Pimp your Ortlieb: Replacing plastic hardware with stainless steel

Have you ever been bothered by the plastic hex nuts that Ortlieb uses inside their bags? Quite possibly your answer will be “no” and you haven't ever thought about them. However, some people are bothered by them, as they stick out into the inside of the bag and can get snagged on things—and also look a little cheap.

When, after many years of heavy use, I lost one of the nubs, I remembered that I had once seen an alternative on a German bike touring forum. Unfortunately, several different local hardware stores didn't have the required parts. But hey, McMaster-Carr to the rescue!

Here's the before:

And the after:

Much nicer, isn't it?

These are the required parts, from left to right:

• 12mm M4 machine screw
• Countersunk washer for machine screw
• 12mm OD M4 flat washer
• M4 nylock nut

For a full conversion of a Back Roller you will need thirteen of each. I got everything in stainless steel, which is probably a bit overkill and quite expensive. If you're paranoid about waterproofness, it might make sense to add a little Seam Grip before tightening.

Credits for coming up with this solution go to GeorgR.

Musson's Professional Guide to Wheel Building: But does it work!?

My review of Roger Musson's Professional Guide to Wheel Building is very positive. But how does his advice hold up in practice? Well, I just finished building a 650B wheelset following his advice and using some of the DIY tools described in the book.

DIY Nipple driver

Musson argues that commercially available nipple drivers such as the Park Tool ND-1 suffer from a design flaw in that they lead to an initial spoke tension that is too high[1] . Musson's design, built from a cheap screwdriver or bit has a central pin 3mm long, significantly longer than that of most other nipple drivers. The idea is that the spoke moves up inside the nipple, pushes against the pin, and then disengages the driver, allowing the builder to quickly achieve the same thread engagement on all spokes. To achieve that in previous builds I had used a visual indicator: Engage all nipples to the point where the threads just disappear into the nipple. Depending on your spoke length, this may already be too much tension, and Musson's method also sounded faster so I decided to give it a try.

Crude, but it works

I started out with a drill bit, later to be used with an electric drill. I don't have a vise, and consequently the tool I produced is neither pretty nor particularly precise. Musson also advocates against using an electric drill. He argues that with a hand tool, it is easier to precisely feel get the disengagement of the tool just right. After having used an electric drill in this build, I tend to agree. I ended up with fairly good equal tension in all spokes, but it could have been better still. Another problem I encountered was that after using the tool, the spokes were still very slack, requiring several more turns with a regular spoke wrench. However, that probably was less the fault of the tool but of slightly too long spokes (see below).

Spoke lengths

I had ordered spokes before buying Musson's book and reading his strongly worded advice to not rely on manufacturer or any other measurements that you haven't done yourself. While I actually had measured at least the front hub myself, for the ERD of the rims and the rear hub I relied on the value provided by the manufacturer/the Edd online database. This did not work out so well. Assuming that my tensiometer is still accurate, in order to get adequate spoke tension, I had to engage the nipples to a point where I'm almost out of thread. One or two millimeter shorter spokes definitely would have been better—and probably would have prevented the problem with the nipple driver described above.

Spoke is already far in the nipple, despite not being at final tension yet

Lacing instructions

The lacing instructions were perfect. I got the lacing (32 spokes, three cross) right on the first try and for the first also managed to properly align the hub label with the valve hole (for purely aesthetic reasons, one is supposed to be able to read the hub label when looking through the valve hole). Between the written instructions and the helpful illustrations it is hard to go wrong.

Dishing gauge

When reading the instructions for building a dishing gauge, I was skeptical: Building a precision tool out of cardboard, double-sided sticky tape, and zip ties!? But lo and behold, this is a very solid design. Instead of using Musson's design of a bent spoke as the feeler gauge, I simply stuck a barbecue skewer through the corrugated cardboard. Because my truing stand—in contrast to Musson's design or the Park Tool TS-2.2—requires me to have the quick release skewer in the wheel for truing, the BBQ gauge was not ideal, requiring me to remove the QR skewer each time I wanted to check the dishing. This would be easily fixable, though, and with the QR removed, the dishing gauge worked great! As an alternative to cardboard, Musson suggests using thin plywood. At this point I think that for an infrequent wheelbuilder like me the (more easily manufactured) cardboard version is totally sufficient. Instead of using double-sided tape to attach the wood pieces that sit against the rim, I used superglue, which allowed me to more easily align.

