Fallbrook Technologies stellt die neue stufenlose NuVinci N360 Getriebenabe mit 360% Übersetzungverhältnis vor, die lt. Hersteller mit nun 2450g um 30% leichter als das Vorgängermodell ist. Details liefert die verlinkte Herstellerwebseite. Über den Wirkungsgrad finde ich wie schon beim Vormodell keine Angaben, und das Gewicht ist nach wie vor relativ hoch. Für Fahrräder ohne Leichtbauanforderungen oder für Lastenfahrräder ist die Technik auf jeden Fall interessant.

Update: In der Newsgroup de.rec.fahrrad wurde mir dazu dankenswerterweise der Link auf den Fahrbericht in phil’s velo blog genannt.

The Fahrradzukunft magazine published a highly interesting review about dynohub chargers conducted by dynohub manufacturer Schmidt and others. The article was published in German language and unfortunately does not cover my Jawetec charger due to its unavailability. However, there are several interesting devices including the pedalpower+ stuff (check my link bar for more information on it!).
Update: the Fahrradzukunft magazine recently published part II of the USB charger article with some more very interesting devices and updates.

A short note on this blog: Most likely I will continue writing this blog at slow rate in German language. Xtracycle released several very interesting new addons and pannier kits and things are going on, but it is not such a big hype anymore. I believe it is worth of talking about in our native language, although big dummy cargo bicycles are still not a big issue here. At least, people realize the concept is useful, and I still love its great versatility and riding style.

I have been successfully using the jawetec bikecharger in combination with several devices for several trips at my bicycle, and I really like it. Today I received the information Jawetec’s web page is no longer available. Currently I have no clue whether their bike charger is still available somewhere. Since this great little gadget has been mentioned many times within this blog, please be aware that any links to the Jawetec page from this blog have become obsolete. I do not know, what happened to the company. In my opinion the Jawetec charger is one of the most useful accessories with bicycles and dynohubs, and I very much regret if production is stopped. There are similar products out there, but those are more expensive than the lightweighted, sophisticated, reliable and small Jawetec bike charger.

By the way, in spite of the fact that this blog has not seen updates for quite a long time, the Big Dummy is in happy use. 2009 milage compares to 2008′s. Snafu Knob Job tires, however, show far better durability than the Fat Franks used before. Apart from that, the Token bottom bracket again shows up some outer slackness, so I will probably use ordinary Shimano square tapered or whatever in the future.

Every now and then there are certain highlights that I am thankful for and enjoy them very much. It has been a busy summer and I had to reduce some of my occupations. There was not much time left for anything. However, we finally managed to meet nearly 6 months after his arrival at Salzburg. I am talking about Robert from Ohio who had his Big Dummy shipped to Salzburg from the US, and who will be leaving soon. I was in fear we would completely fail to meet at all.

I will be thinking a lot about those things we discussed as like our environment, nature, cycling, big dummy bicycles and Surly bikes, motorcycles, work, family, economy, USA, Austria. Once more I may indicate my dedication to cycling even this time where my bicycling percentage has dropped due to time and many other constraints.
Robert, I wish you a nice trip back home and I will be looking forward to your next visit over here.

Due to lack of fitness I had to cancel our plans for doing the Route des Grandes Alpes on the Big Dummy this year. Instead, we did a relaxed 6 day slope from Austria to northern Italy, visiting the Adriatic sea and back via Slovenia.

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Day 1 (Villach – Osoppo)
It started out with some short 25km from home to the train station at horrific weather. Riding exposed to a heavy thunderstorm, fighting strong head wind and massive rain was kind of bad start. However, when reaching Villach by train through continuous extraordinary rain, it started to light up slowly. After a while the rain stopped and we rode to Tarvisio at dry conditions. It even became sunny that day and we were happy when arriving at our hotel in Osoppo.

