The duo returns for the 7th episode. This week they return to a normal format, starting off with This Week in Repair and This Week in Cycling. TWIR has them discuss Zipp Wheel Repairs, while TWIC has them discuss the new Sram DUB BB standard. The main topic for this week is all about Forks; all you could ever want to know and why they don’t repair them. Of course there is another #carbonqueries Q/A, and finally a rousing Over/Under closes out the episode.
Shawn: 00:00 Welcome to episode seven of the fiber side chats. I’m your host, Shawn small,
Dan: 00:07 and on today’s episode we’re getting back into a little bit more of a normal routine. We’re going to be talking some this weekend repair, got some topics for this week in cycling, but most importantly our main topic is forks, why they break in, why we don’t fix them. Most importantly, what you can do to look forward to see if yours is. All right.
Shawn: 00:38 all right. This week in repair, what did we, what are we got this big. Damn. It was another, let’s say a basic week for us. Couple bikes coming in, couple bikes going out. What do we have? Four or five leaving Tuesday. Thursday, so that’s good. That is good. Five bikes leaving in January is always a good thing, but other than that we had some zip disc wheels. We saw another, another broken three t if you bang, same spot. Exact same spa. Yeah. If you’ve been following along in the past couple of weeks, we’ve been doing bike reviews for this. We can repair things that we see that come through the shop that we like. The three t all rode the explorer. Oh, I believe it’s a same damage. Uh, like, like I said, if you’ve been following along, you’ll know that that is right where the seat posts a gets inserted kind of clamp style. Is that again expanding well expanding wedge? How do you think it broke over clamping? Uh, I don’t actually know. There’s a kind of a lever that, you know, is that the, that’s another one. You put a longer set posts on there. It acts as a longer lever. Um, I don’t know.
Dan: 01:41 Yeah, we’re not sure, but it’s the second one we’ve seen in the same spot. Second when we fixed. On that same note, we kind of had an argon [inaudible] come in with a really similar damage at the seat tube clamp right here for. Yeah, that’s one of the spots. And then the other spot was a, needed a hard patch from all the chain suck on the chain stay. So we had to patch up that area and get it going. But it also came in for a little bit of a new layup at the top tube tube junction. Again, I don’t know if that is because it’s a thin layer up in a area that takes a lot of force. I’m not sure if the customer set it down in a hard way.
Shawn: 02:20 An area where a lot of bike frame designers and companies that have drastically keep changing their approach to whether it’s a seat post or, you know, we did mass there, the mass craze for what, like three, four years or everybody was mass mass mass. Then they realized the masseur obviously. I mean there’s a lot of pros. The, there’s more cons in a consumer market because you can’t ship your bike. It’s now hella expensive to ship a bike. Um, seat mass toppers, kind of pain in the ass. Um, is it OK to say ass the radio, you can say ass on the radio. Perfect. Um, I think we only get five times though. So I have three more.
Shawn: 03:00 Um, so the mass thing was a craze and then you realize that realistically you’re not going to resell it bike with a seat mass. Nobody wants them. No, but it’s too hard to fit. But all the pros have a seat mass to. Are you going to design a much lighter bike? Uh, it’s an extension. It’s a much cleaner extension of the seat tube top tube and seat stage function, which is great. That really simplifies the layup in that area as it makes the bike just handling ride better. But everybody hated it. So we’re now back at sea pose, which is fine. He had a gun or whatever by the now going to more integrated wedgetail I think everybody, well not everybody, but giant is really loving their defused seat post, which is a d shaped post. Then they do it on all their weird stuff. Cannondale’s down back to 25 point four round. Remember, I was always throwing a fit about that the other day on a synopsis and that as a wedge doodle that looks dumb. No offense. Scott’s been doing it for years, are gonna Teens. Everybody’s doing it and it’s like, I think it’s still in some rough phases. Hopefully someone figures out a good wedge style system. Everybody’s doing something so different, so unique. It’s a big chunk of aluminum inside a carbon frame that’s expanding. Trying to burst out in a sense
Dan: 04:13 the failure of the clamp or a non adequate lay though because I feel like that went pretty basic. Right. Shouldn’t be expanding. Wedge has been using them bikes for years. I mean decades will step, expanding wedge essentially. I’ve seen some really cool seat posts that do use a quell style base, mainly more on custom bikes. You know, I’ve seen people adapt some thompson posts and put a wedge style, which is really, really cool. A little more finicky on set up to get it right. You probably have to install it before the saddle, Huh? Exactly. It would be a huge pain in the ass. They’re does. Is that for each? Do each get five? No, no. It’s only total, right? Well, we’re not in a unique. Yeah, exactly. And so yet again, I don’t know. How often do you change your [inaudible] post? I mean you, when you first put together by you changed a lot just to fine tune it.
