Monday, November 9
EWR Project - Phase Nine (Part 2) - Dang Stems...
by
Billy Goat
on Mon 09 Nov 2009 11:53 GMT
My dentist put pay to my Sunday ride (an un-blogworthy story) but just think Texas Chainsaw Massacre and you'll get close to the Codeine popping pain I'm currently in...So, where were we?....oh yeah, continuation of Thursday's Steam Tweak.....Ok, anyone that has fitted a Syncros stem and not wanted to damage/scratch their bars will be well aware of what we call in the UK 'The 2p Trick' (some of you might well know this as the Dime Trick or Euro Trick  ). It's the one where you unthread the alloy bolts from the bar clamp, feed them in from the underside against a coin and force open the bars wide enough so that they don't scratch your beloved NOS-ness as you slide on your new stem. Well, I'm using riser bars on the EWR so we have all those bends to negotiate so we're into a whole bunch of fun with these!!! You see, the 2p Trick spreads the clamp using the maximum of the bolt thread, plus the thickness of the coin......and the stem is aluminium, which don't like being bent....EVER!!The '2p Trick' So, we start with the 2p Trick and voila, the Cattlehead stem glides round the first bend gracefullyRound the first bend
I start to feel confident and everything on earth was at peace......UNTIL, we get to the centre bulge on the bars  .
This is where you need to grow a set of balls as big as that Bull I posted up on here a while back and go for the 'Open Wide And Say My Name' 8p Trick. The 8p trick is FOUR 2p coins and my NOS Syncros stem stretched wide open to heart stopping, this baby's gonna crack, proportions  If I open any wider I'm gonna split asunder Someone was on my side, I got round the second bend and quickly cranked the stem back up tight. Not had a chance to ride the bike yet and I'm into that whole messy, sloping top cap rubbish you get with Syncros stems (say goodbye to another lovely King Top Cap...)Third stem on my EWR, third time lucky?
Saturday, October 10
EWR Project - Phase Seven - Barbara ann ba ba
by
Billy Goat
on Sat 10 Oct 2009 21:02 BST
Saw Time  So, the Race Face bars were TOO wide so out came Mr Sandvik and I've lost 20mm of each end, sanded down the ends and reset the controls. Grips got refitted and some Helicopter Tape applied on the cabled side of the head tube and also on the Syncros Revolution cranks.Minor tweak on saddle height too so it matches my Pace.Freshly cut (and out of focus  )
 You should have seen them BEFORE they were cut!!! So, you've read about using GT-85 and WD-40, Hairspray, water, glue......what about the 'Zip Tie Trick'? Well, it works a treat. Get two long and strong Zip Ties, feed them down inside the grip, one either side, so the 'teeth' side faces the grip....push to get it started, make sure any logos or patterns are lined up how you want them, then 'ski' them up using the ties by pulling the ends (for best results ziptie the ties together so you have a 'handle'). Once they are all the way up, pull harder and the Zip Ties will slide out.Zip Tricks
Friday, October 9
EWR Project - Phase Six...Dial Time
by
Billy Goat
on Fri 09 Oct 2009 10:16 BST
Another week, another configuration and I'm back in that pine forest again for some more shakedown time, it's a shame the place is a 100 mile round trip from my house else I'd be blasting round there all weekend....sadly I only get to go once a week and after work as it's near my office Last week was the first ever ride on my EWR and it highlighted some 'handling weirdness' that needed ironing out....and fast, so last weekend I pulled the front end apart, switched from a 0° rise 135mm stem to a 10° rise stem, lost the 1" rise Club Roost bars in favour of some Race Face Air Alloy in 1.5" rise flavour, moved one poker chip above the stem (leaving 20mm of spacing below), dropped the saddle height by 20mm, nudged the rails back and bled the back brake so it's now ultra vicious As much as hunting down elusive bike parts is a whole lotta fun, there's nothing more satisfying than dialling a bike in so the ride is El Perfecto. Plenty of bikes look good in pictures but ride like a wheelbarrow full of runny shit...So, it got blasted round the woods in the pitch black and wet and gnarly tree roots hidden by freshly fallen leaves focussed the brain 
That aside, my OWB rides 100% better than it did last week but I think these bars are a bit too Cowhorn for my liking. Since 1988 I've ridden flat bars and bar ends so this whole riser bar thing is a little freaky to me full stop and these Race Face bars are about a mile wide ......