Day 2 (Osoppo – Caorle)
A sunny and relaxed ride along the Tagliamento river passing several sleepy little towns with nice bars. We found some Bed&Breakfast accomodation where we slept in a rolling home. In the evening we took a bath in the Adriatic sea at Caorle beach and had our dinner in a good fish restaurant in the beautiful center of Caorle.

Day 3 (Caorle – Grado)
Going along the Caorle Laguna via San Gaetano and finding some route nearmost to the sea, we passed by Aquileia and stayed at some Hotel at Grado.

Day 4 (Grado – San Pietro al Natisone)
After leaving Grado, we visited the archaeological excavations of Aquileia and spent some time there. Then we went to Palmanova and Cividale, two awesome cities. In Cividale we took a bath in the river Natisone. Along the beautiful Natisone we rode on direction Pulfero and Slovenia and stopped at San Pietro al Natisone. At dinner, we had a special dessert: Gubana, some dry cake fully soaked with Grappa. Cheers. Ouch.

Day 5 (San Pietro al Natisone – Paternion)
From San Pietro we went to Slovenia passing by Kobarid and Bovec, heading towards the Passo Predil. It was steady uphill all the time. From Passo Predil we went down back to Italy and finished at Villach Austria, where we departed. From now on I was on my own and took the Drautal bikeway to Paternion, where I found a nice and cheap accomodation.

Day 6 (Paternion – Golling)
I wanted to get home in one day. 197km and two hard climbs. First climb, the Katschberg pass, was probably the hardest uphill ever with my Big Dummy. Continuous slope of up to 21% for probably 500m of elevation with my 8 speed internal hub and all the baggage was a killer. With some intentional photo and water breaks I did it, but I was exhausted. Next uphill to Obertauern was relaxed, compared to the former one. From Obertauern I went down to Radstadt and rode on direction Salzburg. After 157km and probably 2000m of elevation I decided to take a train and a bus for the final 40km, since the extreme hot weather all over sudden changed into nasty headwind and heavy thunderstorms.

Conclusion
After all, the Big Dummy and the Alfine drive train once more proved reliable for touring. No problems at all. Also, I was very pleased with the Snafu Knob Job tires that worked well for both paved and gravel roads. The mobile power plant as mentioned in previous articles worked flawlessly. The dynohub power supply kept my GPS operational all 6 days without any outage and without use of internal batteries. Even at slow uphill passages without sufficient dynohub feed the Powertank was durable enough to last on.

There are several solutions for two child seats on one Big Dummy. Here is mine with two child seats bolted on the snapdeck safely. See my previous articles on mounting the first child seat. It worked similar with the second one.

Today was my first test ride for the new power supply device chain: new dynohub SON 20R, JaWeTec Bikecharger, SwissBatteries PowerTank M, Garmin Oregon GPS without internal batteries, Schmidt Edelux lights playing all together. I did some short slope of probably 45km with some 1300m of elevation. Most of the uphills were too slow to keep the bikecharger charging the Powertanks internal battery, so I switched it off at uphills and let the Powertank drive the GPS on its own. At first image those two Powertank LEDs are visible. A red one indicating charging state and a blue one indicating some device at USB out consuming power.

With such short ride I could not enforce any power outage and I could not determine whether the GPS would empty the Powertank quicker than it could be recharged by the bikecharger. No problems today. The Garmin GPS ran continuously without internal batteries, performing routing, showing maps, trip computer and several other jobs permanently. No power saving mode, but no backlight, though.

Charging of the Powertank starts at less than 10km/h with the SON 20R dynohub. As soon as speed goes further down, one should consider switching off the bikecharger to protect the Powertank from those remaining slow pulses at DC out of the bikecharger no longer being able to provide constant voltage from dynohub out.