Shawn: 05:07 At least I do. I don’t know my fit that perfectly and then I haven’t touched it in years. Like on my row road bike I’m in touch to so that’s why I think it’s more of A. I don’t want to say manufacturing defect but no it’s not a defect but if areas are being designed, you know we always talked about at the top tube is always really thin and if you’re going to have that much leverage forest in that area, it’s just kind of seems like it would be prone to breaking the old seat. Post clamp styles, flooring obviously it SB overbuilt. It’s not necessarily ideal for carbon where you kind of have to create a leaf approach and then you put a clamp on it, tighten the clamp, squeezes those leaps in and those grab, you know the post. Its all right. Obviously it’s worked. Can work. We actually also just got the seat post that comes with the explorer. Yeah that just got dropped, dropped, dropped off. Kind of hilarious. It looks like a camp
Shawn: 05:58 or camping. I don’t understand what the head looks like. Kind of get it into. Must Lock into those keys, but I don’t know. Seems weird not changing. The saddle angle is actually, it seems a little tedious, but once. I mean it’s nice that you actually have like block spa degrees rather than the classic going to get it right. And then as soon as you do it right and you go to Torque it down and it knows of the saddle dips in your car. You mean the Thompson? Like best satellite system, you have to be like you’re right in the rear to tilt it back to it in the front and tilted dad. Tighten the bag tilted until, till till you’re like whatever society here, wacky. I Dunno. Whatever. They’re all obviously millions of millions of options out there that are fine. They’re all fine, but it’s anything perfect that you can say that about everything.
Dan: 06:48 Exactly. Trick question got busted. You passed. Another thing we repaired this week were the only wheels we repair full the ZIP disks. Yeah. Why do we like repairing zip of their big and flat and flat and big flat stuff is a real treat because it’s flat, flat stuff is easy and they’re the only we’ll we touch and really anybody should touch for the most part because there’s a lot of material kind of known as an infinite spoke pattern in a sense. The idea of a full disc, we’ll every threat of carbon is essentially a spoke. Yeah, they’re pretty cool when you think about it that way and that’s the point of a wheel and that’s why there are so strong. Obviously it’s more of an aerodynamic thing and they make really cool sounds. If you haven’t written a love, that sound makes you feel fast. Yeah.
Shawn: 07:38 It looks like you’re a pizza cutter. Yeah, definitely a life size pizza cutter going down the road. I guess [inaudible], this is tiny, but a bike, pizza cutter. I think everybody in this podcast is probably received one from a family member for Christmas or your birthday. It’s like you’re into bikes. Here’s your pizza cutter. Hey thing. The best part about it, it probably has a bottle opener on it somewhere to bite product. There’s a bottle opener. Do we need that? No, but sure. Just sure. What are some of the reasons that we don’t fix other wheels? Danger, danger, danger, um, danger. But it comes down. It’s a spinning mass. Uh, it’s also, they’re very light. There’s not a lot of material there. That tire pressure alone is probably one of the scariest things on a bike. You have the pressure that you inflate it to, you know, depending on road tire, you’d be up to a hundred, hundred and 20 if you want.
Shawn: 08:34 If people still ride that high anymore and you, let’s say you impact something, you’re really going to bulge that one spot extremely aggressively and that’s not something that you can really repair safely. Even low pressure tires. It’s a higher volume things, so it’s a little different but pressures lower, but it’s much, much higher volume and that changes how that also impacts and if their rubrics a heat bad at most. A lot of things are a lot of things. Residents, raisins, yeah. Puts a lot of heat into the system and you’re just, I mean repair is really safe with a lot of things. Obviously we wouldn’t be here else wise, but yet again, when you’re putting that much heat, low tire pressure load and he’d throw in rotational imbalance spoke tension as well. Yeah. Good point. Spoke tension and you try to retrieve the thing. I mean I’ve done a few here or there.
Shawn: 09:22 I mean when was the last time we probably did one years ago. I don’t like do it and doing it at all. Um, but the full desk we do and yet again it’s because of it and they’re typically tubular. So that takes a lot of the clincher problem out of it. Stressful in remaking and literal physical stress from, as you said, the inflation. And typically every desk we’ve repaired is it yet against the full surface area. It’s typically damage the aside from something impacting it. So the repair is very far away from the break track. So you again, there are rubrics or repair is so far away that the heat load never gets there and you know, we’ve checked it on our thermal cam, you know, it’s not getting there, it’s not even close. And our residents are good. We know they’re good to forget what their glass transition temperature is off the top of my head, but 340 degrees Fahrenheit and they’re fine as big and flat.
Shawn: 10:10 And yet again, any other we’ll repair. Not really good idea, not really a good idea. Big Flap disc wheels. Great idea. Yeah. Let us know. And then I can yet again with their ultrasound, we get a map out that we repair of areas specifically, you know, minimize that. And the other hard thing with wheels is, I’m suppose he zip wheels or any big desk as their core material, whether it’s some type of foam or honeycomb, that’s a different type of repair. Uh, if you want to do it successfully or safely, you can always just throw a bunch of junk on top. Yet again, we’ve seen a lot of other people’s repairs or they just layer and layer and layer. It looks bad. It is bad. So it was a pretty normal week for us this week and repair, as we said, zip disc wheels, another broken three t and an argon 18 with a the exact same damage as the [inaudible] seat mass. Oh, that’s I guess seat posts, heat mass. Be careful, be careful. Carbon paste, torque wrenches.
