Having Fun in the Big Ride World

When a guy that I know approached me and asked me to build him a new bike to replace his 20 year old Raleigh Crested Butte (the frame finally cracked), I said “Sure..No Problem”

But, there were a few catches. First, he wanted another steel frame, a hardtail. That’s easy, there are a lot of nice choices within his price range.

Second, it had to have braze-ons for a rear rack. Still easy, narrows down the field a bit, but plenty of choices

Third, and by far the biggest one to solve, was that he uses the Mountain Tamer Quad. the quad is a fourth chainring, 16 teeth, with the Quad you can climb anything. I know, because I’ve ridden a few times with the inventor, Tom Mayer, co-founder of the Iron Horse Classic Road Race, member of the Mountain Bike Hall of Fame in Crested Butte and all around nice guy, and I’ve watched him climb steep slopes while the rest of us had our bikes on our shoulders.

Overall, the proverbial piece of cake..

We selected a Soma Groove to serve as his new ride.

While I picked out the parts to build his bike up with, there were a few restrictions.. He wanted to stick with a seven speed cassette, I tried to convince him to at least upgrade to an eight, but he wasn’t interested. He wanted wide bars, and was willing to try something new, maybe a riser. He mentioned that he likes to do daylong rides, but sometimes his hands and arms got tired from braking (cantilevers) during the descents. His Raleigh had a 1″ threaded Judy, so that was another upgrade. And he wanted bomber wheels.

I picked out a RockShox Recon (not too expensive, easy maintenance, easy set-up, 80 mm travel)

convinced him to give Avid BB7s a go to relieve his descending discomfort

The wheels are Shimano XT (newer version than the XTs that he was using before) laced to Sun Rhyno-Lites.

And as you can see, i convinced him to try out an On-One Mary handlebar. plenty wide, with an ergonomically pleasing sweep

In mixing new tech with old school, we kept his old friction shifters (friction would be required for the front derailleur anyways)

The most significant hurdle to overcome was the cranks. The quad requires a 110/74 mm 5 bolt crankset. and these are hard to find. Easy enough, first attempt is to just use his old cranks. Worked on the Raleigh, with a wide anough bottom bracket spindle, they should work on the Soma. BUZZZZZ. Wrong answer. Even with a BB spindle length of 137 mm, the cranks hit the chainstays. can’t find a longer BB, so it’s time to find some new cranks. Searched through a few distributors, called a lot of shops, and searched the internet, but no dice. So, I called my good friend Tom for some advice. He sympathized with my dilemma, he already knew that these cranks were few and far between, and he let on that the last couple he’s known about were all found on E-bay. So off to E-bay I go, where I find a brand new Sugino crankset that meets the bill. I was even able to return to a normal length BB.

The next problem is immediately noticeable. the quad spider mounts between the middle chainring and the small chainring, and is 3 mm thick, which with the built-in spacer on the Suginos is just wide enough to drop the chain between the chainrings. Every shift..

Now, it’s time to get creative, and the trusty Dremel tool is needed, a ittle bit here, a little bit there and voila..no more gap..

Count-em 4 chainrings…

and after a longish wait, Craig can will be able to ride his new bike over the holidays

the color matches the trim on our house..