There is one more interesting experience: with the SON 20R there is no need to switch on the lights when reaching speed of 50km/h to protect the bikecharger from dynohub overvoltage. Actually the charger would switch off itself automatically for that reason. I had to take care about this when using the stronger SON 28S dynohub.
On the other hand, I found out, as soon as switching on the lights, there is not enough power to charge the powertank, no matter how fast I am riding. With my previous installation it looked as like there was enough power left to charge the GPS even when lights would shine, but there definitely is not. The Powertanks red LED will not even flash slowly with lights switched on. So that was not a very good idea, anyway. Something that I will no longer pay any attention to.

Finally some words on installation and weight: the whole collection of USB devices and cables including GPS but without dynohub and lights makes up 342g. See third image. Installation looks some kind of messy at the moment, but everything will be protected by some small bag mounted at top tube. At final stage there will by two wires from the top tube bag to handlebar and the GPS at the handlebar. Should look quite clean. Need to get appropriate bag.

The image shows my new ensemble of USB gadgets, the mobile power supply chain I will be using for further touring. Located uppermost is the JaWeTec bikecharger, that I had used formerly. See my previous posts about this topic. The bikecharger is connected to the dynohub und will create constant DC of 5V at its USB-out which is wired to DC-in of the new lightweighted SwissBatteries PowerTank M. This basically is some sort of optimized rechargable LiPo battery pack with some electronic circuit. The PowerTank will on the other hand permanently feed the Garmin GPS (without internal batteries) at its USB-out. This works, but I need to test whether the bikecharger will be able to keep up enough power level to ensure continuous operation of the GPS in the long run.

Xtracycle offers some custom program for new Big Dummies, together with those previous options of frame kit and complete build. In my opinion this is a pretty good idea and a valuable option for us Big Dummy home designers. I think custom colors are totally appropriate for Big Dummies.

My friend Markus, who had created some comments at this blog, sent me a flickr link showing pictures of a purple big dummy. I like this. Check these custom freeloaders! Great.

Robert from Ohio/USA, riding a Big Dummy at home, contacted me some months ago, announcing his visit to Austria. He was going to move to Salzburg for some longer period of time, visiting his Salzburg family and thinking about getting another Big Dummy frame over here, just bringing his parts with him, since he did not want to stay without a big dummy cycle (yes, that is quite an issue).
Today Robert emailed me about his arrival in Austria and it turned out he had taken the whole thing with him:
“Yes, I ‘m now back in Salzburg and have brought my BD with me as extra baggage for $200 dollars (about 150euro) as this was the most appropriate method (cheapest) rather than shipping just the parts and buying a frame over here.”

See Roberts pictures how to airmail a complete big dummy bicycle. 200$ is not that much, especially keeping in mind, that I once had to pay EUR 300(!!!) for shipping some small package with bicycle parts from Taiwan to Austria.

He also states:
“I would be very glad to have an article in your blog about having the 2nd BD in Austria, in fact I have been looking forward to this since your first email.”

I am happy to drop in this article. Actually, I am not really sure whether there are only two Big Dummy bicycles in Austria (I realize, one of my E-mails did indicate this), but in fact this may very well be the second BD in the Salzburg area. At least, I have never met any Big Dummies over here and there are no comments of Austrian BD riders in this blog. However, Surly as a bicycle manufacturer is rather wellknown over here.

Robert went for a ride with a local cycling club (see pictures). I am very much looking forward to have a beer with him, since we have not yet been able to meet up to now, and weather is still very bad. So maybe we need to wait some more time until those two big dummies can be captured on one picture with those two happy riders.

Please note these are Roberts pictures, that I am publishing here. Thanks a lot!

Our espresso machine needed service and I had to get it back from the shop after one week without it. No problem about. First Big Dummy ride in 2009, 45km, 500 meters of elevation: what a pleasure after sticking with our studded winter MTB for some months, even with this heavy block of steel strapped to the wideloader. Once more the Big Dummy proved great riding convenience.
Also, this was my launch ride for the new SON 20R front wheel and my new Snafu Knob Job tires. I perfectly like those tires. Low rolling resistance, ready for riding paved roads smoothly, even long distances, but also with some offroad capabilities. Due to tread pattern there is slight oscillation one can feel at the handlebar. A light humming sound reminding me of some low tuned distant singing bowl. Looks good so far, everything. I keep on liking this bicycle, totally.