Dan: 11:09 So we are moving on to our main topic for the week’s episode. The main topic. We’re going to talk all about forks, why we scan them, what side of the plate they go on, why we trashed them, how they are made, where they’re vulnerable. Why do we not repair them? Why they ran away with the spoon, and why no one should be repairing them. Start at the top. Let’s dive in. Why should nobody be repairing? Forks is the most dangerous part of a bike. I always say there’s two things that you never break on, a bike, your breaks and your, uh, your brakes are the only thing you know. Who cares if your drive frame breaks? Right? You can still come to a stop. I mean, it’s annoying, but you can flip. Your brakes should always work and break, but there’s a lot. It’s so much more material involved.
Shawn: 11:56 There’s a lot of triangulation between all the tubes. Obviously it’s. You can still fall and get hurt, but if you’re for goes, you’re, it’s trouble. There’s no way graceful way of a fork breaking. We scan them. You know, we miss canning forks now for over a year and we trashed a lot of forks. I mean, these aren’t new. These are folks that have been involved in any sort of wreck. Be it with a really, really heavy, gnarly personal wreck. Somebody crashed into a curb really hard or hit by a car or they drove their bike in the garage. You know, anytime you do anything super destructive, it’s good to probably let someone in ultra sound scan your fork. Not a lot of places that can do it or the only ones probably in North America. It’s quick. I mean, we turned us 50 bucks for it, but when I’m mainly looking at as your steer tube and it’s amazing how much damages to your two can take without showing any damage.
Shawn: 12:51 Ridiculous. That’s a little terrifying and I’m not trying to scare people about forks, but just like carbon forks are amazing. If you get into front end collision with your fork, you should probably be scared of it. That’s a good point. Yeah. Yeah. You should take it seriously. I mean you just said it. These aren’t new for is that we’re talking about. We’re talking about forks that are already deployed in service. Yeah, and if you crash it into your garage or into another car or human right, you shouldn’t be scared of it. I mean you just said it. We hidden damages in steer tubes. Massive. Massive. I mean how many did we. We just scanned 44 and found damage in the tube almost in every single one of them after had been in a crash and we don’t repair it or we just cut the legs off and sometimes they scrap them for weird parts.
Shawn: 13:36 But I suppose the personal thing. Yeah. You know, it’s like when people talk about fork damage, it’s typically the steer tube. You know, if you wreck anything in the lower legs, it’s pretty obvious. It’s much thinner tube. You look at it, you know it’s visible, it’s easy to see the paint scratched. It’s not hidden inside of your head and two bearings or it’s inside the head tube is not under a stem or headset spacers. You don’t see your steer tube. I mean there’s no reason to. So when you crash, you know, think of all the force of your entire body weight going into the handlebar in a, you know, type of crash it, single type of crash and going into the handlebars through the style, which is a very short, stiff object into the steer tube and that distorts it. And then the steer tube is locked in place by your two bearings and a lot of people are surprised that it’s do tubes break or show damage inside the head tube essentially. But I try to talk about it as your fixed points of contact. Do you have the axle, you know the dropouts where the sets. That’s kind of your input force, right? Whether it’s a curb, a pothole, running it into something, it doesn’t matter. You hit it. You put your forest on the axle and then that bends the legs which are meant to bend a bit, you know, [inaudible] are compliant and then it hits the lower bearing and then that acts as a kind of a little fulcrum noticed I got a teeter totter
Shawn: 14:53 and it tries to impart all that stress load into the middle of the steer tube there, which. And then it’s locked again by the upper bearings. If you run a big head to bike through, which a lot of bikes aren’t nowadays. Yeah, unless it’s a 29 that they were in tiny, tiny had throughs, but that’s where we find most of the damages. Exactly. In the middle of the forest, in between those two barriers to impact or we find most of them on over clamp stamps. Yeah. Or yet again, they do something wacky stems are really, I don’t know yet again, people, certain stem seem to clamp more aggressively or sharply and cut into forks a lot more. I was not good either or there’s something on the inside of the bike. You know, we saw this one today that came through on a repair request.
Dan: 15:37 Somebody has an old wound up fork that they don’t make anymore caliber for a tandem. So very specific. A one inch tandem to. That’s what it was right when it was over one inch, wound up for work for a tandem caliper break. But no, it, it, it somehow with the term, with the, you know, the rotation of the fork through turning this customer gouged, you know, a millimeter, half a millimeter deep or really all the way around the entirety of the fork. And they were like by the upper headset area. Is that the compression? Uh, it looked like it was in the middle of the forks. I don’t know exactly it weird and there’s a lot of weird, uh, my [inaudible] or my full suspension, I’m in ibis do this as well where they run the cables through the head tube and it gets near this steer too, but like it’s just kind of by this year too, but I never liked it.