I used E-6000 glue instead of double-sided tape to attach the wood pieces

Tensioning

Spoke torsion flag (and marked valve hole)

As a way of achieving spoke tension, Musson, like others, suggests using the sound a spoke makes when plucked with a fingernail or guitar pick: Pluck the spoke and compare the sound to that of the other spokes. I must say that this has never worked for me. You always get a mix of different frequencies and I find it hard to compare them to each other. It's quite possible that this is just a skill I lack (I do like death metal and grind core after all...), but I rather relied on my Wheelsmith tensiometer. Of course, as Musson correctly points out, this is more time consuming than the plucking method, but it does have the advantage of also providing you with absolute values for the spoke tension.

Musson's approach of iteratively checking lateral trueness, vertical trueness, dish, and tension works well, especially if you have the luxury of the amateur wheelbuilder: You can take as much time as you want to. For the final stages of tensioning I found his advice of using a masking tape flag to visualize spoke torsion to be especially useful. Under high tension, turning the nipple will start lead to a small amount of twisting of the spoke instead of further engaging the threads. So if you turn the spoke half a turn, it will probably only have engaged the equivalent of one third of a turn earlier in the building process. Previously I had just overtightened the spokes by about one eight of turn and then turned them back the same amount to get rid of the spoke torsion. But with the flag method it is possible to get the exact amount of required overtightening and backing out.

Conclusion

All in all, using Musson's tools and instructions allowed me to build a great set of wheels with little pain. Obviously I can't say for sure how they're going to hold up in the long term. But the tension is even, and trueness and dish are within tight tolerances so that I have a lot of confidence in them. The Professional Guide has proven itself to be an excellent manual for wheelbuilding while also saving you money by building your own tools.

[1] I believe this is not true for this VAR tool. But then that's 50 bucks...

Soda can stove extravaganza – Capillary Hoop Stove

I'm a big fan of DIY alcohol stoves. They're cheap, lightweight, efficient, and not terribly difficult to make. Until now I've used different iterations of Mark Jurey's Penny Stove. It's based on an air intake loosely covered by the penny in the middle and six jets on the outside. Alcohol poured into the middle primes the stove and once that has been used up the stove draws air through the center and starts the jet burn.

Old version of the penny stove, using the no longer available Heineken cans

In a discussion about coffee-making setups, someone mentioned a Japanese maker of a different type of soda can stove, the “capillary hoop stove.”

I spent a lot of time watching tetkoba's videos, and the both the design and the craftsmanship are amazing. By virtue of the capillary force, the jet burn starts almost immediately, and amazingly the stove stays cool to the touch. Today I bought a sixpack of V8 cans of the right size and will try to build a CHS myself. To be continued!

Testing a Penny Stove in the Cold

I am a big fan of DIY alcohol stoves, especially the penny stove variety. I like DIYing in general, and in this case it's also about the fact that a homemade penny stove is actually better than many if not most of the commercial offerings in terms of weight and heat output.

Heineken Penny Stove and stand

In a recent thread on the German Radreise-Forum about equipment choices for an overland trip from Germany to China, the question of the ideal stove came up. Alcohol stoves were discounted by some, based on the availability of fuel in many countries along the way and due to their questionable performance at high altitudes and low temperatures. I was somewhat surprised by the latter objections, as on the penny stove website there are a number of testimonial about the cold weather performance of the stove, including a quotation by Reinhold Messner who supposedly made tea with a jet-based alcohol stove on one of his expeditions to the Himalayas. However, the information there was not very specific -- how much longer does it take to boil water at cold temperatures and how much more fuel does it take -- and my curiosity was sparked. I decided to test it myself.