This is the Snafu Knob Job tire (26×2.35), acquired lately after doing some research and review about availability of fat tires for dual purpose usage (see previous article about tires). These tires seem to be acceptable for tarmac usage, on the other hand provide good grip and have got much better offroad capabilities than Schwalbe Fat Frank that I used previously. Also, they look quite durable and nice and were cheap due to some special offer over here. However, I have not yet done much of test riding.

BTW I may very well throttle this blog a bit within the next weeks or months since there are some motorcycling issues currently attracting my attention. But the Big Dummy stuff will be continued as soon as salt on roads will be swept away.

For those who pay attention to choosing appropriate colors for their home made bicycle assembly kits as like I do:
This comes too late for my own wheels unfortunately, but maybe it seems interesting to other Big Dummy wheelbuilders: Leafcycles Venture Rims are available with a new green color. Or do you probably like it better in brown color? Both would perfectly fit the Big Dummy frame color, I guess. These are 32mm wide durable rims of approximately 800g of weight, available with 32 or 36 holes. These rims are anodized.

I used Spank Subrosa rims in chocolate brown for making my Big Dummy wheels. Spank rims are powder coated and they are available in light green and other colors as shown at their web page. However, I might probably have used the dark green Leafcycles rim for my self made wheels in case I would have discovered it earlier. No need to say, these rims are not to be used with V-brakes or whatever rim brakes.

Late addendum: another supplier of green rims (and several other colors) is Atomlab. The Pimp rim is 32mm in width, has got 730grams of weight, and can be used with Atomlabs special torque nipples. Atomlab also offers colorful spokes, but only in a very limited range of spoke lengths.

This is a beautiful part that I would like to dedicate an article on its own. K6-III at Bike Forums came up with it. Thanks! I have been evaluating some DMR chain devices and some others for use with my Alfine internal gear hub, but did not really find what I was searching for. I would like to get rid of the heavy Alfine chain tensioner (see image at right side) due to several reasons. Unlike the DMR and other tensioners mounted at bottom bracket, the Kore tensioner uses a cantilever spring to maintain chain tension and therefore, once installed, does not need to be adjusted manually. Here are some reasons for replacing chain tensioner mounted at derailleur hanger:

• weight
• need to completely remove Alfine chain tensioner for rear wheel deinstallation, making it a pain since it stays losely connected to chain running through the pulleys. Reinstallation of tensioner is kind of cumbersome.
• why routing chain through these small pulleys in tight bends just to keep some tension on it?
• less cleaning effort

I may probably give it a try. Benefits would be shorter chain length (weight), no more pulleys, nothing that could deform derailleur hanger when being hit accidentially, wheel removal much easier. On the other hand, it might cause some noise when being operated. However, since it needs to be mounted at rearmost part of chainstay due to special Big Dummy frame, not fulfilling Kore mounting instructions, I doubt there is enough vertical chain clearance that could be used up to create tension at chain, so this purchase would be kind of risky in terms of cost. I will need to ask for price at first. Anyway, after doing some research it looks like this item is not easily available over here.

The longtail bicycle has not been used for quite some time now due to salted roads everywhere. I am currently using our winter MTB with studded tires mostly. However, here are some pictures showing the Big Dummy with the new SON 20R dynohub wheel installed, that I built previously. The new front wheel is completely identical to the previous one except for replacing the previous SON 28 dynamo hub by the new and lightweighted SON 20R centerlock hub as shown in image. The previous front wheel has been installed at the winter MTB.