Dan: 16:27 I don’t know. I don’t know what caused this huge couch, but you know, the customer, the bike shop person who got in touch with you guys are replaced this or do your magic. And so, you know, especially being the bearer of bad news with something that’s not one off, but really, really hard to replicate like that. It’s like, sorry, we can’t do anything. Like, yeah, I wish we could help here. Please don’t have anybody else working on it. And it was a one inch tandem fork. Yeah. We’d say here’s the steel frame builder, right? I mean the bikes already heavy. It’s holding them to people who cares about if the fork is four pounds. And that’s exactly what I went back to. We go back to it all the time. This is not worth it. This is not your customer safety to people’s lives at stake.
Dan: 17:10 I mean, I just, that I, I said, I really hope that you don’t bring this to anybody else to be worked on because it should be retired, which is, which is the factory. And again, that’s like we, we empathize with you, you know, we hate telling people that they have to get rid of things. We were talking about wheels earlier in this episode. It’s sucks to trash a wheel or a fork, but fact of the matter is you have to. Safety is the number one priority for us and we’re striving to make that the number one priority of shops and people that worked with us as well. So, um, yeah, it’s hard, but sometimes that’s the nature of damages is
Shawn: 17:50 not repairable. That’s the way it is. Yeah. We don’t fix anything and again, have experimented a lot as far as people cut steer tube short, they want us to extend it. I’ve tried it once for myself. That’s not great. That’s fine. I, you know, honestly it was OK, but it just wasn’t going to be great. It was never going to be perfectly round and not have the run-out when the rotational run out issues and what’s the rotational run out? Basically just rotational alignment basically. If you were to like take a tube and roll it on a table, what it hop. Oh, you know what I mean? Yeah. So it’s hard to keep things cancelled. Run out in a rotating. Yeah. You run out can still loose term, but basically some things rotating and you get kind of a hop, you know, it’s like a wheel.
Shawn: 18:33 You would call it out of true. Typically like shaft rotations in machinery called run out. I don’t really know where that comes from to be honest. So that’s what you see pool bros doing with their cues when they roll them on why they’d. Yeah, I guess that is checking for it. Yeah. Pool Gobros little sharks jump into the pool. I know it as not clipping enough bolts when you’re climbing and then you’ve potentially have 15, 20 plus feet of rope underneath you before you clip into things. So that’s what you’re running. That’s how Joel claims he’s a wildlife forks. Don’t laminate repair them. Why or just replace? Why are they, why are they so vulnerable in the first place? Oh, that’s a good question. Know I think they shouldn’t they be, shouldn’t they be more beefy? Well, they actually very much so. What I try to tell people a lot without a fork, you know, it has to almost do the same amount of work as the rest of your frame as far as like holding up a writer.
Shawn: 19:30 Obviously the rest of the frame has a drive train attached, but the [inaudible] that’s the only other thing there. The fort still has to do all that same amount of work and only three pieces left leg, right leg steer tube. You know, it’s like you can make a frame 600 grams. He still can all your lightest forkey should probably ever imagine you’d be 200 grams. I don’t even know. You know, people always think fortunately lighter and lighter and lighter, but you’re like, Nah, don’t do it. It’s not worth it. And so do all the same work. And, you know, there’s a lot of safety around it too, especially in one of the biggest reasons why people are moving to through axles, you know, as, as a safety reason. Um, a lot of forks are designed in the worst case scenario. If somebody doesn’t close the quick-release right, let’s say you’re writing along, you know, you can ride a bike without a quick-release, don’t do it, but as long as you’re pushing down on the legs and the forker sitting over the axle, a, you take a turn and lean it a little bit, you’re going to come out and fall over.
Shawn: 20:22 So a lot of [inaudible] companies that design their bikes, that each leg has to take the full force of the rider, which is kind of crazy to think about. So you’re like, all right, it’s already factor safety to right off the bat. Um, so the beauty of through axles, why I think it’s being adopted very quickly, is you get rid of a lot of inherent user risk. You don’t need lawyer tabs anymore because it’s a calf captured axle system. You’re not going to change as fast. But in general, nobody’s, I mean there’s a few racing scenarios where you need to do a really quick, we’ll change, but I would think 99 point nine, nine percent of people do not need to do a quick oil change. So I to be a contrarian on that anyway and say that it could actually even be faster. Why?
Dan: 21:05 How do you get to that point? Fumbling around with the quicker lease. If you don’t have all of your quick releases for the wheels that you’re dumping in any way set exactly to the clamping force, then you have to do like the notes and obviously there’s the pro trick where you take all the. We’ll have a mechanic. Well the parole mechanics trick, you take all of the wheels that are neutral anyway and you pre tighten them before you put them in the car. Not Everybody’s going to do that. So arguably I think that actually it could be faster because it’s easy to go well twisted bunch of times. I’ll put it back in exactly lined up, already send it on down the road and like, oh, maybe I didn’t like fully clamp it tight. But then as you said, it’s like, oh, it’s still going to be OK for the remainder of that race.
