Much like the local terrain, the past week or so has had a lot of ups and downs. The biggest downer was that I had to miss Mountain Bike Oregon this past weekend. At the very last minute, I found out I would not be able to attend, and I was extremely bummed, but I can’t really do much about things that are out of my control, so that’s the way it goes. Coming in at a close second in the downer department was that about $300 worth of bike parts, on both my mountain and road bikes, decided to fail. The freehub on my mountain bike; an expensive part on a bigger, more expensive part, just flat wore out. Great idea putting lightweight parts on a 5″ travel all mountain bike. I also notice a couple of my chainrings are worn out and causing the chain to skip. So the mountain bike is broke down, I head out on the road bike. After a few miles, I stop at a stop sign and I have trouble clipping into my pedal. I look down and the stupid pedal is broken. Are you kidding me?
OK, things are down, so what are you going to do? Start clawing your way back to the top, that’s what. Luckily, a good online bike shop had the parts I needed at a very reasonable price. They really did a good job to get the parts I needed quicker than I would have expected. UPS choked on the overnight delivery, but the shop refunded me the entire shipping cost. There is a lot of bad customer service out there, but I have to give props to Tree Fort Bikes. They have always done me right and they have great prices as well. A WTB freehub is not exactly a part everyone has, but Tree Fort had it and had the best price by far. They had the chainrings and pedals for my road bike as well. So thanks to Alan and the Tree Fort crew for the great service.
So what fun, rebuilding the rear hub of the mountain bike. The freehub was most definitely fried. It’s pretty clear this is a common problem because the new freehub had been redesigned to address some of the flaws that killed my bike.
The old freehub is on the right, if you look closely, you can see the teeth that engage the hub pawls are completely worn down. The old freehub has grooves in the hub splines from the cassette cogs, this can make it tough to remove the cassette. The new freehub(left) has a composite “bumper” to help prevent the cassette from eating into the freehub splines and it even looks like different material. The new freehub is made of a slightly darker, hopefully harder alloy.
Bikes are fixed up so out I go to ride my problems away. It almost worked to perfection. The riding conditions were perfect. Overcast, not as hot as it’s been, almost looks like a message that fall is on the way.
After a few miles, the rear hub loosened up and I had to ride back to the ranch to tighten it up. The rear hub loosened up shortly after I bought the bike so it seems like a regular issue with WTB DiscLite and American Classic rear hubs. Always schedule a “shakedown cruise” after major repairs, so this was not unexpected.
Back out the next day, more great riding. Never really a bad day on the trails around here.
The cloudy skies made things a little darker in the deeper parts of the forest, not a bad thing.
I had a couple small problems to make sure I was still in touch with reality. After doing a lot of work on my bike and spending more than a few bucks, I had a flat tire, not surprising because this time of year all the plants are throwing out the spikes and thorns. I carry a Crank Brothers Power Pump, unfortunately, I had a flat on a previous ride and the pump did not work the way it was supposed to. I sent the pump back to Crank Brothers and they sent a new pump out, no questions asked. Once again, great customer service. I needed that pump less than 24 hours after I took it out of the box and put it in my pack. Think a good pump is not a big deal? I had to stop right under these guys:
Pretty quick flat repair, to be sure.
A short time later, I broke my nearly new chain. Gimme a break! Thankfully, I had my Crank Brothers Multi17 tool to fix it up and get home. I ride by myself most of the time and in areas where nobody might be coming by for a while and there’s no cell service, so I count on my bike, what I carry with me and my knowledge and experience to get me home if I run into problems.
So, I’m trying to steer towards the sunny side of the hill, but I am genuinely bummed that I missed MBO. Oh well, tomorrow’s Monday, which is something.