Fig.1 shows two screenshots of two different tracks in different scaling on topografical Oregon 400t map. I like the clear and pretty map drawings. This map does not contain trails and gravel roads mostly, but nevertheless it gives a good impression about topografical layout providing good readability. Also, it provides a surprising amount of roads and city streets enabling road navigation capabilites by means of uploading tracks generated with google maps or whatever. This works pretty well but certainly lacks automatic rerouting, also needs an internet computer for planning the route and creating a GPX file to be uploaded to the Oregon.

Fig 2.: Track displacement example: some sloped section ridden downhill with GPS mounted at handle bar in horizontal position (left image) and ridden uphill slowly with GPS carried in back bag of trikot. Although riding much faster and therefore creating less track points (visible at image), the sooner downhill track recording is by far more acurate than the latter uphill track.

Fig 3.: These are two track screenshots of an uphill (and back downhill) ride onto the Zwölferhorn summit at our area. Left image shows track overview within topografical 1:100000 Oregon map. Right image shows topografical 3D profile of this track section from birds perspective, a feature that I like very much.

All those screenshots were directly taken from the handheld, no postprocessing.

Finally I received missing Sapim Force spokes of length 254mm in black colour and built the new Big Dummy front wheel with lightweighted SON 20R dynohub and strong Spank Subrosa rim in chocolate colour. This time I took some pictures showing the building process which should pretty much follow Sheldon Browns guidelines with 3 crossings. Leading spokes run at inside at outermost crossing to maintain better tension at trailing spokes when braking hard with disk brakes.
The resulting wheel should be very strong. It has got 1197g of weight (including rim tape, without quickrelease axle). That appears quite ok for a durable disk brake dynohub wheel. The new front wheel will replace my current SON 28 / Spank Subrosa front wheel at the Big Dummy. The latter one will be installed at our winter MTB where it will replace an older Shimano dynohub wheel, making it easier to juggle lighting equipment between those cycles just in case. Also I can finally install my Shimano XT centerlock front disk rotor to the Big Dummy, replacing a cheap noname 6 bolt rotor. And last but not least, it will shave off another 200g of weight without introducing any compromise.

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Here it is. Measured 392g of weight without axle. Note there is some protective plastic coating around the hub making it less shiny than it actually is. Plastic will be removed after wheelbuilding.
Unfortunately silver spokes were supplied instead of black, so I will have to wait some more days before being able to build and ride the new wheel.

Bicycle Holder Installation

Within the last weeks I have been gathering some practice with my new Garmin GPS, an Oregon 400t model. It was attached to my MTB, the Big Dummy, a motorcycle and a scooter. Finally I installed two bicycle holders, one at the Big Dummy and one at the scooter. I will need to buy at least two more of them. The Garmin bicycle holder for Oregon and Colorado models is simple and cheap, but it is not ready for hard bumps and impacts, probably dropping the device incidentially. Thus I had to feed in some layers of soft rubber tubing to prevent heavy shattering of device. While this was possible in an easy and efficient way at the scooter due to its thin handle bar stay providing space for a thick rubber layer, at the Big Dummy I had to keep my anti vibration layer quite thin due to thick 31.8mm handlebar. See images to compare both mounts. Nevertheless, I am hoping there is enough rubber to make it absorb hard shaking and keep device in place.
There are several GPS mounting systems available as like Bikertech customized, Ram Mounts, Touratech and probably lots more, most of them fairly well addressing the oscillation issue, but in my opinion they are way too big and heavy for my small vehicles, also quite expensive.

Power Source

Lengthy trips require some thoughts about GPS power supply. Batteries may be sufficient for one or at most two days of continuous use. Some battery charger will be needed most likely, since the Garmin would never recharge its batteries inside when plugged to some USB power supply.
Trying to avoid another battery charger in my baggage, I connected the Garmin to my hub dynamo via the JaweTec Bikecharger mentioned previously here. Basically this works, but it is far from being a perfect solution:

• With the SON 28 dynamo a continuous speed of at least 10km/h is required to provide enough power for the device. As soon as riding slower the GPS will start beeping and switch to battery if possible or just shut down.
• The charger is not recognized as a simple power supply. By default the GPS goes to mass storage mode when the charger is switched on. To prevent this, the devices USB interface needs to be set to Garmin Spanner mode, which means, for every short power outage one needs to confirm switching to GPS mode instead of mass storage mode at some popup window coming up with a nasty beep, again and again. Thats sort of cumbersome.

