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Target / Practice

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I had a good ride Sunday. I took out the new bike I built, the pre-production steel Diamond with unicrown frameset, that was at Interbike. A few specification details; all the spokes, front, rear, left and right are the same length and are equally tensioned. The hubs have different dimensions but the spoke length works out the same. The front hub is a Jones 135-F and the rear hub is Chris King singlespeed. The unicrown fork now has low-rider rack mounts (perfect for a Tubus Duo rack). The rear view shows the mounts on the rear dropouts for a rack (the top struts of a rack will need a seat binder collar with mounts built-in) and also visible is the bolt that secures the dropout adapter – in this case for singlespeed, but all the frames come with a dropout that’ll take a rear derailleur. The cranks are the latest Shimano XTR which work very well on a singlespeed – it looks like I won’t have to modify any others any time soon!











The steerer tube on the unicrown fork is 300mm to start with. I cut it down to 260mm and added a 40mm spacer plus two 10mm spacers. The 40mm spacer is the same height as the upper clamp and spacer of the Truss fork. This brings the bars up to that height (as if the Truss were there). The two 10mm spacers over that spacer are there so I can adjust the height of the bar for how I’m riding or feeling. I often have to remind people that my forks are not suspension corrected and are therefore much shorter. The stack of spacers here may make the front end look very high but it isn’t really – the head tube is just lower. The seat and bars are just about level. The seatpost here is an Eriksen titanium.

Two bottles (and cages) on this ride. The frame can take another cage under the down tube, by the bottom bracket (which is a good place for a storage bottle/container holding weightier items when bike packing). And also on the downtube are brazed on mounts for a Crud Catcher front mud guard – can be very useful when the wet weather is with us.

As I said, the ride was good. I did not see any other bike riders or many cars out there. No motorcycles. Just one nice family target shooting. It is hunting season now so much more shooting than normal. I wear my orange vest – safety first. I love riding my local roads and trails (no sarcasm intended and I don’t mind the guns – this is Oregon!). It is harvest season here too but that is another story.

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