David Singlespeed Unrau

You are not seeing much action over here as I’ve been busy updating the True North Cycles website.  Make sure to check it out.  I still have lots of photos to put up and lots of content to refine, so make sure to stop by regularly and see how it is progressing!

We are working on an updated jersey design for 2008. To get a better idea of what the jerseys are going to look like, I ended up cutting the fabric patterns out of paper and taping them together:

Front, back and shoulder of the XXXXS version of the new True North Jersey. There should be a little tiny black collar going around the neck, but there is no way that is happening with my craft skills! This is the XS template, so there will be more green space on the larger sized jerseys, as the design is the same across all sizes of the jersey.

Here is one of the older jerseys for comparison.

The ‘bike’ of the day today is in fact just a stem - a one-off hand painted custom lugged stem! This is one of the prettiest piece of bike art to pass through the shop in a while. The lucky owner of this stem already has the bike to match. I don’t have any pictures of the bike at hand, but it features the same lug set, matching paint and is dressed up with polished stainless cable stops on the downtube.

Well, Croutch just won the provincials on the last set of tubulars that I glued, and they held up just fine through the last half of the season racing in dry, snow and mud. They were glued using the Greg Reain method plus a little extra:

• Vittoria Mastik One glue (this glue is a lot firmer than the Gommitalia)
• Three layers on the rim - the middle one quite thick
• Two layers on the base tape, one thick
• A last think layer on the rim
• Mount the tire when the glue is wet
• Mask the tire sidewall and the rim braking surface, deflate the tire, run a bead of glue in the crease between the rim and the tire

All told, 5.5 tubes of glue and four days for two wheels - Grifo tires on Ambrosio rims. I still don’t think the Ambrosio Excellence rims are the best rim for CX tubulars, but it all worked out. Croutch ran the tires around 35psi, and gave them rave reviews.