For the motorcycles there is no problem about power supply since it can simply be wired and plugged to the battery via some modified USB converter taken from my previous navigation device. Thus I can run it without any battery inside which is strongly recommended with offroad usage. For the Big Dummy I am still in search for a better solution. I may probably connect a special battery charger to the JaweTec charger and keep a pair of fresh batteries there, but actually I do not really like this, since it requires taking along too many small devices and batteries. I may probably just get a small and lightweighted charger and recharge batteries every night, leaving the JaweTec charger at home.
Another feasible solution would be the dynohub driven Zzing USB charger providing internal battery buffering (unlike the JaWeTec charger) for devices not being capable of USB charging. This way the Oregon GPS could be used totally without its batteries (keeping it lightweighted with better protection against bumps and vibration). However, the Zzing charger is quite big.
As to some readers comment the Australian company Pedalpower+ provides DC hub generators and several more interesting mobile power supplies for bicycle usage.
I finally decided to stick with my reliable JaWeTec charger and put some USB chargeable power buffer, called PowerTank by SwissBatteries in between the charger and the Garmin Oregon. I will give it a try and report about it.

I will have to replace my Big Dummy tires for my 2009 trips. Up to now I used Schwalbe Fat Frank, which showed good riding comfort and low resistance, but I was not really impressed with their durability. I am currently looking for longer lasting tire alternatives. My requirements are

• big fat tires with good riding comfort
• hybrid tread pattern for road and light offroad usage, running easily
• acceptable durability even with some load on bicycle
• not too heavy if ever possible

These are some ideas for pretty wide 26″ Big Dummy allround tires:

• Maxxis Hookworm (2.5″): good looking and durable, but extremely heavy, good grip on tarmac, limited offroad usage
• Maxxis Holy Roller (2.2″, 2.4″): leightweighted, good offroad capabilites
• DMR Moto folding tire (2.2″, 2.4″): thanks to Björn for pointing me to this! Lightweighted and good hybrid tire
• DMR Transition (2.2″, 2.4″): road usage mostly
• IRC Lovers Soul (2.25″): road usage mostly
• Halo Twin Rail (2.2″): several tread colours available, hybrid tire pattern
• Kenda Kiniption (2.3″): road usage mostly, cheap, click here and scroll down for all 26″ sizes available
• Kenda K-Rad (2.3″/2.5″): currently my favourite. Affordable, similar to DMR Moto, not too heavy, good hybrid quality, click here and scroll down for all 26″ sizes available
• Snafu Rim Job/Knob Job (2.35″) (scroll down page)
• Geax Tattoo (2.3″), Geax Booze (2.3), both have rigid and fold versions. The sooner is also available with white color

BTW Schwalbe provides a new colour for its Fat Frank tires besides black and creme: brown (USED HQ has got an image of a complete cycle with brown Fat Franks, looking kind of red). Should look nice at the Big Dummy. However, there were durability issues with my creme coloured Fat Frank at the Big Dummy.

Finally, for you fancy wheelbuilders out there I would like to point out availability of white powder coated spokes at Halo. They are selling them in many lengths, unlike those colourful atomlab spokes being sold only at some very specific lengths for atomlab hubs and rims. I have been searching for such spokes previously, so I would like to add it here.

Late addendum (2009/01/28): I finally decided to order a set of Snafu Knob Job tires, listed above. I got them fairly cheap and they look nice. In the long run I might switch over to using the new Schwalbe Marathon Extreme DD being not as heavy on the one hand, but longer lasting on the other, but these are very expensive and they are not yet available right now.