I suspect that if they stay on the bike they will be saying hello to my little friend....the Sandvik Hacksaw for some 'amputational correctness'  Cowhorns in the pines Good job the trail was wide here...
 Cowhorns in the pines Part II
Saturday, October 3
EWR Project - Phase Five...Testing in Eastern Woods
by
Billy Goat
on Sat 03 Oct 2009 20:53 BST
Wednesday, August 19
EWR Project - Yard Trauma
by
Billy Goat
on Wed 19 Aug 2009 11:12 BST
Ahhh the joys of retro builds, one minute your are Soaring Angelic and the next you are Fathoming Hell when you hit a glitch, still, these seemingly insurmountable obstacles are there to be overcome...This particular bogey is perhaps to be expected, my frame is 1994 and therefore on the cusp of the transition to Compact Drive (or MicroDrive if you worked for Sun Tour  ) from the long established Standard Drive 5-bolt 110 mm/74 mm BCD. Me being a dumbass goat didn't factor this in and blindly specced some nice 110 BCD Syncros Revolution cranks (see pix below), lovingly spent an hour putting together the chainset from a bag of bits, offered them up to the sufficiently long enough BB (118mm where Syncros Revolution's should only need 117mm), tightened up the Crank O's and....BUMMER, the rings wanted to eat the chainstay  . Overlooking the obvious (well I am a goat  ) I showed this to my buddy and we came to the conclusion that the chainstay 'indent' (what the hell is the official name for that?) is positioned for Compact Drive 5-bolt 94 mm/58 mm BCD This was confirmed by offering up a 22/32/42 chainset which fitted nice and snug in the indent with sufficient clearance. So, the search is now on for a very rare beast indeed, Syncros Revolution Cranks in Compact Drive. I've only seen two sets for sale in as many years so this could prove a difficult task.....onwards with the search!!On a plus note I've managed to score a wheelset more suited to this build, sure the Campag Mirox were nice but not really EWR material. The current replacement is a set of Mavic 231CD's on Shimano DX hubs with 7sp cassette. More build pix coming soon....
Monday, August 17
EWR Project - Phase Two - Cock...pit...check? Yes, okay.
by
Billy Goat
on Mon 17 Aug 2009 13:17 BST
Cockpit check?Yes, okayLargactil, five milligramsLargactil, checkValium, ten milligramsValium, ten, checkHaloperidol, five milligramsWhich one's that?Little white ones, w, w, w for whiteW for white, okay, checkPhenobarbitone, five milligramsCheckDisipel, five milligramsCheckGlass of waterCheckOur father, which art in heavenMea culpa, mea culpa, mea maxima culpaI'm doing my best to keep this project Period Correct and it's frustrating! I am fully capable and aware of what is required, having done so on many previous occasions....anyway....rant over  The original EWR catalogue shows the OWB with Club Roost Go-Fast bars (complete with superflouous add-on brace).Original Woods Bike in 1994 EWR Catalogue I figured this
would be hard work until my regular riding buddy pulled out a couple of
pairs from his gargantuan parts bin. Sure they are not NOS but they
will do the job and I'll get the GOFAST decal reproduced for the brace.
Go Fast !!!  DX Thumbshifters....no man can live without several pairs of these badboys laying around and i'm no exception. Unfortunately I take it to the extreme and have several sets of NOS ones just laying around the place. They are very cool and work extremely well, who needs to be a sheep and fit M732 XT Thumbies anyway?....I am still using a set of MT62 DX Thumbies that came new with a bike in 1991, they have shifted God Knows how many times through at least 10,000 miles of cycling and not once did I tell them I loved them, in fact they have never even been stripped, just had copious injections of GT85 over the decades and they are still silky smooth. This EWR already has a bunch of M650 DX stuff on it so lets go the whole hog and hang these little virgins in the Cockpit too...NOS in the box   Smile for the camera children
Tuesday, August 11
EWR Project - From the horses mouth
by
Billy Goat
on Tue 11 Aug 2009 17:44 BST
Cussing and critique-ing the EWR 'Cable-stop-noodle-widget-thing' and then inviting the EWR boys to look at my Blog was probably not a smart move but as a result I now have the answer from Kenn at EWR himself....and it makes perfect sense from Kenn <*****@*****.com>to ********<*******@*****l.com>date 11 August 2009 17:33subject Re: Watch this (EWR) space....