Air temperature of -9°C

Stove, pot, windscreen

This winter has been pretty mild in Montreal and so it took some time until it was cold enough for a meaningful test. Last Sunday morning had been predicted to be about -10°C and so I put my stove, fuel, and thermometer out on the porch right after waking up and ran the test after about an hour. So this is the experimental setup:

Altitude: 10m
Amount of water: 1l
Air temperature: -9°C
Water temperature at start: 5°C
Pot: 2.2l REI coated aluminium pot with slightly to big stainless steel lid (I couldn't find the original plastic lid)
Stove: Heineken-based penny stove with wind screen
Wind: almost no wind
Fuel temperature: same as air temperature

Burner at full power

I started the timer right before lighting the stove. The lighting itself was unproblematic: I just dropped a burning match into the stove. The total time until reaching a full boil was about 14 minutes and 30 seconds. I didn't measure the fuel consumption, as my kitchen scale recently broke, but the stove still had quite a bit of fuel in it.

5°C water right from the tap

Now what's the bottom line? Is the penny stove an appropriate choice for winter camping or riding through the Himalayas? I don't think you can definitely answer that question based on my test. Unfortunately, I don't own any other types of stoves and therefore couldn't do replications of the test on other equipment. But there are some hints: first of all, the stove does work in the cold. Even if it may not be the fastest, it will still boil your water in a not totally unreasonable amount of time. Second, we can compare the stove's cold weather performance with some of the published data at higher temperatures: in this test, a penny stove boiled 32 oz (0.95 l) of water in 7:50 at 20° degree air temp with 18°C degree water temp and 670m elevation. It would be interesting to calculate the estimated burn time adjusted for the different starting temperatures of the water, but I haven't done that yet.

Full boil

Assuming that it will get colder again here at some point, I'll try to repeat the test at something closer to -20°C and I might also do a test indoors to get a good baseline to compare my results to. If any readers can contribute data on the cold weather performance of alcohol or other stoves, please feel free to comment.

How to: Embedding maps with a GPS track and geotagged photos

On my other, mostly inactive blog I've posted a tutorial for creating embedded maps with GPS tracks and geotagged images. Not quite sure why I didn't post this here, and thus I at least wanted to link to the post.

Gunnar is ready for a ride

Okay, I've finally finished building up Gunnar and have had a chance to take some pictures for your (and my) enjoyment. Isn't he a beauty? Due to poor weather and salty roads I haven't had a chance to take him for a ride but hopefully it'll get better soon.



Now the nerd facts:

Gunnar Roadie 2002 62 cm frame
Shimano 105 ST-5600 brifters
Shimano Dura-Ace BR-7700 brakes
Shimano 105 RD-5600 rear derailleur
Shimano Ultegra FD-6500 front derailleur, clamp-on
SRAM PG-1070 12-27 10 speed cassette
SRAM 1050 chain
Selle Italia Flite Gel Flow saddle
Bontrager Select 27.2mm seat post
Powerdrive BC1.37x24t 68mm shell bottom bracket
FSA Gossamer 50/34 compact cranks
3T Forgie stem, aluminum, 120mm
3T Forgie bar, aluminum, 44cm
Cane Creek S2 headset
Mavic Cosmos 28 spoke rear wheel
Alex DA-16/Shimano Deore front wheel

Some of the components, like the front wheel will probably be replaced in the near future and I still need pedals, but my main goal was to get to a functional and affordable quality build ASAP. And in that I've certainly succeeded.

Mud Flap Pictures

Okay, here are the promised pictures of my DIY mud flap. Required skill level: only slightly above 0. Tools and material: box cutter, steel ruler, zip ties. It's a bit tricky to get straight cuts on the curved shampoo bottle; thus my mud flap ended up a bit smaller than intended. But, as I've said: it does work and it makes a big difference when riding in the rain.

Mud flap

I made and installed a DIY mudflap, made out of an old shampoo bottle, yesterday. Instructions (in German, but you don't really need them anyway) can be found here. Of course, today it was raining, and therefore I can say: they do work. They look a little goofy because they're Fructis-green but finding a black shampoo bottle is not exactly easy. Function over form.

Pictures will follow shortly.