Previously I installed my MTB wheels to the BD but those 2.4″ Mountain King tires would not fit beneath fender stays. Well, I finally had to change tires due to bad wear of my Fat Frank rear tire, that even showed carcass damages already. This time I used my Big Dummy wheels and fit some MTB tires I had in my depot. Rear tire is Schwalbe Fat Albert 2.35″, front tire is Schwalbe Racing Ralph 2.1″. They both fit, and I experience very good snow riding quality, that may result from long wheelstand on the one hand and nobby tires on the other.

After quite a long period of evaluating GPS web pages and newsgroups, searching for test reports, user experiences and talking to people, I got totally submerged by chaotic information overkill. Finally I decided to replace my Medion automotive GPS navigation device with a real outdoor GPS, the Garmin Oregon 400t (European model with 1:100000 topografical map covering most regions of Europe). This device will be mounted at the Big Dummy mostly, but will also be used for hiking and motorcycling. Currently I cannot tell, whether it will be possible to run it with my unbuffered dynamo powered USB charger since the Garmin device will not use and recharge its batteries when being plugged to an external power source. So, when riding slowly, the Garmin may simply shut down. I will find out more about it.

Within the last days, the brandnew Schmidt dynamo 20R came out as centerlock version.

Check manufacturer Schmidts homepage for details. I hope I will receive this item within the next few weeks. It will replace my SON28 disk hub in the Big Dummy, shaving 200g of weight off the latter. Also, I will finally be able to install my Shimano XT 2008 disk rotor with it. Currently I need to use some 6-bolt replacement rotor instead. Maybe, probably, this could have an impact on the fork oscillation issue mentioned previously. I hope so, but I do not know at all.

Late addendum: In the manufacturers installation document there is a clear statement against using this hub dynamo together with disk brake in tandems or cargo bicycles with front wheel(s) sized bigger than 20″. I have not been aware of that severe restriction until I found the mentioned document to be released, so I would like to point it out.

After a nice small MTB slope today I had to clean the MTB and also the Big Dummy from previous rides’ dirt. I removed wheels at both cycles and decided to swap wheels between them just for the fun of it. Both cycles have got an Alfine rear hub and disk brakes. Both wheelsets use same type of rim and strong spokes. Different sprocket sizes are no problem due to usage of chain tensioner at Big Dummy. So, swapping wheels might be a good idea for Big Dummy offroad rides that will occur every now and then. Also, I very much like the look of these white Spank rims.

However, there is some trouble, as always. The Continental Mountain King 2.4″ tires won’t fit my fender stays. Fenders need to be removed, otherwise they are very likely to be torn into the nobby tires. Also, rear disk is only 160mm while Big Dummy rear disk is 180mm. So, disks needed to be swapped as well, which would be no big problem. But finally, the MTBs Alfine sprocket has been installed reversely, which means, chain line is not as narrow as with Big Dummy. This means, the Big Dummys chain tensioner would need to be adjusted differently for every wheel swap. All in all this looks like too much effort to me, so I may just change tires in case I need some offroad tread.

Schwalbe Fat Frank rear tire after 3000km of tarmac usage mostly, some offroad also. The brown dot is tread wear. There is no more creme coloured rubber there. To me that means, durability of those tires compares to narrow road racing tires.

My bicycles have always been subject to continuous modifications as long as they have been residing in my garage. This results from juggling parts between them or just obtaining some new item, pushing it onto the bicycle stack and rotating everything downwards by one level. At the other end an item of functional equality pops out, being not as new, light, nice, whatever. The latter one is likely to get sold somewhere. This time it hit the Big Dummy. The first of several modifications to come was a new stem. My bold Spank 2-Timer stem was replaced by a lightweighted Syntace Superforce stem. Both items were designed for rough usage. The former has got 205g, the latter has 135g. This way, stem length was reduced from 50mm to 45mm. Upper tube of my Big Dummy is long enough to compensate for. I like a short stem for direct steering. And it is a nice part. Further modifications are soon to come.