Dan: 21:51 I don’t know if that’s actually been tested. I don’t know if we’ll swap, you know, between a quick release and through axle. I think a quick release will still be faster in the. Someone really quick. I think you’re talking seconds. I personally could stop and slow down in my life a tiny bit more and go, Oh, this is really beautiful. Was really talking race scenarios. Yeah. I don’t care if I get a flat. I’m just like, oh, I’m stopping and I’m trying to check in into the president of every once in awhile or are we done with this episode? Um, yet again with through axle forks, I think it’s a great system. Sure you need a wheel set change, whatever. But actually there’s a lot of wheels out there that are convertible, which is great. Yeah. And all it’s a fully capture system allows you to make a much safer for, I don’t want to say lighter, but better designed for the 12 millimeter axle thing is a little bit of an annoyance, but I get it makes it much more compliant for those 12 millimeter envy forks ride.
Shawn: 22:45 They ride much smoother than the 15 millimeter one or even the 15 millimeter or sorry, the quick-release cross end before I have them on two of my bikes and they’re great, but they’re actually pretty like noticeable. Um, but then the 12 millimeter fork rides, oh, it’s smooth because he had, again, they are combining both legs into the single design. You know, they get around that safety factor alone. I mean it’s not getting around to is just a smarter system. I love through axles. Think that the best thing it looked good too. I have always hated the local quick releases. Something about that leverage. Just a little. I know it’s a weird thing. It just looks terrible. Don’t know if [inaudible] ever some of them. Not all of them, not all of them. And you get those. Dt Swiss are was ones you get to reposition into the right spot and when somebody has really big feet like myself, I hit my foot on my heel.
Shawn: 23:38 Doesn’t that sound crazy? But it’s totally doable. Whoa, that sounds crazy. Big Feet. Some banks are really small. Whoa. I never thought about that. What about total overlap, but he’ll overlap. Yeah, I think the main problem was a rigid 26 inch mountain bike. Don’t worry. Those have all been donated to the historical society in my garage. Everybody’s screaming. Does anybody still make a rigid 26 or. I mean just I guess hardtail not for rigid. That sounds like a compass cycles thing to me of the willamette trap. Pass a softball. Fat Bikes don’t count. I know there’s still 26 inch fat bikes, but you’re rolling a motorcycle tire at that point. That’s a whole different episode. Yeah, that is a whole different different episode. Forks don’t embody repair. I’m not worth it. I know it sucks to buy a new one. Oh, another question. Oh, how many different types of Fort Construction are there?
Shawn: 24:39 You know, I could almost say as many as you can think of, that’s a dumb answer, but generally there are only a handful and it kind of comes down to what’s known as one, part two, part three, part forks. That refers to you how many individual pieces the forks made as and if it’s a carbon fork, you’re typically talking about how many parts are molded separately and then bonded together in a post-secondary process. I would say like your envy fork is to Buddhism was a fork there. Your most expensive fork in general. That processes because the dropouts through the steer tube, that’s a single layouts expensive because it’s a bigger mold and it’s more complicated. Designed that way up. It’s also your strongest work. It’s all so your latest [inaudible]. It’s really your best fork. It’s also the most expensive, obviously being strongest, best, latest. I’m still empty.
Dan: 25:27 Forks aren’t that expensive considering it’s literally holding up the, you know, it’s doing the work of the entire frame. A lot of forks from a lot of different areas are known as [inaudible]. Part of the lowers and the steer tube are made very separately and you’ll see these forks, sometimes they have alloy steer tubes, you know, carbon lowers, kinda depends how they blend them together, whether it’s at the crown or they can be a some kind of aluminum or steel molded crown with the legs bonded, bonded in there, you know, they could just put the steer. It depends if the crown is molded into with the legs and the steer tube is glued or molded into or I guess bonded into that section. That’s really common. That’s a much cheaper fork. It’s honestly relatively fine. It’s not as elegant. It’s not a mean. It’s probably a strong, but they have to be heavier to be as strong.
Shawn: 26:17 I don’t like them. They don’t ride as nice than a three part framework is really your cheapest fork. If anybody’s ever selling a carbon fork, maybe under a hundred and 50 bucks, it’s probably this style and obviously you can do it and it’s OK, but yet again it’s heavy and that’s where you have a steer tube, a crown and your legs are made separately and everything is just clued together and there were a, you know, an carbon forks first came out and that’s, that’s how they were made, you know, each individual leg has made blue to the crown crayons and glue to the steer tube. A lot of little parts, cheapest mold, you know, sometimes the left and right legs are actually the same, same mold, which is, you know, areas. And then you start to put dropouts in. No, it was actually thinking about this morning on the right and remember Alpha q, a here and gone so fast.
