Clever Yeti

yeti 007, originally uploaded by BMC Mike.

Black Mountain Cycles posted this today on a Yeti in for work. Pretty clever way to run a bottom-pull derailleur on a frame with braze-on routing for top-pull. (Well, if you don't count the necessary braze-on for the chainstay cable bolt.)

Solves the common problem of locating a cable barrel adjuster for the FD as well. Is that an older side-pull road caliper cable stop set-up? Cool beans.

Rocky Mountain actually solved this problem on some of their older bikes by mounting a pulley on the back of the seat tube near the bottom bracket. I'll try to get some photos posted here of that set-up since I have just such a frame in the closet.

I've been trying to set up the Rocky Mountain with an old Ritchey 2x9 42/29t chainring set up. My top-pull Suntour XC Microdrive triple derailleur has been balking at having to try to shift this, with good reason. Pretty hard to find a top-pull double front derailleur from this time period. Looks like some McGuyvering in this direction might be warranted. I'll keep you posted.

Tune-ups

Mind-blowing weather in Vancouver today: Sunny and 17 degrees (65 F, south-of-the-border speak) with light breezes and not a cloud in the sky. Off to Whistler for the weekend and hopefully there will be some singletrack involved, so it seemed like a good time to check the Karate Monkey's state of tune after a long rainy season. Legs were slow but the bike was clicking along precisely and Pacific Spirit Regional Park provided some fast, smooth-rolling trails to get the heart rate up.

Old tech: Loving the cost efficiency of the recent Sram X-O gripshift-to-Suntour XC 9000 thumbshifter swap to shift for the front SLX 36-24 double. Works like a charm!

New stuff, but it will wait

Where is the summer at? It is rainy and crappy and grey all over the place in Vancouver. Have some fun stuff to post but I need some sunshine for photo-taking. My people in Austin, meanwhile, are sweating and swimming in the sunny 90s. Ah well.

Picked up a few things recently. A frame on the cheap, brake levers to feed my Suntour XC habit. Good stuff over the weekend too.

I'll leave you with the brake levers for now, talk more about the other stuff when I get some photos taken. I usually leave stuff like this to gather dust at the UBC Bike Kitchen, but I picked these up for a potential overhaul on the Rocky Mountain and in place of a set of classic Shimano 600 calipers that were seductively super-shiny, but that I otherwise have zero use for. Not starting any more gruppo-hunts, thanks. Anyway, coming away with the Suntour levers instead of a massive new bike project disguised as jewel-like Shimano 600 calipers felt a little like a victory. (Rationalizations...)

Look like late 80's /early 90's Suntour XC -- Comp or Pro, hard to say without the foil stickers but they were basically the same levers unless my research findings are wrong.

Bad in black and all-metal construction with rubberized lever ends. More on these in a few days, because they've got some interesting stuff going on with them, good and bad.