I am very sorry for any availability issues of this site. On the other hand, I have been reorganizing my stuff a bit and changed the wordpress theme. Additionally a new type of image gallery was introduced for my trip image galleries providing better viewing convenience.

The Hirschbichl is a famous little pass between Weißbach near Lofer and Ramsau/Hintersee with some steep 30% slopes at both sides. My trip went from near Saalfelden, starting yesterday at 3:00 p.m. via Berchtesgaden, Zill (another nasty 25% of slope), Hallein, the Wiestal, Faistenau to Fuschl/See, arriving at darkness and cold, 80 km altogether, exhausted.
I had some very small video camera with me and captured some sections of it. Music track is ‘Blueberry Hill’, performed by Erika Stucky on Suicidal Yodel.

I would like to refer to my previous article about tires, steering, rigid fork. The steering issues were mostly fixed by increasing tire pressure. The fork oscillation happened again when riding downhill from the Hirschbichl at some very steep section. I guess this is a matter of using rigid forks with strong brakes probably, but this is not related to the specific BD frame and fork. Will keep it in mind.

Basically I think the BD setup with rigid fork is a perfect idea (and was exactly what I wanted). There is no need for suspension at the BD at least for my way of riding (touring on- and offroad, every day riding). However, I am experiencing two issues that I am a bit picky about.

1. Handling of my BD when riding turns: I have no idea whether this is a matter of tires, steering angles or fork specification. Surly setup looks perfectly alright. I cannot see any technical reason for this in frame geometry. Nevertheless, when riding fast turns with quite some slope, there is some sort of oversteering. Handle bar (or tire?) tends to take the turn harder and harder forcefully, no matter whether applying brakes or not. My BD does not just run through the bends in a neutral way as one would expect (my MTB or road bikes handling keeps neutral when riding turns with slope). I have not yet experienced such behaviour with previous bikes, regardless of tire thickness, but I have never been using Fat Frank tires with their special shape before. I have got an 18″ frame using a dainty hope headset keeping front low.
2. Combining rigid fork with disk brake: Apart from quick release axle issue, (see disk brake page) there is some more thing I would like to point out. When using brakes under certain circumstances fork might start building up oscillation in longitudinal direction somehow. Something I have never realized with disk brakes up to now, even at some previous rigid fork setup in another bicycle. It happens when braking on ripples or when using brakes in turns and trying to modify the curve radius. These actions will be taken up by fork which will start swinging back and forth (at least it feels as like), and brake lever needs to be released to calm it down. It is not just like using brakes on uneven ground, as like everyone is used to with ordinary MTB riding or so. In my opinion this may be a matter of rigid fork not being able to vertically absorb initial strong brake impulses on the one hand and riding impacts on the other (concurrently), making it start to oscillate. Maybe this is a matter of thick tire springiness lacking any dampening. Within the last 2600km of BD riding I had it twice, both when riding downhill tarmac roads with nearly no load. Second experience happened today in the morning when I took a tight turn with brakes applied and had to go even tighter which let fork start shaking.
   Brakes (2008 XT hydr. disk) provide strong, clear and smooth operation. There are no noises at all, no vibrations, nothing. Also, there are no issues with irregular brake power, bad rotors or anything.

I am currently thinking about testing my pace RC40F suspension fork (130mm of travel) at the BD to address both issues. It might absorb or dampen sharp braking and riding impacts and could probably prevent what I called fork oscillation. Also it will considerably change steering geometry and thus could resolve handling issue. However, these issues may very much be related to the tires used, so I should probably start experimenting with different tires as a first step.

Björns blog article describes a new and interesting Big Dummy build up project starting right now. His 20″ frame was announced to arrive today. His assembly kit includes heavy duty sports components as like Magura Gustav M downhill brakes in combination with Shimano Alfine internal hub and hub dynamo for allround and offroad usage. I am really curious how it will work. Check his complete blog for any further information. Björn, have fun with it!