and help us get the word out there and thanks everybody. We will see you next week and remember the only moment we have is the present and it’ll check into it every once in awhile.