macbobster

Thanks for the tip seeker. Seems as though 'Ripcord' is out of production but I found a DYI kit on eBay for a good price. This will be perfect retro for my antique trail bike. Got hold of some other compressionless for the antique tour bike. Both these bikes have full length rear brake cable housings so this should be a great improvement. Always was annoyed with the squishy feel but did not know of a solution.

Best regards, MAC

macbobster

You are right on! I actually have a pair of SunTour cutters I have had forever, am I dating myself? They are not as sharp as they used to be and the crimper is a bit awkward to use but they still work well. They may last as long as I do. Here is a pic of my touring bike, soon to get some better brakes.

stardognine

You must be confused, a good pair of Kleins aren't that expensive, or heavy. About the same weight as a pair of pliers, or slightly more. 😉And touring is where you need them most. You don't want to get jammed up for tools, in the middle of nowhere, or have to overpay at a small shop (if you can even find one), for help. 🙂

Tourist in MSN

I do not carry a good cable cutter on tour, I already have too much weight in tools. If I need to cut an outer housing on a bike tour, I will go to a bike shop. I carry a spare inner rear brake and spare inner rear shifter cable on tours, but if the have too much cable sticking out after installation, that is what my roll of electrical tape is for, to coil up the excess and to secure it so it won't cause a problem.

If I needed to change an inner shift cable on my Rohloff, it has to be cut to length. I carry a tiny little side cutter, mostly for cutting zip ties. It probably could get through an inner cable without mangling it too much but I am sure it would take a few minutes to cut an inner cable.

Tourist in MSN

I do not have any experience with Aluminum frames, but that dent in the drive side chainstay looks a bit scary to me. Has anyone that knows frames looked at it?

stardognine

Are you serious? That's not a dent, lol, it's dimpled like that at the factory, for crankarm clearance. And yes, there are 2 dimples there, the other one is for chainring clearance. 🙂

I'm not gonna discuss tools anymore, let's just say we should all carry what we're most comfortable carrying, and leave it there. 😉

That's a nice ST600 there, but holy cow, you must have short legs, compared to mine. 😁😉

macbobster

Good eye mate! These early Cannondales are you might say crude but effective. My '91 ST600 is more or less first gen and this is where it all started with them, Touring bikes! That 'dent' is one of several factory dents to both chainstays to clear the crank arms, chainrings and rear tire. Back in the day fancy tapered/butted aluminum stays were apparently not available so Cannondale made due with what they had. I've all ways wondered about that process as it's all done by hand. They more than make up for the cobby looking chainstays with nice welding and overall design. She's a sweet rider!


Chunky seat stays too




Ultimate touring pedals




Comfy bars

cyccommute 

You are correct that the dent is a feature and not a bug. But, just to be clear, not all frames are like that even from the same manufacturer. My 2011 T1 and my 2003 T800 aren't dented.

IMG_1444 (1) by Stuart Black, on Flickr
My bike 12 by Stuart Black, on Flickr

I have 8 aluminum bikes in my garage between my wife's bikes and mine as well as 3 frames and none of them have dimpled chain stays.

Tourist in MSN

Oops. As I said, I do not have any Aluminum frame experience, I have never owned a frame that had a chainstay that was dimpled like that for a crank arm. Chainrings, yes, but not crank arms. Thanks for enlightening me.

Happy Feet

I have to say I don't carry dedicated wire cutters on a tour either. For my older bikes I carry a small needle nose pliers that has a cutter on it but other than that no. The list of other tools you might use as often would make for a fairly large tool kit.

My tour repair kit has one rear derailer cable and one rear brake cable if the two don't intermix. If I had to use them I would just wrap the edges until a town where a garage or bike shop had a pair of wire cutters or pliers. I doubt any shop would charge a tourer for cutting the end of a cable off - especially if you buy the replacement cable there for the one you used.

macbobster

Here is a pic of my sons '89 SM500 Cannondale. Now that is the mother of all chainstay dents. I have '86, '88, '89 and '91 Cannondales and the oversize chainstays are not tapered at all. Pretty sure Cannondale made their own tubesets in the early days. They did manage to source oval tubes but tapered stays were kinda new age, LOL.

seeker333

Cannondale's earlier MTB frames (wider tires = wider CS gap) had a dimple on the DS CS.

I recently watched a YT about Koga's latest tourer where the vlogger raved about it's new "smooth welds" and I thought, whoop-de-doo, now the Chinese can make Al frames with fillet welds like Cannondale did in PA 35 years ago.

https://www.koga.com/en/bikes/trekki...dtraveller.htm

Darth Lefty 

I miss Inpd

macbobster

Mini Cable Cutters:

djb

Like others here, I figure it's not worth the weight vs coiling up a cable and taking it for later cutting.

And as a reference of perspective, early on I took just too many tools, including a chain whip, and my bike weighed a ton, so finally figured out to make an educated guess on the likelihood of needing x tool.

With mechanical discs on long trips, I did add a small pair of needle nose pliers to make it a lot easier to remove pads

As you say, with experience we learn what we prefer to take and be comfortable with. I've learned over time to be a lot more critical of what is really required.

macbobster

For me I might take cutters for a long extended tour in remote areas. If I did I would take my mini cutters and drill them out. Get them down to maybe 40g. I must tinker or die.

Best regards, MAC

Tourist in MSN

I always carried a cassette lockring tool and wrench, even after many tours when I never needed it. I thought about leaving it out, until a short five day trip near home where I needed it. Since then I continue to carry it.

