WhyFi

Horrendous. I find it really weird that they'd essentially buy a name when the name is only known by people that would be turned off by this schlock.

WhyFi

I cheat when I take pictures of plants - I like shooting inside nurseries where the light is nice and diffuse. From yesterday, a dahlia (I think) -

WHOOOSSHHH...

Nice job....

3alarmer

...sometimes you get lucky outdoors. There's a translucency effect that you lose if you're in diffuse light all the time.

halfspeed

Well, at least they haven't fired everybody and moved production to China. Yet.

If this doesn't work, of course, we'll soon be seeing Thiel branded $300 5.1 packages at Best Buy.

WhyFi

Nice! I kid - I do shoot flowers/plants outside, but with not getting the depth of focus that I want, over-exposing the petals and not having much desire to shoot when the light is best (and the mosquitoes are the worst), I have a hard time maintaining patience.

WhyFi

It'll happen. It has to. I don't see them maintaining US facilities and trading under the Thiel name but without the Thiel philosophy. The bright side is that, when they do end up in BB, they'll get to team up with the other American hi-fi sellout - McIntosh.

RUOkie

my 15y/o nephew is coming to visit me for the week from NJ, arriving tonight. Today, while discussing last minute stuff, he says "I hope I can ride bikes with you". --ffs, I wasn't planning on that. Time for some emergency wrenching to get the Raleigh 500 ride worthy (it hasn't been ridden in 3-4 yrs) since it is the only bike with toe clips. Of course I had to go for a 90 min trail ride first. Came hom, e wrenched for 3 hours on all 4 bikes since I figure I'll ride the SS with him. My next door neighbor kept seeing me go into the garage and come out with another bike. She finally said to me, "How many bikes do you actually have?", followed by "why do you need four bikes for yourself?"

If she only knew.

Dudelsack 

I'd lecture him on what a worthless eff he is and drop him in the middle of nowhere. Kids these days...

RUOkie

I'm happy about it, he isn't the most athletic kid, so I'm glad to hear he wants to ride. I could have planned better

Dudelsack 

That's what I'm talking about.

ls01

Ok, so Ive been away for a bit. Not doing the catchup, still to busy. Ls01 is actually going to have an ls01 in his street rod soon. And then it will be a street rod.
I put a craigslist lt1 into a buddys car and it had 0 oil pressure at operating temp. So I sold him mine. Then I bought a wrecked 98 z to transplant. I should be back in a week or 2. Effin wiring harnesses......

LAJ

Nice!!!

3alarmer

...try not to put your eye out.

RUOkie

EXCELLENT!!!

​f

Heathpack 

California Poppy

Heathpack 

FINALLY.... I had a good climbing day up at Mt. Pinos. Climbed it twice with some friends, 35 mi/4300 ft. Bagged a QOM on a nice 7% section of the climb (which also put me #7 on the overall leaderboard, ie including men), lots of ladies top tens. I even rode the first 5 miles as a warm up and didn't try to rock it until I was 3.5 miles from the top. Beat my personal best by 8:26, which isn't saying much because every other trip I've had up the hill has been a trial.

But now I have some questions:
1. Yesterday when I was just wheeling my bike to put it away after the fitting, I noticed my pedals turning as I pushed the bike. Why are they doing that all of a sudden? Does something need lubing in the hub?
2. Today on the climb I heard a noise, wasnt sure what it was, when I got to the top of the hill I took a look and it was one of my rear brake pads rubbing on the rim. I couldn't figure out how to fix it, when my friends got to the top I asked the husband, he's a pretty knowledgable bike guy. He showed me how to fix it, in doing so, gave my rear wheel a spin and he said it has a wobble in it, needs to be trued. I could see what he was talking about once he showed me. Is it normal for this to happen on a new bike like this? How frequently does something like this happen? I don't really want to give my bike up to LBS this week, this is supposed to be a full training week for me, maybe 200 mi/15000 ft. Can it wait until the week after when I'm on a training break? I don't want to hurt the magic bike.

I also have a maddening squeak since getting the new post. I thought fitter had solved that yesterday (carbon paste) and its better but still present enough to make me a little crazy on those climbs. I'm not sure where to go next on that, but I'm not going to think about it for now because it's such an annoying thing. Tomorrow I will think about it.

3alarmer

...this is usually symptomatic of some increasing drag in your freewheeling mechanism, in your case the freehub.
Could need lubrication, could have some sort of schmutz in there, or could have something wrapped in there that you picked up riding.


...I usually tell people that in the final analysis, your wheels only need to be true enough to run through the pads without rubbing.
It's probably because, like every other person who has bought a machine built, low spoke count wheel, it wasn't built very well.

Whether there is anyone at you LBS who knows much about wheels can be problematic, but you might get lucky.

When you pay them to true it, ask them to please even out the tensions and stress relieve the spokes as well.

Heathpack 

1. Will it hurt anything to ride it another 200 mi before taking it in? I will look for obvious hubschmutz, but short of that, am I hurting magic bike to wait another week?
2. How do you assess if LBS has a person who knows about wheels? Or do you think I should just send it to @rjones to make sure it's done right? Maybe Mountain Boy Racer will know, I can ask him, I guess.

3alarmer

...no it should not hurt anything. The schmutz would be somewhere between the rear cog cluster and the hub, FWIW.

The finding a knowledgeable wheel guy is a conundrum. I would ask both Mountain Boy Racer and Fitter Guy, to see if
they got somebody in mind. It's worth a little research, because once your wheels are done right, they seem to go for
quite a while problem free. If they are not done right, it becomes a source of continuing intermittent aggravation.

Also, very often the guys who know what they are doing do not cost any more, or minimally more.

I could probably troll the faithful in here for three or four pages just by mentioning Jobst Brandt, but I have to tend the garden,
and the Toyota is reported to be making a "dragging noise".

Herbie53

Heathpack 

Thanks! FYI Fitter Guy is nowhere near me, he's about an hour away, but still I've sent him an email, he's mentioned in the past that he thinks a good mechanic has moved up near me if only he can find the contact info for him.

I have Mountain Boy Racer's recc, but he seemed to think truing the wheel was no big thing.

rjones28 

Oooh.

LesterOfPuppets

I put it off 'til it starts rubbing on the stays

LesterOfPuppets

This is probably my best flower. Woah, it's a classic. 2005, taken on a Panasonic 2mp PnS .