Monthly Archives: November 2013

You are browsing the site archives by month.

Bikes are better with Belgiums

new wheels

Indeed they are! (Techy bit: colour coded KingR45/HED Belgium/Sapim CX-Ray.)

My bike now makes a “RRRRRrrrrrrrrrRRRRRrrrrrrrrrRRRRRrrrrrrrrr” sound when I’m free-wheeling which is kinda awesome.

Dan at Shifter Bikes did a brilliant job. He’s some sort of magician. He must be because he knew exactly what I needed and wanted.

I blathered on about what was happening when I was descending (speed wobbles which scared the bejesus out of me when I was coming down Lake Mountain and the bike started to shake almost uncontrollably) and he knew my Easton wheels were flexing when I got over a certain speed. Funny thing is, I’d started notice something odd going on with my back wheel without realising it was my back wheel. It felt like my seat was wobbling a little bit and I couldn’t work out why. But this wasn’t happening at really high speed either. This was going on when I was doing boulie laps! And I’d noticed it tootling around town as well.

Turns out I needed stiffer wheels. And an overlapping spoke pattern.

Shifter Dan – genius!

These are not cheap wheels. But I don’t for a second regret letting him work his magic and following his advice about what hubs to buy. My only request was a pair of red spokes. I love finding and working with people who really know what they’re doing. I love the whole idea of being able to just let him do his thing and the end result being brilliant.

The experience of riding my bike now is simply awesome. We went out to the Dandenongs yesterday to try them out (Richard also got new wheels but hey – this is my blog!). There’s nothing to say except they were awesome and had me wishing I’d done this when I first bought the BMC back in February. Now I want to head out to Donna Buang. When I did the climb in March this year on the BMC, I managed the descent in just under 20 minutes (19:43) so I’m curious now to see if I can beat that time.

The bike definitely rolls faster with these new wheels. Coming down from Skyhigh I actually ran out of gears and ended up free-wheeling most of the way down. But it’s not that steep…