Shawn: 27:01 I mean, what were they really around three years maybe longer and I was just thinking about this fork episode and being like, what have I worked on with forks over the years, those Alpha q’s were really [inaudible]. They were actually a pretty nice fork and nobody envy wasn’t around yet or just starting in a NBC seemed astronomically expensive for some reason back then, even though they’re probably the same price now. Uh, so Alpha q was out and you know, they made a carbon fork, but they had metal dropouts in the bottom and the metal dropouts would fail, but they would spend. And I’m sure anybody that’s ever had an off cue, I’m sure this happened to all of them, if not, check your outfit cute for dropouts. And what they can do is they become unbounded or disbanded inside the fork lake, but they can’t pull out. And the reason why they can’t, they can spend and spend and spend and spend.
Shawn: 27:57 Obviously that’s not good, but so if you open your quick release, you can literally spend most of those dropouts all the way around or very easily break them free and they’ll do that and floated it, come out, you know, what it looks like or which I always joke. Exactly. They just, they basically, someone looked at the end of a um, air tool and you know, the male end of the air tool that’s just like kind of a bulb shape. That’s all it is. So that’s why I can’t pull out because it next in that expands and it’s molded. Yeah, I mean it’s filled with epoxy so it’s stuck. I can’t pull out. I pulled them out before, obviously I know how to extract metal from car bad design because it just spins, spun and spun and spun and spun and obviously they were thrown out to who they owned by.
Shawn: 28:38 I forget who else was actually. They’re owned by some, actually a huge company. Yeah. They were owned by somebody really big. They think realize that they can make golf shafts. So a golf club for way more, a lot less work with a lot less liability. And I’m like, yeah, make the carbon golf shaft. I don’t, I don’t blame you, but the fork itself was, there was, those are pretty nice and they were a little ahead of their time and you can get them a fender outs. Remember they, they also made a fork. That’s a little bit of a Unicorn. It was the long reach road for. Yeah, I do remember that one. They did. They were the only people that have really made. I mean obviously in going from wound up, but customer kind of weird-looking yeah, the you made a long reach road for with with fender islands and in the northwest.
Shawn: 29:24 That fork is heavily needed. I mean now everyone just writes to disc brakes or will eventually have that fork was king for a while and you can only really use Shimano made a long pole or a long arm break because you need special breaks at that point and so to develop orange makes one dish model ones kind of sucked because there was a lot of grand cru. Yeah, exactly. The velo orange ones are good. They’re much heavier, chunkier luminance. They don’t reflect the shmodel ones. You could actually fly. You would see the caliper arms, flax under load, so you would break and you could see the arms flexing and like, I don’t like this, and it was raining and garbage, Yo, it’s. You’re just picking it up.
Dan: 29:59 The glory days. Am I right?
Shawn: 30:01 While riding in the rain last night, didn’t those coming down the Virginia hills, which is 600 feet am I love disc brakes and tubeless tires. There’s so many holes in the road that you can’t see you in. It’s archives and I feel pretty. Oh, I don’t like Jimmy. My tire and the holes, but no pinch. That’s why I don’t feel like he. Check your Alpha q [inaudible] to check your Id. If anybody’s an Alpha Q. Check the dropouts.
Dan: 30:22 Yeah, and to touch back in where we were, there are a lot of ways to make a fork. There’s a lot of ways to make fork. If you are in an accident, do consider getting your fork ultrasounded. Again, we’re not trying to fear monger, but sometimes the truth is scary and if you’re in an accident that is pretty significant and you ride a carbon fork, get it checked out, it’s. It’s worth it. If it is damaged, don’t repair it. Don’t have anybody repair it. That’s not worth it. Getting a new fork is going to be the safest thing for you, for your customers, for your friends and family, because those are people that are going to be there for you if and when something goes wrong. So again, not trying to fear monger. Forks can be scary now, but now you know what to look for and now you know how they’re made, so now you know how to prevent that from happening all in the first place. If there are ever any questions relating to forks, make sure you submit it to us using the carbon queries hashtag and we will get right back to you with an answer.
Shawn: 31:20 Yeah, I mean look how many fork recalls the earn a year to four. That’s why there are so many fork recalls. All the big companies take [inaudible] very seriously. They know it’s the highest liable to say the highest liability aspect of their bike. Probably. I mean specialist. Do you recall the 1000 of the law works and you know, whether it’s track or giant or Kanye or whoever, whomever. There’s always one fork recall a year it seems.
Dan: 31:41 Oops, I’ve got to think anything in the cockpit is high liability bars, stem fork, front wheel. I’ve never heard of this. Yeah, I’ve never heard of a stem breaking either.