I think you have seen my miniature light weight substitute for a chain whip before, but if not, it is described at this link:
Chain Whip for Travel

Wow, I had not realized that I started that thread six and a half years ago. Time flies when you are having fun.

djb

like you guys say and show, there are certainly lightweight options out there. Its the old "touch wood" multiple times thing here, knock knock, I just find that stuff adds up and Im hesitant to add more weight and go from past riding experience to make the judgement call on stuff.
I have been carrying a fibrefix thing around now, in lieu of taking a cassette tool etc, and will try not to jinx myself with my past experience of being ok--but a big factor is not being out in the middle of nowhere, ie Ive been generally been on roads where I could flag down a lift if need be--but would certainly consider the cassette removal tool etc if out in really the middle of nowhere nowhere.
Ive generally in the past had my wheels checked out before trips, spoke tensions etc, and like I always bring up, Im a light guy so I probably have that advantage of things being easier on spokes and rims than heavier folks. touch wood twice now!

but yes, its always good to see what others use , to make one think about what is available and to think about what would be good to change to a tool and parts list for a given type of trip.

Tourist in MSN

That recent time when I needed the cassette tool, it was not for a spoke, thus a fiber fix would not have solved my problems.

It was on my Lynskey soon after I built it up that I needed the cassette lockring tool. It has replaceable dropouts so you can remove the conventional 135mm dropouts and replace with a 142mm through axle system. The dropouts are held in with a couple small 4mm screws. When I bought the frame, I checked and the screws were tight so I thought nothing of it. Built up the bike and started riding.

On a short five day tour near home, one of the screws started to unthread itself. It then dragged on the cassette lockring and eventually pushed hard enough on the lockring that the lockring started to unthread from the cassette. When I was riding along and suddenly my bike felt like the brake was applied, I knew something was wrong, pulled over immediately to inspect it. Found what teh problem was. Needed to tighten up the cassette lockring, fortunately I had the tool. The allen head screw on the replaceable dropout was ground down some, a wrench would no longer fit it. Fortunately I had a spare derailleur hanger that was part of that dropout, and it had two new screws in it, so I had a new screw to put in.

When I got home, I added a threadlocker to those screws on both sides. And after some thought, I added a tiny bottle of thread locker to my tools and spares kit since I have seen so many other cyclists in campgrounds that have lost rack bolts, etc. And it makes sense to carry a bottle of threadlocker with my S&S bike too, I have to remove the racks to pack up the bike for transport anyway. (The tip in the bottle clogs, I also carry a paper clip rubber banded to the bottle to uclog it.)
https://www.truevalue.com/catalog/pr.../category/517/

Photo at this link shows the through axle version with the two screws in each dropout.
https://cdn11.bigcommerce.com/s-m0s2...395460.jpg?c=2

stardognine

Sometimes I wonder what's wrong with myself. I don't always communicate things as I see them, then wonder why others don't get my meaning. 🤔😉 What I meant was, if the aluminum (or any metal) were dented, the paint around it would be trashed, and most likely have large flakes missing. 🙂
If you guys would just read between the lines better, or take up mind-reading, we could avoid these little misunderstandings. 😁😉

djb

Timsn, that's a neat dropout design isn't it?
And an interesting little loosening bolt story.
I took a little bottle of blue loctite with me on the central America trip, unsure if loosening stuff was going to be a problem, it wasn't, and I gave the bottle away at the end of the trip with other repair stuff.

djb

Hey, this happens to all of us. Important thing is that we don't get our noses to much out of joint, and generally it sorts itself out with some more writing.

The dent thing reminds me of seeing a photo of someone else's bike like one of mine, and seeing a dent in the main front triangle, and then seeing on mg bike that it had the same dent, I think to make it easier to carry on the shoulder, being a cross bike.
I'd never really noticed this before, or saw the dent and then forgot about it...

Tourist in MSN

In a previous job, some of the technical stuff that I wrote was read by tens of thousands of scientists and engineers. I learned the hard way that I had to take great pains to avoid ambiguities in my writing. But for decades before that, a lot of the stuff I wrote was pretty confusing. Do not worry about it, on a forum like this nobody really cares that much.

A friend of mine had an older Cannondale, he said his frame was anodized instead of painted. And another friend of mine has crossed the USA three times on his Cannondale, it has dents and scrapes all over but I do not recall seeing any flaking paint on his frame either, maybe his frame is also anodized? Thus, I usually do not know when I am looking at a photo of an older Cannondale if it is anodized or painted, some colors like white I assume is paint but otherwise I have no clue which it might be.

On the dropouts, yeah, that makes it possible for them to make one frame and the final buyer can use whichever type of wheel they want. If I wanted to switch to through axle, I would have to buy both dropouts from them to make the conversion, only one set is provided when you buy the frame.

If the disc brake mount looked a bit odd, they also built that so you can remove three screws and install a post mount for the regular type discs that pre-date the new flat mount design that is in the photo.

They are frame fabrication company, it makes sense to build a frame that is easily modified later so that the user has a wide choice of components. On the other hand if they were a bike company and built up all of their bikes themselves, it would be cheapest to just make the frame fit the components they planned to install. I have no clue what percentage of their bikes are sold as frames and built up by others versus built in house, but the company was started by people with expertise in welding exotic metals and it appears that they are mostly staying with what they know best.

djb

Since 2017 the Troll has a wider rear end, and the stock 135mm hub rear wheel has these two doohickies and fit onto each side of the axle to take up the difference. They can fall off when you remove the wheel, but as you say with this frame, allows you to use 142 hubs that are a lot more common with wider rims etc that work better for wider tires. It can't go thru axle though, so your frame has that advantage.

Makes sense to go with current trends to not limit wheel choices.

And yes, I noticed the disc mount setup also, although I don't really know the differences to be honest.