Hi ****,
That is really cool! You know, I had totally forgotten about the
cable stop thing-a-ma-bob for that generation of frames! Glad you
found one though. We used that thingy because we didn't want to run
the cables underneath the bottom bracket. There were two reasons for
this:
1. We do a lot of winter riding here in PA, and that obviously
means snow and ice. Bikes of that era that the cabling went under the
BB were prone to having the cables freeze. Not a lot of fun
2. We were trials riders and bashed the hell out of our BB's with
rocks and they would have certainly been smashed at some point or
another.
Keep at it, I really like the follow along.
Kenn
Kenn Rymdeko
Keep coming back Jay and Kenn....any progress will get revealed here...
EWR Project - Phase One...
by
Billy Goat
on Tue 11 Aug 2009 10:20 BST
I wasn't going to post live updates of this build, but figured it might be good to look at retrospectively  There's some real history with this particular frame and it comes with a fantastic story but this will be revealed elsewhere once the build is finished.This project is a rebuild of a 1994 Eastern Woods Research 'Original Woods Bike'. EWR is a small company based in Pennsylvania USA who produced three bikes back in the day and then vanished. In the last couple of years they have started back up and now produce 'modern' versions of the Original Woods Bike in 26" flavour as well as some exciting 29er's and SS frames (www.ewrbikes.com).This particular frame is from the '2nd Batch' of OWB's and was made by Bill Grove of Grove Innovations (read more about Bill by going here: http://www.purplelizard.com/GIintro.htm ), it features water jet cut rear dropouts and some of the best mitred joints and pierced tubes you will see anywhere. The frame is plain old straight gauge 4130 Cromoly, no butting and weight saving here, this is just brute strength. Anyone who knows EWR's also knows they are no nonsense, hard riding bikes with their roots in trials and BMX so this build needs to be functional and reliable as opposed to 'aesthetics and tinsel', after all it's going to be hammered round the woods here in England, just what it was designed for. Ideally the build is going to be as Period Correct as it can be but there will be the odd substitution (for example, who would fit a pair of $400 dollar NOS red Shimano DX pedals then thrash it round a muddy forest?)The only theme with this will be small touches of red here and there to match with the red decals. I'm not revealing the full build here as things may change but if you've seen any EWR's then you'll know roughly what to expect 
Syncros Revolution Cranks (175mm) with Crank 'O' Matics, Shimano SG rings (26, 36, 46,) Shimano DX front mech, DMR V8 pedals in 'Code Red'
Shimano DX rear mech, NOS Shimano DX quick release, Shimano LX 7sp hubs laced to Campag Mirox rims.
Magura HS33 Tomac Hydraulic Brakes, NOS Syncros Hardcore seatpost 425mm
Dig those fat tubes...
I'm already thinking about not using the Campy rims and switching to some Mavic 231CD's laced to Shimano DX hubs, what do you think?
Tuesday, August 4
Here endeth the search.....eureka moment!!
by
Billy Goat
on Tue 04 Aug 2009 13:05 BST
Sometimes the smallest things are the biggest pain in the ass and this is no exception. For reasons best kept to themselves (and not fully understood by this poster) EWR omitted a downtube cable stop on the Original Woods Bike and opted for this weird little widget instead to get a Bottom Pull front mech working as if it were a Top Pull  .
Anyways, I didn't have one and have been trawling the Net trying to find one for the last two months.....well I struck double lucky in that not only did I find one but it was THE widget that was originally attached to the yellow beast below and came as a Karma Present  This does mean I guess that something yellow, heavy and steel might now be unleashed on the world.
Friday, July 10
Pennsylvania Steel - Eastern Woods Research
by
Billy Goat
on Fri 10 Jul 2009 15:08 BST
I have a big bunch of bike projects and I'm slow at building them, something I get ridiculed about at RetroBike .
To make things worse I recently picked up my 'Dream Bike' a 1994 Eastern Woods Research - Original Woods Bike.
The EWR has now pushed itself to the front of the queue and is consuming most of my spare time hunting down parts.This is the bare frame.....watch this space for updates.
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