Shawn: 31:51 He recalled my, it wasn’t a full CPC recall. It was their remembers their disc forks. Were you working for us yet? We had one of them and the, it was the disc brake road for work that doesn’t exist anymore. Actually it was the inch and a half lower. Quick read a quick release version. Um, they don’t make them, I don’t think they make them anymore because they took them all back because of the language here off. Oh yeah. It wasn’t a full recall because I don’t think that sold very many at that point and they just emailed the people that are like, hey, you have one of these? And you’re like, oh yeah, I mean it was just sitting there and he used it. I don’t even remember why I had it
Dan: 32:25 put a fork in it. The segments done a soft fork in the road in. Yeah. Again, in summary, please do be careful. Now you know what to look for a check for. Now you know much more about [inaudible] in general, so if something goes wrong and please free to reach out to us at any time, uh, don’t risk it. It’s not worth it. And as a up, there are no visual cues or you can’t iterate that enough. You will not, even if you’re a steer tube was busted, you pulled it out of your bike and you looked at it. You’re not going to be able to tell ultrasounds. The only way to check that out pretty quick too can have that done in 24 hours. Again, feel free to reach out. Safety’s the most important thing on this one. Yeah,
Dan: 33:08 about the time in the podcast where we answer our carbon queries. As always, these are user generated questions that people submitted using the Hashtag carbon queries. You can submit through Instagram, facebook, twitter, linkedin, or email. And if we see a question that will like, we will answer it. This question for us today, Shawn what is the best way to sand down my bike if I want to repaint or spray it at home? What do I look for? How do I know it is paint and clear coming off and not carbon? Uh, I think you’ll. Anybody’s trying to sand down their own bike. We realized that it’s a x to do it early, so city and will take it even a step farther is atrocious to do. Yeah. I mean if you want to do a good paying job, you really have to spend a lot of time prepping.
Shawn: 33:57 Everybody thinks that um, we have some magic to prepping bikes. His name is nick. He’s a wild ride, but I mean as far as like prep goes, there’s the, we have some like shortcut a. You can’t sandblast carbon. You can’t bead blast it. You can’t walnut shell blast it. We’ve tried it all. Varying degrees of success. Not enough that everyone risk risking anybody’s real project. There are, you can soda blast, which is actually baking soda. Really cool. Really dusty. Really messing it. You do it in a booth obviously, but still you’d message super slow works. Um, I just love the concept of soda blasting. I know it sounds so old timey in fifties, like soda blast, use Ph and fossil use. Phosphorus one. Cherry Cola please. It’s just been governor. I wonder if coke would strip a bike. I doubt it. Doubt it. Anyway, the first step is preparation.
Shawn: 34:49 Preparation, or we don’t, um, you. There’s a new method called dry ice blasting. Actually shooting chips. The dry ice. That’s not necessarily a softness thing. It’s more of a, it’s really easy to clean up because it just evaporates or makes a water puddle evaporate. So it’s actually the cleanest is awesome. And then there’s, uh, some paint strippers that are like a chemical goop. There’s summer citrus based and well I’d say those are real mixed bag of. Some of the ones we’ve tried have performed miserably. Oh, they just don’t do anything. Some of the ones we’ve tried work effectively, but then you still have to get all the goop off or can use afterwards. You still have to wait 24 hours. So just yeah, you might as well just get into it and sand in the first place. There really are no, no shortcuts at all for properly your bike for it.
Shawn: 35:38 The thing that I tell people, which sounds really weird, one of the most. One of the things I learned the most in this carbon business over the years is boy, the cost of good sandpaper. So worth it. And it sounds crazy to say like, yeah, it’s a couple bucks a sheet, you know, we use 3m sandpaper. It’s, yeah, it’s not cheap or all the difference. And you know, sandpaper is a disposable thing. You can’t just use it forever, you know, it wears down, the grit wears off or the grip breaks down. Good sandpaper that most of the stuff you get from the hardware stores junk. I haven’t found a good hardware store sandpaper, but it depends on your hardware store. But most of this job just wears down and it’s crappy. And if the big thing is a sanding is hard, I make everybody saying here just to get to respect how hard it is very hard to doing a good job, especially on a bike with a round tube, it’s very easy to create pressure points or high pressure spots and you’ll notice you’re like, oh I cut down this area so fast.
Shawn: 36:32 But then some other areas it’s paint on it. You can through a frame accidentally so fast, unless you can do cars, save carbon repair. You just created a real expensive problem. We had one customer saying, Oh, I’ve got a bunch of customers. Like trying to help to like, oh it was third at sanding my bike out and you’re like one guy, I think he’d like sandor through like five spots and we needed to touch them all up. Sanding socks. If you are going to do, if you are going to do it, we recommend starting with a fine grit. Nothing lower than three. 20 earlier. Yeah. Wet. Yeah. Don’t do anything dry because carbon does bad. Dust is bad, wet. And even that it gets messy. Do it at 3:20. Get a nice flat sanding block. The third thing, we have expensive sanding blocks. They’re very, very hard neoprene blocks, I guess I’d say almost call it a sponge and those were down and lose their flatness as well. You need something just flat and good and good sandpaper and just move your arm a lot. Get a nice podcast like this one. Hey, catch up on all of her old episodes and for you know, and you’d, you’d be half done on the bike.
