Comments on: Gifford: Powdercoat and Details

By: Alex Wetmore is always busy with something… » Blog Archive » Travel Gifford

Sun, 29 Jan 2012 18:48:46 +0000

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By: Alex Wetmore | The Bicycle Story

Alex Wetmore | The Bicycle Story — Wed, 11 May 2011 19:07:32 +0000

[...] variety of reasons, but the most common one is probably the 650b, all-arounder bike that you built, the Gifford. What sparked your interest in framebuilding and how did you learn how to [...]

By: For the Love of D.I.Y. | The Bicycle Story

For the Love of D.I.Y. | The Bicycle Story — Tue, 01 Mar 2011 00:48:24 +0000

[...] and bike-tech wiz (who contributes technical articles to Bicycle Quarterly). His personal bike, the Gifford–a Rohloff-equipped, low-trail, 650B, wide-tire all-arounder–was the basis for [...]

By: Semilog

Semilog — Sat, 22 Jan 2011 04:11:25 +0000

Hey, cool!! That bike is rather similar to the one that I''ve got almost done. Mine is an old Kona Hot (Tange Prestige Ultimate, built by Tom Teesdale), with a new fork made by R+E. Same cranks, same rear rack, similar fat slicks, drop bars, cantis... and a platform front rack is on the way — mine will be a CETMA half-rack.

By: Alastair

Alastair — Mon, 27 Dec 2010 03:28:30 +0000

Thanks Alex, I may do this as a two stage experiment beginning with a Salsa Vaya frameset(which I have on order) and using my findings to finalise my build options on the custom Ti frame. I had a good read of the Phil Wood site, and a huge amount more about EBBs. I note that, as well as the 1/4″ throw standard EBB insert you mention, Phil Wood has now brought out the Philcentric which will rival the Exzentricker from Trickstuff and the Forward Components one as well. These are all EBBs for standard shells but they require outboard bearing cranksets to work. Not cheap but they don”t seem to get the same sort of slippage/creak reports as full size EBBs. I”ve read negatives around the limitations of 1/4″ throw and changing gears re SS/fixed. But for hub gear use that shouldn”t really apply, as long as I set up the hub gear with as close to a magic gear as possible. I then wouldn”t expect to be varying cog or chainring sizes after that so 7mm of adjustment should be enough to accomodate chain wear. I”ll let you know how I get on…cheers….Al

By: Alex Wetmore

Alex Wetmore — Tue, 21 Dec 2010 17:52:28 +0000

Tensioners work. I think they are ugly and they do add a bit of noise and limit your options for using a chaincase, but they work.

I personally like the EBB option the best though. They work best with fenders, don”t look ungainly like sliding dropouts or a tensioner, and don”t have to be too heavy. Phil Wood makes a nice one that has half the throw but which is more compact (so lighter and nicer looking).

By: Alastair

Alastair — Tue, 21 Dec 2010 02:35:08 +0000

Alex, I”ve been giving this a lot of thought recently, I have one bike with horizontal drops and one with track ends, both hub gears. But I”m looking at a new custom frame and am hankering after vertical dropouts with disc brakes. I”ve been weighing up EBB v Paragons but am increasingly wondering if it might just be easier to run a chain tensioner. Maybe just a surly singulator in push up mode and have the disc caliper chainstay mounted? If I do this, and avoid rack/guard mounting issues then it’’s chain tensioner or EBB. As far as I”m aware there’’s no weight benefit to either so it comes down to aesthetics, simplicity and reliability. I”d be interested to hear your thoughts on this?…thanks….Al

By: Alex Wetmore is always busy with something… » Blog Archive » Starting on the Ivy-T

Thu, 04 Nov 2010 07:37:45 +0000

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By: Alex Wetmore

Alex Wetmore — Fri, 08 Oct 2010 19:43:09 +0000

I owned a previous bike with Paragon sliding dropouts and disliked them for a few reasons:
1) They make getting a good fender line hard because you don”t have a fixed distance between the axle and bridges. I don”t like using spacers there, or reconfiguring my fender when I pick different chainring/cog sizes.
2) I didn”t like the asthetics of having the dropouts cantilevered out behind the chainstay.
3) Eyelets are usually not well thought out on them.
4) Using sliding dropouts really means that you are building a frame with a roughly 145mm dropout width (the sliding dropouts take up in the space in between and drop it down to 135mm). The wide chainstays were too easy for my feet to hit with moderate (150ish) Q-factor cranks.
5) They didn”t stay in adjustment for me as well as an EBB.

EBBs sometimes get a bad name because the most common implementation uses set screws and that implementation does not work well. The concept of an EBB is a good one, the set screw implementations are easy to build but don”t work well.

By: Steve

Steve — Fri, 08 Oct 2010 18:57:31 +0000

Why do you choose an eccentric bottom bracket instead of sliding dropouts (e.g. Paragon Rohloff)? I”m thinking of building up something similar.