GoatSurfer Retro MTB and other ramblings...

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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 17:33
subject    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

EWR Bikes, LLC
610.659.4430
www.ewrbikes.com

Keep coming back Jay and Kenn....any progress will get revealed here...

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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