Dan: 37:42 Another thing to think about is your light source. Make sure that you’re in a place that’s bright enough where you can actually see what you’re doing. If you’re sanding down a black bike in your garage, trying to look and see whether the patient has turned a carbon, it’s all going to be black in the first place. You’re going to be kind of tough to see that. So I’m thinking of a light source as well. Um, and then finally I kind of just touched on it, but you don’t want to look for color if you are sanding a white bike. It’s about as easy as it gets. Anything darker than that, it starts to get more difficult, more difficult, more difficult. If you see, if you know you’re thinking, you’re starting to get through paint and you start to see black, that’s where you’re gonna. Want to stop?
Dan: 38:26 Check your watercolor. Yeah, check your watercolor. If it’s coming out black, that means you’re hitting carbon in the far. It’s time to stop. That means you probably should have stopped a little while ago. It’s like a torque wrench. They’re. The only real answer to this way is it’s not easy. Take your time. Go slow. Take your time. Go slow. It’s not hard, but it is actually harder than you think it is. It’s, it’s very challenging and boring. Really boring or you only do it once. I guess it’s OK. And then when you go to repaint it, you know, make sure you get a nice primer too, because that’ll help with smoothness. Hi, Bill Lott. I build, I build brimer. Lay It on Finn to don’t get all excited and do huge goopy sprays all at once. It’s going to look like an ass if you do that through number six. Oh, is that over there? Over? Thanks again for the great submission again. Hashtag carbon queries, instagram, facebook, linkedin, twitter, email. Get out us if you have a question in wants to answer it on the podcast.
Shawn: 39:29 Alright. Heading to our favorite segment. Definitely our favorite segment over, under, over, under. For those of you who aren’t familiar, we haven’t done it for a couple of weeks, but it goes by quick. Ah, it does go by quick. What this segment is is Shawn and I bring up various topics related to cycling, not related to cycling, have to give either an overrated or an underrated claim followed by a y. Who wants to go first? Straight pole spokes versus J bed. I know, I know you have some. We’ll history. I like because it reminds me of defunk for some reason. I don’t know. I think [inaudible] folks, they’re straight pull pokes. Straight pole spokes I think are underrated. I think they’re great. Oh cool. Yeah. I got one for you. Go shoot back and forth. Tuna Salad sandwiches. Saw. Underrated. Actually correctly rated because you think it’s great and it is a great trick.
Shawn: 40:27 Question. Trick answer wasn’t tricky. Depends. I’m not a celery guys, which is amazing to me. Why salaries? Worthless? No, it’s not. It has that peppery crunch that. Yes, it is part of the river. It’s very slight floss. My teeth, I’ll use floss. Clearly. We disagree on this narrow right? Salary. Underrated over under Bar Mitz. That’s a good one to. And I did not see that coming. Completely overrated. What? Have you ever used them? No, I’m going to say they’re overrated. Why? Just because it kind of looks like you’re riding a junkie. Snowmobile. Yeah. I’ll give you that. I don’t like it. Oh, they looked. Um, but the god they were so I to know. Well, I bet somebody crashed and has not been able to get their arms out. Why would you need to get your abs out? Gray so you don’t hit your face on something.
Shawn: 41:25 Oh, I see. I don’t know. I did one, a echo read to read the year that it was like zero degrees. Oh, I borrowed press press department guy. Obviously you and I borrowed them. My hands are so sweaty. See Big. Your hands get too hot. They zero degrees and I was just wearing like normal mom, my gloves, which is awesome, but I was like, my hands are actually take them off in the middle of the race because I was like, I cannot. My hands were sweating very useful. I think maybe if I believed in fat bikes and living in climate that needed them. Dirty Kenza, overrated, underrated over. I’m over it. Never done it. I don’t like that. It’s a lottery and that sells out and now they have, what do they call it? Decade 200. Two hundred mile race now. That’s how it’s always been a. well, they have some special version that’s maybe 400. No, I thought it was a hundred miles. Anything that’s abbreviated [inaudible] and not donkey Kong related right out for Donna. Karen the hand. Why of Donna Karan? New York on dude. No Sir. You can want open my eye. You got to stuffing it up. Give it to your friend and spin. I wraps up this lesson. All right, we’re done with that. That’s a good. Another rousing segment of over under.
Shawn: 42:53 thanks for tuning in this week. We’re hoping next week we’re going to have our first interview, Tony Carlin’s of his Velo, also known as allied cycling, have bringing carbon fiber manufacturing back to Arkansas. Really, really excited at the potential to start doing some interviews. We thought that one was a good place to start there. Making carbon fiber here and we’re remaking carbon fiber here, so it’ll be great mixture. Your tune in for that one. We’ll talk and shop, but other than that, uh, that about tapes up the box for this episode. What do we say about the President John? Check into it once in awhile. Boom. See you all next week.
Speaker 3: 43:28 No.